Editorial Policy

General information

Latin American Law Review (Lat. Am. Law Rev.) is a diamond open access journal published by the Faculty of Law of Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) and the Legal Studies Division of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching A.C. CIDE (Mexico). The journal publishes legal and socio-legal research articles that address problems in any area of law and that are relevant to academic studies on Latin America. The journal is published twice a year and publishes its contents in English and Spanish. The digital contents of each issue are open access through its website and can be downloaded in PDF and HTML formats.

Circulation

Latin American Law Review publishes two issues per year. The journal's issues may be in any of the following formats:

Open topic: These are issues in which there is no theme that articulates the published articles and, consequently, these will be on any subject related to the goals of the journal. The call for the reception of articles in this format is permanently open. You can send us your article through the OJS editorial management platform.

Dossier: These are thematic issues where the articles must revolve around a specific topic defined by the editorial team. The call for articles for the dossiers is open for a specific period of timen and can be consulted at this link.

All articles published in the journal are submitted to the evaluation of two peers external to the University.

Apart from research articles, Latin American Law Review publishes book reviews on its website that allow us to update our readers on new topics of interest. Reviews are not published as part of regular or special issues of the magazine.

To ensure long-term and permanent access to its content and issues, the journal relies on the digital archiving service PKP Preservation Network, which uses the LOCKSS program for this purpose.

Thematic Scope

The Journal publishes articles that have robust theoretical and methodological reflections such as those derived from the following currents:

• Law and society
• Law and economics
• Legal anthropology
• Legal sociology
• Legal history
• Comparative Law
• Cultural analysis of law
• Critical legal studies

Although these are topics that the Journal seeks to privilege, any content that is relevant to the analysis of legal problems pertinent to Latin America will also be considered.

Open access and CC licence

Latin American Law Review is a diamond open access journal that provides its content free of charge to authors and institutions that wish to publish in it, as well as to readers who wish to access the articles. Also, the contents of the journal are available under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This means that users may share the journal material, copy and redistribute it in any format or medium, as long as the following conditions specified in the license terms are respected.

 Appropriate credit: You must give appropriate credit to authors, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

 Non-Commercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

 Non-Derivatives: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

 No additional restrictions: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Authorship and copyrights

Authors retain the copyright of their works and authorize the journal, by means of a license, to use, edit, publish and divulge their texts. They also acknowledge that the contents of Latin American Law Review are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. In turn, readers may access, read and share the contents of the magazine as long as they respect the terms of this license (see the section "Open access and CC license" above). Since the journal is published in Colombia, it is governed by the copyrights stipulated in Decisión Andina 351 of 1993 and Ley 23 of 1982 of Colombia.

For details on permitted usage, users must visit the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license description on the Creative Commons website: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en

Note:

The journal's website footer complys with Universidad de los Andes legal guidelines. The copyright statement found there applies to all creative works found on the site except for journal content, for example, logos and website design, among others.

Executive board roles

Latin American Law Review  has an Editorial Team and an Editorial Board. The Editorial Team is in charge of making decisions about the contents to be published, guaranteeing compliance with academic and editorial quality standards, indexing and content dissemination processes, as well as the operative procedures of the publication. The Editorial Team is also responsible for inviting academics to join the Editorial Board, considering international quality criteria and the candidates’ expertise on the thematic scope of the journal or suggestions put forward by members who are already in the Board. The Editorial Team is also responsible for convening regular Board meetings and conducting timely consultations with its members.

The main role of the Editorial Board is to ensure that the editorial decisions regarding the journal are coherent with its mission and stated thematic coverage. It periodically evaluates the status of the journal, reviews the topics on which it has published, proposes new topics that deserve to be worked on, and analyzes proposals for dossiers, identifying whether they are relevant and timely for the journal; occasionally, it offers a supporting opinion on a submitted content or proposes possible readers or reviewers. Its members have a substantial academic background and are affiliated with leading institutions worldwide. They may be nominated by other Board members or by the journal’s Editorial Team.

Editorial guidelines

Reception and editorial review of contents

• Latin American Law Review receives submissions for open theme numbers thorughout the year editorial management platform OJS.
• Dossier and Special Issues call for papers will open on specific dates. The journal announces submission deadlines, among other terms here.
• Submissions must be sent through the journal's online submission system.
• Authors must review the  Author resources page thoroughly and make sure their submission meets all journal requirements.
• Manuscripts sent to this journal cannot be sent simultaneously to another publication

Content evaluation

• Latin American Law Review’s editorial team initially assess the submissions to determine which articles will be sent to external peer reviews. In this initial assessment, the editorial team will verify if submissions comply with the goals of the journal and the criteria established in Author Resources.
• The articles which pass the review by the Editorial Team are scrutinized by a tool for detecting plagiarism. When whole or partial plagiarism is detected, the text will not be sent to peer review and the authors will be notified of the reason for rejection.
• The journal uses the tool Turnitin to verify the originality of manuscripts and to ensure they are not similar with other contents that have already been published.
• Authors should report the use of artificial intelligence tools and how they were used.

Peer Review

The pre-selected research articles are externally evaluated by two reviewers, under a double-blind system.

• The editorial team will send the articles that fulfill these criteria to two external reviewers who will be selected considering their academic career and expertise in the content to be assessed. During this evaluation, the names of authors and reviewers will be anonymous.
• Reviewers can recommend the publication of an article without modifications, recommend publication with changes or not recommend for publication. Decisions will always be notified to authors within six months after receiving the article.

• Authors whose contents obtain favorable review results and are pre-approved for publication will receive both peers’ feedback, so that they can make the suggested modifications. Peer feedback may be accompanied by adjustment suggestions regarding structure issues from the Editorial Team.

• Authors will revise and modify their texts based on the peer and editorial feedback. They must send back the manuscript’s new version along with a brief explanation of how they responded to adjustment suggestions, and, in case of omitting any, they must justify their decision.

• Once the journal receives the final version of the article, the editorial team will check whether the author included changes suggested by reviewers. The team can determine that the article will not be published if the author did not follow suggestions or included changes proposed by reviewers.
• The editorial team will notify the author by written means the final decision regarding publication of his or her article.

Editorial Process

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the journal follows the guidelines below.

• Authors are obliged to strictly adhere to the editing guidelines established by the journal, ensuring the originality of their contributions, the exclusivity of their publication in our platform without simultaneous publication in other media, and avoiding any form of plagiarism or inappropriate behavior.
• In the process of evaluation and editing, the medium of communication with the authors is the platform OJS. In particular cases, e-mails.
• Authors are consulted during the editing and proofreading process to resolve issues or concerns. The editorial team reserves the right to make minor stylistic corrections.
• The journal reviews metadata translation provided by authors and makes adjustments when necessary.
• The Journal has procedures for diagraming the issue, in accordance with the design and layout pertaining to each publication.
• The authors are obliged to assume the responsibility inherent to the results they present and that are published.
• Authors authorize the journal to publish their articles and will sign an agreement for publication with Latin American Law Review.

See the guidelines for manuscript submission

Ethical policy

The journal has an ethical policy that outlines the responsibilities and conduct of editors, authors, and peer reviewers, which should be consulted here: Ethical policy