Preparation and Submission of Manuscripts
Manuscript files should be supplied as a Word document. The first page of each article should include the article title, the names of the author(s), their institutional affiliations and roles, a short article abstract (no more than 150 words) and up to five key words.
Any figures or tables should be submitted in a separate document or, if images, as separate, clearly labelled files. All figures should be a minimum of 300 dpi. Please indicate in the main manuscript where these figures and tables should be placed within the text.
Charges may apply for colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. Authors should indicate whether a figure must be printed in colour at the point of submission. Those who choose to print figures in colour will be contacted by our partners at CCC-Rightslink, who will handle the transaction on our behalf.
General Stylistic Guidelines
Where otherwise unspecified, style should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition.
Spelling should be consistent, and in American English. Oxford commas should be used. Double quotation marks should be used in both the body of the text and in footnotes. When necessary, single quotation marks should be used within double quotation marks, e.g., As John Smith notes, “The term ‘personal data’ is not defined in any law or regulation.”
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the editor and any reviewers. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge published journal.
Referencing
Chicago style referencing, with footnotes, should be used in preference to Harvard style.
Citing a book
Author, Title (Publisher location: Publisher, Year), page numbers.
e.g., Meryl Thomas, Blackstone’s Statutes on Property Law 2018-2019 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 312-15.
Citing a chapter in a book
Author, “Essay Title,” in Book Title, ed. Editor 1 and Editor 2 (Publisher location: Publisher, Year), page numbers.
e.g., Jeffrey Goldsworthy, “Legislative Sovereignty and the Rule of Law,” in Sceptical Essays on Human Rights ed. Tom Campbell, Keith Ewing, and Adam Tomkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 56.
Citing a translated book
Author, Title, trans. Translator (Publisher location: Publisher, Year), page numbers.
e.g., Cicero, Selected Works trans. Michael Grant (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), 99-103.
Citing an e-book
Author, Title (Publisher location: Publisher, Year) page number/section title/chapter as applicable, URL/e-book format as applicable.
e.g., Campbell, Tom, Keith Ewing, and Adam Tomkins, eds. Sceptical Essays on Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Chapter 1. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2010. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199246687.001.0001.
e.g., Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006), Chapter 7, Kindle.
Citing a journal article
Author, “Article Title,” Journal Title, volume, no. issue (date of issue): page number.
e.g., Carol A. Watson, “Information Literacy in a Fake/False News World: An Overview of the Characteristics of Fake News and Its Historical Development,” International Journal of Legal Information 46, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 93.
Citing a news article
Author, “Article Title,” Newspaper/Magazine Title, publication date, page number/URL.
e.g., Jonathan Stempel and Jim Finkle, “Yahoo says all three billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft,” Reuters, October 3, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/articl...s-yahoo-cyber/yahoo-says-all-three-billion-accounts-hacked-in-2013-data-theftidUSKCN1C82O1.
Citing an interview
Interviewee. “Interview Title.” Interview by Interviewer Name, Program Title, News Outlet Title (if applicable), date of interview. Audio, timestamp (if applicable). URL.
e.g., Laurence Tribe. “Interview with Laurence H. Tribe.” Interview by Janet Heininger. Edward M. Kennedy Oral History Project, April 27, 2009. https://www.emkinstitute.org/resources/laurence-h-tribe.
Citing a dissertation
Author, “Dissertation Title” (PhD diss., University, Year), page number.
Citing website content
“Title of Content,” Website Proprietor, last modified date OR accessed date, URL.
e.g., “Cyber risk in 2017,” Deloitte, accessed October 12, 2018, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/deloitte-growth-enterprise-services/articles/private-company-cyber-risk.html.
Citing social media
Author (@authorusername), “Social media post title or comment in full, depending on length,” Social Media Platform, publication date, URL.
e.g., Chicago Manual of Style, “Is the world ready for singular they? We thought so back in 1993,” Facebook, April 17, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoManual/posts/10152906193679151.
Citing personal communication
Author, form of message and recipient, date of sending.
Citing a Supreme Court decision
Plaintiff v. Defendant, volume number, abbreviated law reporter title, page number on which the decision begins, specific page number cited if applicable (year the case was decided).
e.g., Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell) Co., 133 U.S. 1659 (2013).
Citing other U.S. court decisions
Plaintiff v. Defendant, volume number, abbreviated law reporter title, page number on which the decision begins, specific page number cited if applicable (abbreviated name of court, year the case was decided).
e.g., Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell) Co., 456 F. Supp. 2d 457 (S.D.N.Y. 2006).
Citing non-U.S. court decisions
Plaintiff v. Defendant, volume number, abbreviated law reporter title, page number on which the decision begins, specific page numbers cited if applicable (year the case was decided), URL if applicable.
e.g., Fagan v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1969] 1 QB 439 (1968).
Citing a treaty
“Name of treaty,” date of signing/date treaty was opened for signature, approved, ratified or adopted, the title, volume, and date of publication of the volume in which the treaty is found, the treaty number (if applicable), and the page numbers.
e.g., “Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” adopted December 11, 1997, United Nations Treaty Series Online 2303, no. 30822 (2005): 162-331. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%202303/v2303.pdf.
Citing a U.S. federal agency document
Department, Subsection of Department, Title (place of publication, year), page number, URL.
e.g., U.S. Department of Justice, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, How to Protect Your Networks from Ransomware (Washington, DC, 2016), 4, https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ccips/file/872771/download.
If the document has a personal author, insert the author’s name after the title like so, “Title by Author 1, Author 2, and Author 3 (place of publication, year).”
Citing U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Title, reference number (place and year of publication), date last modified/date accessed, URL.
e.g., U.S. Government Accountability Office, Cybersecurity: Actions Needed to Strengthen U.S. Capabilities, GAO-17-440T (Washington, DC, 2017), accessed February 14, 2017, https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-440T.
Citing United States Code
Name of Act, U.S. Code # (year passed), § # (or §§ # et seq. if applicable).
e.g., Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, U.S. Code 18 (2004) § 1028A.
Citing a U.K. Act of Parliament (pre-1963)
Name of Act, year passed, year of monarch’s reign, abbreviated monarch’s name, chapter.
e.g., The Poor Relief Act, 1601, 43 Eliz. 1, c. 2.
Citing a U.K. Act of Parliament (post-1963)
Name of Act, year passed, chapter number (UK): paragraph number.
e.g., Social Security Act, 1998, c. 14 (UK): para. 2.1(a).
Citing a non-U.S. government document
Country. Province/department/agency. Subgroup. Title. Place of publication, publisher (if different), date of publication. URL.
e.g., Australia. Bureau of Meteorology. Review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Automatic Weather Stations. Melbourne, 2017. http://www.bom.gov.au/inside/Review_of_Bureau_of_Meteorology_Automatic_Weather_Stations.pdf.
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.