JALAA GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

You must read these Guidelines before lodging your submission using the Call for Papers Application Form below.

Introduction

Founded in 2008, the Journal of the Australasian Law Academics Association (JALAA) (ISSN 2652-6573) is an electronic, double-blind peer reviewed journal. JALAA is committed to ethical publication principles, and open access to excellence in legal academic research.

The Australian Business Deans Council categorises JALAA as a B rank journal. JALAA aims to publish a broad range of articles that reflects the varied research interests of ALAA members. We are particularly interested in publishing research authored or co-authored by new and emerging researchers. JALAA is normally published annually, subsequent to the annual ALAA conference. We will only consider articles for publication that have been developed from a paper presented at an ALAA conference or symposium.

Submissions

JALAA publishes articles of between 2,500-5,000 words in length (excluding reference footnotes). Longer articles may be considered at the Editor’s discretion. There is no prescribed number of articles for each volume of JALAA, but we will not publish more than one article by the same author in a single volume.

Articles must be in double spaced 12-point Times Roman font. You must also submit an Abstract of approximately 100 words.

To be considered for publication in the 2025 volume of JALAA, email your article no later than 15 August 2025 to jonathan.barrett@vuw.ac.nz, copying admin@alaa.asn.au

Refereeing

All submissions to JALAA are subject to double blind peer review by appropriate specialists in the field. To ensure the integrity of blind review, you should ensure your article is anonymised.

Citation and style etc.

You must use the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC) 4th Edition https://www.mulr.com.au/aglc/AGLC4-June-2020-v2.pdf when formatting and referencing your paper. The Editor may decline to send for review a proposed article that does not comply with AGLC 4th Edition or, because of its style, errors in grammar, spelling etc, the article is not suitable for publication in an academic journal.

Image, Chart and Figure Guide

Please follow this guide when making these additions to your article.

Images, Charts, Figures

The better the resolution, the better the result. Images, charts and figures should be submitted separately as:
.eps or similar files
At high resolution (300dpi) in commonly used formats such as .pdf, .jpeg or .tif
In the final version for typesetting, authors can simply place a note such as ‘Insert figure 2 here’.

Tables

Can be inserted into word documents as normal.

Endnote

If you have used Endnote or similar referencing software, the field codes should not be live. For Endnote, use the ‘Remove Field Codes’ command.

Copyright in articles published in JALAA remains with the authors. Publication is subject to the Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND. You may deposit the published version of your article in any open access repository but must acknowledge first publication in JALAA.

Authorship

By submitting an article for review, you, as authors, warrant that:

The article is an original work created solely by you, which excludes the use of AI, and that no part of the article violates any copyright;
If you refer to material not created solely by you, such material is properly attributed to its respective authors;
No part of the article has already been published elsewhere;
No part of the article has been submitted for publication elsewhere, or will be submitted for publication elsewhere, until the Editor confirm in writing that ALAA does not intend to publish the manuscript;
You have obtained approval from an Ethics Committee, where necessary;
The article is not defamatory; and
The article does not infringe any other rights of a third party.

You agree to indemnify ALAA and JALAA’s Editor for any loss or damage arising from the breach of any of these warranties or for any other liability which may arise in connection with the publication of your article.

Review of your manuscript

You agree that the Editor’s decision on whether to publish your article in JALAA is final. Your article will be double blind peer reviewed and publication on JALAA will only take place after positive peer review, and subject to the final discretion of the Editor.

The Editor may edit your article to correct any spelling or syntax error, to put footnotes into house style and, to enhance expressions or to clarify meaning. You authorise the Editor to make such changes without seeking your prior approval. The Editor will usually consult you before making any major changes.

Governing Law

The law of the Commonwealth of Australia applies to all matters relating to the submission and publication of your article.

Artificial Intelligence Generated Content Policy

In April 2025, the Journal of the Australasian Law Academics Association (JALAA) formally adopted the AI policy of the Legal Education Review, which applies the principles of authorship as outlined in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2018) and Authorship – A guide supporting the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2019). Submission of an article to this journal constitutes an undertaking that these principles have been complied with. Authors of articles submitted to the JALAA must not knowingly breach any intellectual property, privacy or research ethics requirements. In addition to these broad principles, the JALAA has the following positions on Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Generated Content tools based on Large Language Models (GenAI).

Generative AI and authorship
The JALAA does not recognise GenAI as an author because it is not a legal person and as such cannot be held accountable for a published work or research design, nor does it have legal standing to hold or assign copyright or manage license agreements. AI tools cannot, therefore, fulfil the role of an author or co-author of, or contributor to, an article published in the JALAA.

Standard disclosure of use of Generative AI
The JALAA requires that all submitted articles include a statement, in the first footnote, about the extent to which the author/s have used GenAI in drafting the article. The JALAA considers that the extent to which GenAI is now a part of word processing systems and research tools means it is unlikely that there will be no use of GenAI in future publications, and a statement is now appropriate for all articles. That disclosure should identify the extent of use of GenAI and the tool/s used. Spell-checking and amendment of grammar less than a sentence in length need not be disclosed, and is not considered disclosable use of GenAI.
Sample disclosures are below.

GenAI and authorial voice
The JALAA permits the use of GenAI, when disclosed, to develop, edit and improve the language of the article (including in an iterative manner) and to generate illustrations/charts. However at all times, the author/s should maintain their own authorial voice and style. The work should remain substantially the product of the author/s’ own thoughts, arguments and expression. The final critical review of the content and form of the article must be by the author/s. Nothing in this paragraph should be seen to diminish the fundamental requirements of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, 2018 and Authorship – A guide supporting the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2019).
Authors are fully responsible for any errors in submitted articles.

Disclosure of use of Generative AI in the research process
Where authors have used GenAI in the research process, for example to suggest sources or to collate or analyse materials, this should be fully disclosed in the article’s methods sections. At all times authors should independently verify that any GenAI output is accurate or acknowledge the limitations of verification. The use of GenAI should be disclosed in a way that allows for reproduction of the methods used. Articles should include a discussion of the limitations created by the research methods.

Areas where use of Generative AI is not permitted
Generative AI should not be used to:

Generate primary arguments, conclusions, or substantive content.
Create or manipulate research data unless explicitly part of the research design.
Edit any quotes or other qualitative data
Replace human oversight in the verification of citations, statistics, or generated content.

Referee and editorial evaluation of use of GenAI
Disclosure of the use of GenAI is an important part of the reviewing process. Referees will be asked to provide an opinion on whether the disclosed use of GenAI has an impact on the strength of the article. The JALAA considers that appropriate use of GenAI can improve the rigour of an academic article. The final decision about whether use of a GenAI tool is appropriate or permissible lies with the JALAA Editor in Chief, who may decide, inter alia:

To require an amended statement regarding the use of AI in the article;
That some or all of the paper needs to be rewritten without using AI before it can be sent for peer review;
That an article will not be sent for peer review because of the use of AI;
That the article will not be published because of the use of AI.

Exemplar statements
The following are exemplars of disclosure statements for the first footnote. Authors are not limited to these approaches, and the list is not intended to be exhaustive. In many cases more than one of these sentences may be appropriate. The author is responsible for drafting the statement/s to accurately reflect the way that GenAI has been used.

No Generative AI tools were knowingly used in preparing for or drafting this article.
Generative AI tools were used to improve the wording of a number of passages in the article. The author critically reviewed the revisions and modified the output to accurately reflect the author’s position.
Generative AI tools were used in researching/developing the article and the particular tools and methods and are noted in the Methods section.
The analysis in this article was partly based on use of GenAI tools. This is explained in the Methods section and limitations are noted in the following discussion.
In the research informing this article artificial Intelligence tools were used to evaluate data and spot trends in datasets. All AI conclusions have been interrogated and evaluated by the author before submission.
In the research informing this article artificial Intelligence tools were used to identify and summarise source materials. The accuracy of summaries and the applicability of the source material remain the responsibility of the author.

Planned 2025 Publication

We plan to publish JALAA 2025 on the ALAA website before the end of December 2025.

JALAA Contact Information

Editor: Jonathan Barrett

Jonathan.barrett@vuw.ac.nz

Administrative coordinator

admin@alaa.asn.au