Submissions

Author Guidelines

[A] Aim of the Journal

The Journal offers current, authoritative scholarship on a wide range of issues and developments in European restructuring and insolvency law. It aims to promote academic discussion which crosses national boundaries, mainly in the field of European preventive restructuring and corporate insolvency law. This also includes related issues in adjoining areas. In this respect, we kindly ask our authors to make a special effort to acquaint themselves with the academic discussion on their particular topic in European legal systems other than their own. Only this way we are able to offer our readers the highest level of legal analysis, and to achieve an ongoing transnational discourse.

The Editorial Board welcomes contributions fitting the aims and scope of the journal. The Journal seeks to be relevant to the entire European insolvency and restructuring community (and beyond), including practitioners, judges, bankers, legislators, regulators and academics. EIRJ strongly believes in the benefits of cross-fertilization between practice and academia and therefore publishes content that is relevant to all. The Journal publishes case notes, articles with an academic connotation and articles with a practitioner connotation. 

We welcome the submission of articles and case notes to be considered for publication. Authors can upload their submission in our online portal. We accept submissions on a rolling basis. The Journal is published digitally and is fully open-access. In order to facilitate rapid editorial processing, authors are requested to observe the following information when preparing their articles for submission. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject contributions because of non-compliance with these guidelines.

[B] Online submission

1. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically via our online portal. The Journal only accepts submissions via our online platform. Submissions via other routes will not be considered. Detailed instructions for uploading your manuscript online can be found in the online Submissions portal. The Editor will acknowledge receipt of the manuscript with a reference number, which should be quoted in all correspondence. 
2. Submission of a manuscript will be held to imply that: 
1. it contains original work that has not been published before (either domestically or abroad);
2. it is not under consideration or being submitted for publication anywhere else at the same time;
3. its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any. Where applicable, the submission will be held to imply that publication has been approved by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. 

The Journal will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

1. The Journal is fully open access based. Submission of any contribution will be held to imply that the author agrees to make the contribution available in open access. 
2. Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere and/or from copyright works, are required to include adequate acknowledgement for the reproduction of these extracts. Any material received without such acknowledgement will be assumed to originate from the authors. 

[C] Reviewing process

1. The Editorial Board will review each submission for suitability. All potentially eligible articles then undergo a process of double-blind peer review prior to acceptance for publication. 
2. Since this Journal follows a double-blind peer reviewing procedure, authors are requested to submit: 
1. A blinded manuscript without any author names and affiliations in the text. Self-identifying citations and references in the article text should be avoided. 
2. Separately submitted author information, containing all author names, affiliations, and the contact information of the corresponding author. Please see below for the full requirements. 
3. Contributions are accepted entirely at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Articles that do not fit within the aims and scope of the journal, or that are regarded as not reaching the formal and substantive quality standards of the journal, are rejected. Manuscripts may be returned to the author for revision. 
4. The Editorial Board will, in general, inform the author within two months as to whether the manuscript has been accepted for publication, or which revisions are necessary before publication. 
5. After acceptance, but before publication, proofs will be sent to the author for checking. The proof-reading stage is to be used only to correct minor errors that may have been introduced during the production process. Substantial changes in content, e.g. new results, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board requests prompt return of the corrected proofs, preferably within two days of receipt. The article will be published online only after receipt of the corrected proofs. 

Our reviewing procedure works as follows:

The EIRJ reviewing procedure is as follows. An author can upload their manuscript onto EIRJ’s online portal. The Editor-in-Chief receives the manuscript and confirms to the author that the manuscript is received. The Editor-in-Chief decides which two (2) reviewers should be selected to review the article. The Editor-in-Chief is assisted by an editorial secretary.

The actual reviewing procedure is a double-blind peer reviewing procedure. This means that during the reviewing procedure, the two (2) reviewers who will review the content of the article, are not aware of the identity of the author. Furthermore, the respective author is not aware of the identity of the two reviewers. For the reviewers that will review the article, the identity of the author is automatically hidden by the online portal and vice versa. Please be advised that the identity of the author is however always known by the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial secretary.

The two reviewers that are selected by the Editor-in-Chief both simultaneously receive the blinded manuscript. They both independently review the manuscript. They give their review of the article and give comments on the article. The Editor-in-Chief, assisted by the editorial secretary, collects the reviews and the comments of both reviewers and merges the comments together. After both reviews have been received, the Editor-in-Chief makes a decision: to reject, to accept, to accept under the condition of minor adaptations or to ask the author to review and resubmit. That decision, as well as the comments on the article, will be shared with the author. (In the case that the reviewers’ comments should contradict each other, the Editor-in-Chief will get in touch with both reviewers and discuss with the reviewers to try and bring their opinions together. In the case that this consultation does not lead to a shared decision, the Editor-in-Chief has the decisive vote.) There is of course a desk review possible by the Editor-in-Chief. This means that, if submitted articles which evidently fall outside the scope of the magazine or which are evidently below standard, they can be directly rejected without reviewers having to do an in-depth review.

After the Editor-in-Chief has sent the author the reviewed article, the author goes to work to implement the given feedback/comments and uploads a revised article to the online portal. (Then, it is possible to have another round of comments.) Finally, the reviewers can find the article acceptable for publication - again, the Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision whether the article is accepted for publication, based on the reviewer’s opinions. The author has the chance to proof-read his article one last time before publication. The finalized article gets uploaded back into the online portal. The article gets published on EIRJ’s website.

[D] Manuscript details

1. Please ensure you have read and complied with our House Style below before submitting your manuscript. Failing to comply with these guidelines might cause rejection of the manuscript and/or unnecessary delays in the review and publication process. 
2. Contributions must be submitted via our online portal in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx). If applicable, illustrations and tables must be submitted separately via our online portal along with the manuscript. When submitting figures as separate files, please ensure that they are high quality (.jpg files with a resolution of at least 600 dpi). 
3. The language of the journal is English. Only articles in English will be considered. Manuscripts should be written in standard (British) English; our preferred reference source for spelling and grammar is the current version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Manuscripts will be returned to the author if the English is below standard. In case of doubt about the correct use of the English language, authors are advised to have their text checked by a native speaker before submitting it. 
4. In order to ensure anonymity for peer review purposes, the main text from the manuscript should be submitted separately from the author information, as stated above. 
1. The main text should be a blinded manuscript without any author names and affiliations. The footnotes should also not disclose the author’s identity. Please ensure the full anonymity of your manuscript before uploading it. 
2. The separately submitted author information must list the full title, short title and names and affiliations of all authors (i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country). Give a clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author. If applicable, include acknowledgements and funding details. If applicable, include a disclosure statement. If conflicts of interests are present, appropriate disclosures must be included. Availability of data and material must be stated (data transparency). Please note that it is the responsibility of the author of each paper to collect any permissions and acknowledgements necessary for the paper to be published prior to submission. 
5. Articles with an academic connotation should be approximately 8.000-10.000 words. Articles with a practitioner connotation should be approximately 2.500 words. Case notes or comments should be approximately 1.500 words. 
6. The author must provide an abstract of the paper in English (not to exceed 250 words). The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references. 
7. To further boost the search engine optimization of your article, please provide approximately ten keywords that describe the content of your contribution. 

[E] House style for text and references 

1. Text formatting should be simple (no bold, no underlining). Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times New Roman). Italics may be used for emphasis or for foreign-language terms. 
2. For headings and subheadings, please use the decimal system of headings with no more than three levels (1.1, 1.2.1 and so on). 
3. Paragraphs should be numbered. The EIRJ asks authors of both case notes and articles to number their paragraphs individually. This way, it is ensured that detailed references can be made. 
4. Special attention should be paid to quotations, footnotes, and references. All references and quotations must be verified before submission of the manuscript. The accuracy of the contribution is the responsibility of the author. 
5. References within the text should be limited to clearly defined subdivisions (see supra … or see infra ...). Please make sure that references to footnotes are correct. 
6. Literal quotations should be limited to a minimum. They are indicated by quotation marks, even when extending over several lines (“...”). 
7. Abbreviations should be avoided in the main text. In general, they should conform to established standards of the English language. Alternatively, abbreviations must be defined at the first mention and used consistently thereafter. 
8. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the text with superscript Arabic numbers. Footnotes should be placed after the punctuation mark, unless referring to a single expression only. Always use footnotes instead of endnotes. A bibliography is not to be added. 
9. The Journal uses the citation style of Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). All contributions should be submitted in the style of OSCOLA. The OSCOLA Quick Reference Guide can be found here. The complete OSCOLA guidelines can be found here. For citing international legal materials (e.g. Treaties and United Nations documents), the OSCOLA guideline can be found here. Please note that the OSCOLA citation style allows sources from jurisdictions other than the UK (for instance French, German or Italian case law) to be cited as they are cited in their own jurisdiction, but with minimal punctuation. The citation of case law should always include the ECLI number, if available. 
10. The Editorial Board reserves the right to make alterations and corrections as to style, punctuation, grammar and in conformity to our house style.