Journal Policies

Section Policies

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

1 Referee system

SCRIPTed publishes Articles, Analysis Pieces, Case/Legislation Comments, Book Reviews, and Conference Reports. To ensure that only submissions of the highest quality are published, the journal employs the following referee system:

1.1 Initial review

All submissions are first considered by the Managing Editor to determine if they are suitable.

1.2 Assignment

Having determined suitability, the Managing Editor assigns Articles to a Supervising Editor, who in turn assigns it to an Assistant Editor with particular experience and/or interest in the field. The Assistant Editor is responsible for sending the submission to at least two recognised experts for independent, external peer review.

Analysis pieces and Case/Legislative comments are internally peer reviewed (one reviewer) by either a member of the SCRIPTed Editorial Board or Edinburgh Law School faculty/PhD candidates with particular experience and/or interest in the field. Analysis pieces and Case/Legislative comments only go to an external peer reviewer if internal Edinburgh Law School faculty and/or PhD candidates lack the expertise to provide an adequate review.

Conference Reports and Book Reviews are not externally peer reviewed; they are reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and/or Managing Editor only.

1.3 Peer review

Referees are asked to consider the following: (1) overall quality; (2) originality (its contribution to the field); (3) timeliness and time sensitivity; (4) academic standards (argumentation and presentation, including adequacy of referencing, grammar, syntax etc.); and (5) success of synthesis between areas for those submissions purporting to be interdisciplinary. Referees will recommend one of the following options: (1) accept outright for publication; (2) accept subject to minor modification; (3) accept subject to major modification; (4) reject outright.

1.4 Revision

Authors will be sent anonymised copies of Referee comments. Authors are responsible for ensuring that necessary amendments are carried out in light of Referee recommendations.

1.5 Reconsideration

Revised manuscript submissions received by the Managing Editor may be returned to Referees or may be assessed solely by the Managing Editor (having reference to the review and recommendations by the Referees).

1.6 Recommendation

Based on Referee Reports and his or her own assessment, the Managing Editor will make a recommendation on disposition to the Editorial Board, which has final responsibility for each decision on each submission.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submission conforms to SCRIPTed’s formatting style (see below and our Article and Book Review templates), and for ensuring that all citations are accurate.

While the Copy Editor does NOT check the accuracy of citations, s/he reserves the right to make amendments considered necessary to achieve SCRIPTed stylistic and formatting standards, and may make changes with a view to (1) eliminating errors of typing, grammar, syntax, punctuation, spelling, and idiom, (2) eliminating ambiguity, illogicality, tautology, circumlocution and redundancy, (3) producing accuracy and coherence, and (4) improving the mode of expression and style of writing. Changes will be sent to the author for approval.

Once approved by the author, the manuscript will be treated by SCRIPTed as final and ready for publication. No further changes will be allowed to the text absent compelling justification.

Publication Frequency

In an effort to maximise the benefits and flexibility of online publishing, SCRIPTed now publishes its peer-reviewed articles and analysis pieces on an ongoing, rolling basis, with contributions being collated into two-three issues per year (March,July,November). Submissions are invited on any aspect of the relationships between law, policy, society, ethics, and technologies.

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.

This journal’s open access policy is in line with UK research funders’ policies.

Authors are not charged any APCs (Article Processing Charges) or other publication fees.

SCRIPTed is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his or her institution. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or to use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Submissions are published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.

SCRIPTed is part of the Open Access Law Program.  Its contents can be viewed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.  To receive updates concerning the site, sign up using our RSS feed.

The most recent issue of SCRIPTed can be found on the Current Issue page.  The full content of all previous issues can be accessed on the All Issues page.

Publishing fees

SCRIPTed does not charge authors any fees to submit, process, or publish a manuscript.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 4.0 International license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
More information on Creative Commons

SCRIPTed is an open access journal built on the principles of sharing academic works for the benefit of the wider community. As such, authors retain the copyright to their submission and submissions can be published by SCRIPTed in two ways:

• the author releases the work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence, which allows users to reuse, copy, publish, perform or communicate the work, provided attribution is given, no commercial use is made of it, and it is republished/re-used in full (excepting quotation); or
• the author grants SCRIPTed the non-exclusive right to publish the work online and reserve all his/her rights.

For self-archiving purposes, and only after the submission is accepted for publication on SCRIPTed, the author may reuse the original (un-copy-edited) manuscript, provided that a statement is included indicating that the work is to be, or has been published on SCRIPTed.

Authors reserve the right to republish their submissions without prior consent from SCRIPTed, on the condition that it is clearly acknowledged that the work is first published in a specified issue of SCRIPTed.

b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access ).

d. Authors are required to make sure submitted content does not infringe third-party copyright. Authors must obtain permission to reproduce any third-party material for online – and print, if applicable – publication in perpetuity. It is also the authors’ responsibility to include any acknowledgements requested by copyright holders, and to mark clearly third-party material used with permission, material that has separate licensing terms, and material used under exceptions or limitations to copyright.

More information is available from the UK's Intellectual Property Office and Creative Commons.

Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse articles published in this journal, provided that reuse is in line with the article’s Creative Commons licence and attribution to the author(s) and the published article is maintained. Please note that these terms do not extend to any material that has separate licensing terms specified or any material that is identified as being the copyright of a third party. Permission to reproduce third-party material must be obtained directly from the copyright holders concerned.

Take Down Policy

What Edinburgh University Library will do if you believe content on this hosting platform infringes any person's rights, or applicable UK laws.

Journals on the Library’s platform are strongly encouraged to make every effort to ensure that published content does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws.

Should you discover content in this journal that you believe to be illegal, or infringes any of your statutory rights, you may contact the Library who will review the complaint.

On receipt of your complaint, the Scholarly Communications Team will:

1. Make an initial assessment of its validity
2. Acknowledge receipt of the complaint by email
3. For all but spurious complaints, cease access to the item that is subject to complaint
4. Refer the complaint to the University's Legal Advisor for comment and advice
5. Seek to verify your identity and authority as complainant.

When the Service Manager has verified the authenticity of your complaint and has been advised that it is ostensibly legitimate, the article will be removed from public access, leaving behind the article abstract.

If the Legal Advisor confirms that it does not breach any law then the item will be reinstated.

Please contact:

Scholarly Communications Team, Edinburgh University Library
Floor F East, Argyle House
3 Lady Lawson Street
Edinburgh
EH3 9DR

Email: edinburgh.diamond@ed.ac.uk

Please note the Library is staffed 9-5pm Monday-Friday

Journal History

SCRIPTed is a high-quality, open access, interdisciplinary, and multi-lingual journal of peer-reviewed articles, analysis pieces, case and legislation critiques, as well as commentaries, reports, and book reviews pertaining to law, society, and technologies in the broadest sense.

SCRIPTed’s Editorial Board is assisted by an Advisory Board of internationally-renowned experts drawn from the disciplines of intellectual property, information technology, medical law, artificial intelligence, communications law and E-commerce.

As the online journal associated with SCRIPT (the Centre for Research in Intellectual Property and Technology Law, based in the School of Law, University of Edinburgh, and established on 1 April 2002 with generous support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council), SCRIPTed draws on a thriving postgraduate community of students from around the world and benefits from the close ties of that community with the Faculty of Law.

In an effort to maximise the benefits and flexibility of online publishing, SCRIPTed now publishes its peer-reviewed articles and analysis pieces on an ongoing, rolling basis, with contributions being collated into 2-3 issues per year. Submissions are invited on any aspect of the relationships between law, policy, society, ethics, and technologies. Further assistance for authors and artists can be found in the Submission Guidelines.

Journal Sponsorship