ISSN printed version: 1390-6402
ISSN on-line version: 2528-7834

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Submission Preparation Checklist
• General guidelines
• Basic style guidelines
• Graphics and tables
• Footnotes, quotes and bibliographic references
• Copyright Notice
• Privacy Statement

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• The submission has not been previously published or submitted for consideration by any other journal (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect formats.
• Wherever possible, URLs are provided for references.
• The text is single spaced; 12-point font size; italics are used instead of underlining (except in URLs); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed in the appropriate places in the text, rather than at the end.
• The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which appear in About the journal.
• If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring Anonymous Review should be followed.
• There is no conflict of interest (CoI) in the article; if there is one, it must be declared in the manuscript, after the Conclusions section.
• The author of the article will notify the editorial director or team of any other possible conflict of interest.
• We recommend that the author, in case of being a student, be a master's or doctoral student. Either a practicing lawyer or an independent researcher.

• Articles must be original and never published before. Authors will have to identify themselves and indicate their affiliation. In the case they do not have any affiliation they will have to use the definition "independent researcher."
• Articles may be written in Spanish or English, the official languages of the journal.
• Articles must contain between 20,000 and 40,000 characters (without spaces).
• Furthermore, the beginning will include a summary of 750 characters maximum (without spaces, approximately 10 lines) in Spanish and English. Keywords (with a limit of 6) will also have to be indicated in both languages.

• Format: Font Times New Roman, size 12, simple line spacing, no tabs. Margins of the document will be 2.5 cm or 1 inch (top and bottom) and 3 cm or 1.25 inches (left and right).
• Title: The title must be centered. Size 14, bold. The name of the author will appear under the title, on the right. The following line will contain the name of the university or institution of affiliation, the city and the country. If you do not have affiliation, you can write "Independent Researcher". In a footnote, a mini-biography should be included, as well as an e-mail and the ORCID ID, if you have one. If there is any funding involved on the research of the article, it must be explained in the same footnote. In the case of co-authorship, the type of participation of each co-author of the article must be stated (defining responsibilities, degree of contribution, division of labor) in a second footnote entitled "Declaration of contribution of each author."
• Summary: A short and attractive description will appear before the body of the text and under the title. The words "summary" and "keywords" will appear in bold. Keywords will be 6, maximum. This part of the text will have justified margins. If you have doubts about the use of keywords, we recommend the following website: https://seranking.com/keyword-suggestion-tool.html.
• Body of the text: If necessary, the body of the text will be divided into paragraphs that will be numbered (Arabic numbers), size 12. Titles of paragraphs and sub-paragraphs will be aligned to the left in bold, without a period at the end, and will be separated by a space. All paragraphs in the body need to be separated by one empty line.
• Indentations: the paragraphs in the body of the text are indented except the line after the title, subtitle or citation, which are not indented.

Graphics and tables will be inserted with the specific option of the word processor used. They will have to be in .jpg or .png format, appear in the body and be centered. Captions will be written in Times New Roman, size 10. Images will have to be Creative Commons (with rights to reproduce) or authors will be responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions.

The journal follows the APA format for footnotes, quotes and bibliographical references. It is important to adhere to the following:

• Footnotes will not correspond to bibliographic references, they will appear on the corresponding page and not all together at the end of the document. Simple line spacing will be used, as well as the same font as the text (Times New Roman) in size 10. The footnote anchor will appear in Arabic numerals after the word and before punctuation.
• Short quotes will appear in between quotation marks ("") in the text, while longer quotes (more than forty words, approximately three lines) will appear in a separate paragraph, using the same font and in 11 point, with 1.5 cm of indentation. An empty line will be used before and after each quote. Brackets will be used in the case of ellipsis […] (that is, when intentionally omitting part of the quote).
• Bibliographical references will appear in the text, in the order: author, year and page, separated by commas and between parentheses.
  Example:
  "Es la noción de persona del positivismo fundamental […] en el texto penal de ese mismo año" (Montesdeoca, 2000, p. 35).
• When referencing a complete work, only the author and year of publication will appear, not the pages.
  Example:
  La legislación boliviana desde una perspectiva penal ha sido estudiada ya en el pasado (Montesdeoca, 2000).
• When continuously referencing the same work, it will not be necessary to indicate the name of the author.
  Example:
  Es la noción de persona del positivismo fundamental en el texto penal de ese mismo año (Montesdeoca, 2000, p. 35). Justamente, en el artículo 25 aparece la traducción española exacta del texto kelseniano (2000, p. 35)
• In case the same author published more than one work in the same year, texts will have to appear in alphabetical order according to title of chapter and book. The year will be followed by a letter. Example: Han sido los trabajos realizado a inicios del milenio los que han develado cómo Kelsen se adaptó en la legislación boliviana (Montesdeoca, 2000a, 2000b).
• "Bibliographic references" can only be of quoted texts and will be ordered alphabetically, at the end of the article, using the same font and size as in the body of the text. Second line of the reference should be indented.
Books: last name of the author, followed by the initials of the name and year of publication in between parenthesis, followed by a period. Place of publication, followed by column and publishing house. In the case of more than one author, publications will be listed by last name and initials of the names of the authors, they will be separated by commas with an "and" before the name of the last author.
Example:
Petit, E. (2000). Tratado elemental de Derecho Romano. Barcelona: Paidós. Benhaviv, S. (2005). El Derecho de los Otros. Madrid: Castalia, vol. II. Alessandri, A., Somarriva M., y Vodanovic A. (1994). Tratado de los derechos reales. Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile.
Articles and chapters in collective books: the last name of the author, followed by the initial of the first name and the year of publication in between parenthesis, followed by a period. The title of the chapter will not use bold or italics and will be followed by a period. "In" followed by initials of the first name and the full last name of the authors, followed by (Eds.) The title of the book will go in italics, the page of the chapter in between parenthesis, followed by a period. The last information will be the place of publication followed by a colon, and the publishing house.
Example:
Corral, F. (2016). Las palabras de la Ley. In D. Falconí Trávez (ed.). A medio camino. Intertextos entre la literatura y el derecho (pp. 397-411). Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch.
Articles of periodicals: The last name and initial of the first name, followed by year of publication in between parenthesis. The title of the article will not use bold or italics, and will be followed by a period. The title of the publication is in italics, followed by a comma, then the volume, number and pages of the publication.
Example:
Torres, L. F. (2013). El activismo judicial en la era constitucional. Revista Iuris Dictio, 15 (13), 65-80.
Web publication: online texts follow the same rules as printed texts, but they need to include the url.
Example:
Zapatero, J. L. (2015). El expediente judicial electrónico. Justicia Electrónica. http://justiciaelectronica.es/tag/eje-dje-expediente-judicial-electronico-documento/.
Rulings: The name of the court or organism that made the ruling, followed by the year in parenthesis. The name of the ruling (in cursive). Date of the ruling. Number of the ruling. All rulings must be listed under an underlined subtitle that states "Rulings", within the bibliographic references.
Example:
IACHR (2015). Marcel Granier and Other vs. Venezuela. Preliminary Exceptions, Background, Reparations and Costs. Ruling 22 June 2015. Serie C No. 293. ECHR (2012). B.S. vs. Spain. No. 47159/08. Ruling 24 July 2012.
Conventions, treaties and conferences: the name of the sanctioning organism, followed by the year of ratification/conclusion (in cursive). The name of the document (in cursive) and, if necessary, after the colon, its acronym. Date of adoption. All documents should be listed under an underlined subtitle called "Conventions, treaties and conferences", within the bibliographic references.
Example:
UN (1965). International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Descrimination: CERD. Adopted by the General Assebly on 21 December 1965.
Observations, opinions, recommendations and reports: name of the sactioning organism, followed by the year of ratification/conclusion (in cursive). If necessary, the name of the department or section. The name of the document. The date of adoption. All documents should be listed under an underlined subtitle called "Obsevations, opinions, recommendations and reports", within the bibliographic references.
Example:
UN (1989). Human Rights Committee. General Observation No. 18. No discrimination. 10 November 1989.
IACHR (2003). Advisory Opinion AO-18/03 on 17 September 2003. Serie A No. 18.

Submission of articles to be considered for the journal entails authorization for publication and acceptance of related, applicable rules. If not otherwise indicated, texts of the publication will be published under Creative Commons license.

Electronic addresses and names introduced in this website will be used exclusively for the purposes stated in the journal and none other, and will not be given to third parties.