About
Focus and Scope
Utrecht Journal of International and European Law is an open access, peer-reviewed, student-led law journal affiliated with Utrecht University.
The Journal aims to contribute to legal scholarship on international and European law by promoting these fields' progressive development and providing an international forum for interaction between academia, practitioners and students.
Each issue of Utrecht Journal is devoted to a specific theme chosen by the Board of Editors. The Journal is edited by students, is published biannually and applies double blind peer review.
The Journal was founded in 1981 as Merkourios and has expanded its readership significantly since then. In 2013, the Board of Editors decided to change its name to its current form. Today, Utrecht Journal of International and European Law is distributed all over the world via www.utrechtjournal.org and through online databases such as HeinOnline and the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Publication Frequency
The journal publishes two issues per year.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Authors of articles published in Utrecht Journal of International and European Law remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.
The journal encourages authors to make their research data openly available via an appropriate repository to aid replication and/or use of research material. For a list of generic and subject specific repositories that meet our peer review criteria, see here.
Archiving Policy
The journal’s publisher, Ubiquity Press, focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. Content is also archived around the world to ensure long-term availability.
UJIEL is indexed by the following services:
- Web of Science (Emerging Sources Citation Index)
- Scopus (CiteScore 1.0)
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- HeinOnline
- Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers
- SSRN
- Google Scholar
- EBSCO Knowledge Base
- EBSCOhost
- Chronos
- OpenAIRE
- Journal TOCs
- Cengage
- CrossRef
- SHERPA RoMEO
- JISC KB+
- Ex Libris
- vLex Justis
If Utrecht Journal of International and European Law is not indexed by your preferred service, please let us know by emailing support@ubiquitypress.com or alternatively by making an indexing request directly with the service.
Call for Papers
Each edition of Utrecht Journal of International and European Law is devoted to a theme within the field of international and European law. These themes will be chosen by the editorial board. Each call for papers includes a deadline, usually limited to three months after the publication of the call for papers. All submissions received after the deadline will not be reviewed for the forthcoming issue.
Registered readers of the journal will receive calls for papers by email. To register, go to: register with this journal.
Editing Policies
In order to ensure the academic quality and professionalism of Utrecht Journal of International and European Law, it is necessary to devote the proper amount of time and energy to editing the articles we accept for publication.
The editing process
The first step in the editing process is simply reading your article. The editors do this as a first check to make sure the article is of sufficient quality and that it is appropriate for the current call for papers. At this point, the editors will also check to make sure you adhered to the citation guidelines in your article.
If your article passes this stage, we will send it to a referee to review based on academic level and content. The executive editor will contact you about the results of this review process and we will send you any comments or suggestions from the referee about your article. If your article is accepted, we will ask you to make the changes suggested by the referee. We will contact you to set an appropriate deadline to get the improved version back from you. At this point, our editorial board will read the article closely for style, form, content, and language use. This process will involve close contact with you, the author, and it is therefore imperative that you are available during this period.
After editing the structure and content of the article, the editorial board will send the article to a "specialist" editor. The "specialist" editor will be a native or near-native English speaker with an academic legal background. These "specialists" are excellent writers and jurists and are able to improve the article to a near-native level. The executive-editor will be responsible for finding and communicating with these editors.
After your approval of the final version, the article will be published in the journal.
What editing entails:
The editing tasks will be divided among two groups, the editorial board and the specialist editors.
The editorial board will pay attention to the following matters when editing:
- Strength of argumentation.
- Structure of the paper.
- Citations in the paper.
The specialist editors will pay attention to the following matters when editing:
- Language use.
- Style.
Journal statistics
Core journal statistics for the 2022 volume:
| Submissions received1 | 25 |
| Reviews requested2 | Data unavailable |
| Reviews received3 | Data unavailable |
| Total Rejections4 | 22 |
| ...of which, Desk rejects5 | 13 |
| Acceptances6 | Data unavailable |
| Acceptance rate7 | Data unavailable |
| Time from submission to publication8 | 491 days |
Definitions
1Number of new articles received by the journal
2Number of peer review invitation emails that were sent out
3Number of completed peer review reports received
4Total number of articles rejected (including desk rejects)
5Number of articles rejected prior to peer review
6Number of articles that received a 'Accept for publication' decision
7Number of acceptances, as a percentage, against the total number of final decisions
8'Mean' average from submission to publication for all publications in the volume
Advertisement Policy
Utrecht Journal of International and European Law welcomes advertisements on its site. The journal only displays advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. academic programs and services; conferences/events; scholarships/fellowships; websites/blogs; journals/publications; institutional outreach etc.). Advertisements are displayed on the right column of the journal homepage and will need to fit a 120 pixel wide space.The editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point.
For more information about advertising with the journal, including the fee structure, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.
Annotation and post-publication comment
The journal platform permits readers to leave comments on the publication page, via the Disqus service. Readers will need a Disqus account to leave comments. Comments may be moderated by the journal, however, if they are non-offensive and relevant to the publication subject, comments will remain online without edit.
The journal platform also includes in-browser annotation and text highlighting options on full text formats via hypothes.is. Readers will require a hypothes.is account to create annotations, and will have the option to make these publicly available, available to a group, or private.
Sponsors
History
This journal was previously published as Merkourios: Utrecht Journal of International and European Law (ISSN: 0927-460x, Vol 26 - 29). Merkourios was founded in 1981. As the student magazine, which it was at that time, Merkourios contained summaries of study-trips, conferences and other issues related to Urios, the study association for International and European Law. Over the following years, until 2009, Merkourios was published 70 times. During these years Merkourios evolved from a student magazine into a formal law journal run by members of Urios. In 2009, the evolution into a professional law journal was finalised when a group of referees were introduced to peer-review the articles published in Merkourios. From Vol. 30 (2014) the journal is published under the title Utrecht Journal of International and European Law.