Submissions

Author Guidelines

SCRIPTed welcomes submissions from academics, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers at all career stages, including postgraduate and doctoral students. All submissions are assessed according to the same editorial and peer-review standards, irrespective of the author's career stage or institutional affiliation.

Manuscripts should be submitted via the SCRIPTed Submission Portal operated by Edinburgh Diamond.

The journal does not charge any submission, processing, or publication fees.

Standard submission categories

SCRIPTed accepts the following categories of submission:

Submissions exceeding these limits may be considered at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor.

Other types of contribution

As an interdisciplinary journal situated at the intersection of law, technology, innovation, and society, SCRIPTed welcomes proposals for contributions that extend beyond traditional academic articles. These may include interviews, roundtable discussions, scholarly dialogues, practitioner reflections, visual essays, multimedia projects, artistic contributions, or other innovative forms of research dissemination.

Because such submissions often require a tailored editorial and review process, authors are encouraged to discuss proposals with the editorial team before submission. Acceptance of alternative formats remains at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, and the SCRIPTed Supervisory Board, who will determine the most appropriate review and publication arrangements.

Before you submit

Authors should:

• Use the appropriate SCRIPTed template:
• Articles, Analysis Pieces, Case/Legislation Comments and Conference Reports: Article Template.
• Book Reviews:Book Review Template.
• Follow the SCRIPTed House Style and OSCOLA referencing requirements.
• Use Microsoft Word format.
• Ensure that the manuscript has not been previously published and is not under consideration elsewhere.
• Ensure that all citations and references have been checked carefully prior to submission.

Where English is used, submissions should follow British English spelling and punctuation conventions.

Anonymous peer review

For Articles and Analysis pieces SCRIPTed operates a double-blind peer-review process.

For Case/Legislation Comments SCRIPTed operates a single blind peer-review process.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that submitted manuscripts are fully anonymised.

In particular:

• Remove author names and affiliations from the manuscript.
• Remove identifying acknowledgements where appropriate.
• Remove identifying information from document properties and metadata.
• Avoid self-references that would reveal authorship.

Failure to anonymise a manuscript may delay review.

Submitting a manuscript

All submissions must be made through the SCRIPTed submission portal hosted by Edinburgh Diamond.

Before submitting a manuscript, authors must create an account on the platform (or log in to an existing account). Once logged in, authors will be guided through the submission process and asked to:

1. Upload their manuscript and any supplementary files
2. Provide a title, abstract, and keywords
3. Add details of all contributors
4. Confirm compliance with the journal's publication ethics, declaration of AI use, copyright, licensing, and privacy policies.

Following submission, authors will receive a confirmation email and will be able to track the progress of their manuscript through the platform. A visual submission guide is available here.

Communication with the editorial team

Where possible, all submission-related communications should take place through the relevant Discussion board on the journal platform rather than by direct email. Using the platform helps ensure that all communications relating to a submission remain associated with the manuscript and accessible to the relevant members of the editorial team.

Authors should regularly monitor both the email address associated with their account and the Submission URL for their manuscript, which is normally included in communications from the editorial team. Editorial decisions, reviewer reports, requests for revisions, and other important updates will generally be communicated through the platform and notified by email. The Submission URL also provides access to the manuscript workflow, allowing authors to view the status of their submission, respond to editorial queries, and upload revised versions of their manuscript when requested.

Use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies

SCRIPTed recognises that generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies are increasingly used in legal research and academic writing. While such tools may assist authors in certain aspects of manuscript preparation, they must not replace the author's own intellectual contribution, scholarly judgment, critical analysis, or responsibility for the work.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and legality of all content submitted to the journal.

Permitted uses: Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies may be used for these limited purposes:

• improving grammar, spelling, readability, and language clarity
• supporting background research (but not generating ideas)
• supporting coding or data analysis (where appropriate)
• assisting in the creation of visual materials such as diagrams, illustrations, and graphical summaries. Any such use should be disclosed where the visual forms part of the scholarly content of the submission, and authors remain responsible for ensuring that they possess any necessary rights to reproduce and publish the resulting material.

Any use of AI must remain subject to meaningful human oversight and critical review.

Prohibited uses: Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies must not:

• be used to generate ideas
• be used to fabricate, manipulate, or alter research data, results, evidence, images, or other research materials
• be used in a manner that replaces the author's own critical analysis, legal reasoning, interpretation, or scholarly contribution
• be used in ways that violate copyright law, confidentiality obligations, data protection requirements, contractual restrictions, or research ethics obligations
• be listed as authors or co-authors

The inclusion of hallucinated or fictitious references will be regarded as a breach of academic standards. Authors are expected to verify all citations and sources independently prior to submission. The identification of such references by reviewers or the editorial team may result in rejection of the manuscript, requests for substantial revision, or further investigation under the journal's publication ethics procedures.

Disclosure requirements: Any use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies beyond routine spelling, grammar, or formatting assistance must be disclosed. This requirement applies equally to the preparation of written content and to the creation, modification, or enhancement of figures, diagrams, illustrations, images, and other visual materials included in the submission.

Authors should include a section entitled "Declaration of AI use" immediately before the bibliography or references.

The declaration should identify:

• the AI tool used
• the nature and purpose of the use and
• the extent to which the tool contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

Suggested declaration of AI use: During the preparation of this manuscript, the author(s) used [tool name] for [description of use]. All outputs were reviewed, verified, and edited by the author(s), who take full responsibility for the content of the manuscript.

Failure to disclose relevant use of generative AI may be treated as a breach of the journal's publication ethics requirements.

Authorship and accountability: Generative AI tools cannot satisfy the requirements of authorship and must not be identified as authors or co-authors. Authorship entails intellectual contribution, accountability, responsibility for the integrity of the work, and the ability to respond to questions regarding the research. These responsibilities can only be assumed by human authors.

Copyright, confidentiality and data protection: Authors must ensure that their use of AI tools complies with all applicable legal and ethical obligations. In particular, authors should not upload confidential, sensitive, personal, proprietary, unpublished, or third-party materials into AI systems unless they are satisfied that they have the necessary permissions and legal basis to do so.

Authors remain responsible for obtaining any permissions required for copyrighted materials.

Editorial oversight: SCRIPTed reserves the right to request further information regarding the use of AI tools during manuscript preparation and may reject, withdraw, or retract submissions where AI has been used in a manner inconsistent with this policy or with accepted standards of academic integrity.

This policy will be reviewed periodically in light of technological developments and evolving scholarly best practices.

Cover art submissions

SCRIPTed welcomes submissions of cover artwork.

Images should:

• be submitted as high-resolution JPG files (minimum 1200 × 800 pixels)
• include the artist's name and title of the work and
• optionally include a short abstract (maximum 150 words).

Cover artwork is reviewed by the editorial team for suitability and publication.