Call for Papers: BDLD Journal (Bangladesh Law Digest), Volume 1 Issue 1 [ISSN 2708-6313]

Bangladesh Law Digest (BDLD) is a legal research institute established in 2015 by a group of law alumni from the University of Dhaka. It publishes the BDLD Journal (Bangladesh Law Digest), a citable, peer-reviewed, open-access law journal carrying legal scholarship with no paywalls and no reader fees.

Beyond publication, BDLD runs a Legal Research Membership Program that trains law students and practitioners in legal research and drafting, and holds national seminars and workshops that draw participants from more than 20 universities nationwide. Its address, as given on the BDLD contact page, is the Department of Law, University of Dhaka, Kazi Motaher Hossain Building, Ground Floor.

• Journal title: Bangladesh Law Digest
• Publisher: BDLD
• Publication model: peer-reviewed, open-access
• Peer review: double-blind
• Frequency: one volume per year, four issues per volume
• Language: English
• ISSN (Online): 2708-6313
• Archiving and preservation: deposited in Zenodo. All published issues stay permanently available on the BDLD website and are additionally archived in Zenodo, a research repository operated by CERN and OpenAIRE, to support long-term preservation and public access.
• DOI: every manuscript accepted for publication is assigned a Digital Object Identifier on publication. The DOI gives a permanent, stable link to the published article and is registered with an internationally recognised DOI registration agency.

The journal covers domestic and international legal issues and is published from Bangladesh.

The Editorial Board of BDLD Journal (Bangladesh Law Digest) invites submissions of original and unpublished manuscripts for publication in Volume 1, Issue 1 (July to September 2026). The Call for Papers opened on 1 July 2026 and the submission deadline is 15 August 2026.

The Journal promotes rigorous legal scholarship and welcomes contributions from academics, researchers, practitioners, judges, policymakers and students. Interdisciplinary and comparative studies are also encouraged.

The Current Issue page describes Volume 1, Issue 1 (2026) as in progress: it is open for submissions and under peer review, and the table of contents will appear once articles are accepted and finalised. The Archives page lists Volume 1, Issue 2 (October to December 2026) as "Call for Papers not yet open".

Submissions are invited on any area of law, including but not limited to:

• Constitutional Law
• Administrative Law
• Human Rights Law
• Criminal Law
• Environmental and Climate Law
• International Law
• Refugee and Migration Law
• Commercial and Corporate Law
• Labour and Employment Law
• Technology and Cyber Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• Comparative and Transnational Law
• Law Reform and Public Policy

The Author Guidelines state the same scope and additionally name Legal Theory and Jurisprudence. Interdisciplinary and comparative studies are also encouraged.

• Research Articles: 6,000 to 12,000 words (the Author Guidelines add "excluding footnotes" to this category only)
• Case Notes / Comments: 2,000 to 4,000 words
• Legislative Reviews: 2,000 to 4,000 words
• Short Articles: 3,000 to 6,000 words
• Book Reviews: 1,000 to 2,500 words

The source gives the four categories other than Research Articles as bare word counts, with no footnote exclusion stated. All submissions must comply with the Journal's Author Guidelines.

Authors looking for something shorter and less formal are pointed to the BDLD Blog instead, which takes Articles of 1,500 to 3,000 words (excluding footnotes) analysing domestic or international legal issues and Book Reviews of 1,000 to 2,000 words on legal autobiographies or practice guides. The Blog runs on invitation-based and rolling submissions, is reviewed and selected directly by the BDLD Board of Editors rather than by double-blind peer review, and has a faster turnaround.

• Original and unpublished work only.
• Manuscripts must not be under consideration elsewhere.
• Submissions must follow OSCOLA, 5th edition.
• Manuscripts undergo editorial screening and double-blind peer review.

The Author Guidelines set out the formatting checklist:

• Body text: Times New Roman, size 12, 1.5 spacing, justified.
• Footnotes: Times New Roman, size 10, 1.0 spacing, justified, numbered consecutively, one full stop at the end of each.
• Style guide: follow the Oxford University Style Guide.
• Citations: format footnotes to OSCOLA (5th Edition). No ibid; short-form cross-references only. BDLD hosts a free OSCOLA 5th edition auto-citation generator and a quick citation guide on its own site (both linked below).
• Article format: Author, 'Title' (Year) Volume BDLD J FirstPage.
• File format: Microsoft Word documents (.doc or .docx).

Title page (separate file): title, author's full name, institutional affiliation, designation, ORCID if available, email, and a short biography of 50 to 100 words.

Manuscript file: no author name, affiliation, acknowledgements or self-citations that would identify the author. Use Author (n.d.) for self-citations and strip identifying file metadata.

Abstract and keywords: an abstract of 150 to 250 words stating the research question, methodology, key findings and contribution, plus 4 to 6 keywords.

Disclaimer carried on the Author Guidelines: views belong to the individual authors, and authors indemnify BDLD against copyright and plagiarism claims.

The model is double-blind. Reviewers do not know the author's identity and authors do not know who reviewed their work. Every research article, case note, legislative review, short article and book review goes through this process before acceptance. This differs from the BDLD Blog, where the Board of Editors reviews and selects submissions directly.

• Desk review: the Editorial Board checks scope, format and anonymisation. Manuscripts outside scope or poorly prepared are returned without full review. The Author Guidelines add that the Editorial Board may reject a submission at preliminary screening, before it reaches reviewers.
• Reviewer assignment: at least two reviewers with relevant subject expertise are assigned, screened for conflicts of interest.
• Independent review: each reviewer assesses originality, methodology, argument quality and contribution to legal scholarship, without consulting the other reviewer.
• Editorial decision: the Editorial Board weighs both reports and issues a decision. Where reviewers disagree substantially, a third reviewer may be added.

Stated durations: desk review 1 week, peer review 6 weeks, decision 1 week, revisions if requested 2 weeks, final approval 3 days, DOI assignment upon publication. Total: approximately 12 weeks from submission to first decision.

Decision categories:

• Accept: publishable as submitted, or with trivial copyediting.
• Minor revision: publishable once the author addresses specific, limited concerns; not re-reviewed by the full panel.
• Major revision: requires substantial rework; the revised manuscript returns to the original reviewers.
• Reject: not suitable for publication in the Journal, whether on scope, quality or ethical grounds.

Reviewer selection: reviewers are selected for subject-matter expertise relevant to the manuscript and screened for conflicts of interest before assignment. Reviewer identities are kept confidential under the Privacy Policy.

Appeals: an author who believes a rejection resulted from a factual error, or a conflict of interest not disclosed by the reviewer, may write to the Editorial Board with specific grounds within two weeks of the decision. The Board reviews the appeal and may seek an additional independent opinion before issuing a final decision. Appeals based on disagreement with a reviewer's academic judgment alone are not grounds for reconsideration.

Author responsibilities under the Publication Ethics Policy:

• Submit only original, unpublished work, properly cited throughout.
• Disclose any prior or overlapping publication of related material.
• List as authors only those who made a substantive contribution, with each author's role identifiable.
• Disclose funding sources and conflicts of interest.
• Notify the Editorial Board promptly if a significant error is found after publication.

Plagiarism: submissions are checked for textual overlap with previously published work, including the authors' own prior publications (self-plagiarism). Confirmed plagiarism results in immediate rejection; if discovered after publication, the article is retracted and the finding is noted in the published record.

Conflict of interest: authors, reviewers and editors must disclose financial, professional or personal relationships that could reasonably be seen to influence the handling of a manuscript. Undisclosed conflicts discovered after acceptance are addressed case by case, up to and including retraction.

Research misconduct: fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are treated as research misconduct. Allegations are investigated by the Editorial Board, and where an allegation is substantiated the Board may reject, retract or correct the affected work, and notify the author's institution where relevant.

Retraction: an article may be retracted where its findings are unreliable due to misconduct or honest error, where it substantially duplicates another publication, or where it plagiarises another work. A retraction notice is linked to the original article and states the reason. The original remains accessible, marked as retracted, and the article's DOI is retained and continues to resolve to the retracted version.

Corrections and errata: minor errors that do not affect the article's conclusions are corrected through a published erratum linked to the original. Errors affecting the reliability of findings or conclusions are handled under the retraction policy.

Editorial responsibilities: the Editorial Board decides which submissions to publish on academic merit, originality and relevance, without regard to an author's nationality, institution, gender or seniority. Editors do not use unpublished material from a submission in their own research without the author's written consent, and recuse themselves where they have a conflict of interest.

Permitted uses:

• Language editing, proofreading and grammar correction.
• Literature searches and preliminary research assistance.
• Formatting assistance, including citation formatting.
• Drafting assistance, provided the author reviews and takes ownership of the resulting text.

Prohibited uses:

• Generating data, case citations or sources that do not exist.
• Writing substantive legal analysis or argument presented as the author's own reasoning without disclosure.
• Using AI tools to conduct peer review on behalf of a named reviewer.
• Submitting AI output without verifying the accuracy of every citation and factual claim.

Disclosure: authors must disclose any AI use beyond light copyediting in a statement accompanying the submission, naming the tool and describing what it was used for, for example "ChatGPT was used to check citation formatting" or "Grammarly was used for language editing". Reviewers and editors likewise disclose any AI assistance used in preparing a review or editorial decision.

Authorship: AI tools cannot be listed as an author or co-author, and cannot hold copyright. Authorship requires the capacity to take responsibility for the work, which an AI tool cannot do. The human author is fully responsible for every claim, citation and argument in the manuscript, regardless of what tools were used.

Editorial verification: where AI use is disclosed, the Editorial Board may ask the author to verify specific citations or claims before proceeding to review. Manuscripts found to contain fabricated citations or unverifiable claims are rejected; if discovered after publication, they are corrected or retracted under the Publication Ethics policy.

Author rights: authors retain copyright in their work, and publication with BDLD Journal does not transfer ownership. Authors may:

• Post the accepted manuscript to an institutional repository or personal website, with a link to the published version.
• Reuse the article, in whole or part, in a future book or thesis, with attribution to the original publication.
• Share the article with colleagues and students for teaching and research purposes.

Journal rights: by submitting, authors grant Bangladesh Law Digest a non-exclusive licence to publish the article in the Journal in electronic form, to archive it for long-term preservation, and to distribute it through indexing and abstracting services (the policy names Google Scholar, SSRN, HeinOnline and similar platforms).

Licence: all articles published in BDLD Journal (Bangladesh Law Digest) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Under this licence readers may share and adapt the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes, provided they give appropriate credit to the original author and BDLD. The policy's own table records reading and downloading as freely permitted with no login or fee, and citing and quoting, redistributing in full, and commercial reuse as freely permitted with attribution.

Reuse permissions: because authors retain full copyright, they are free to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version, for example posting it to an institutional repository, publishing it in a book, or granting translation rights, provided an acknowledgment of its initial publication in BDLD Journal is made.

Third-party material: where a manuscript includes material copyrighted by a third party (figures, tables, extended quotations), the author is responsible for securing permission before submission and must provide evidence of that permission on request. BDLD accepts no liability for third-party material included without proper permission.

Fees: no charge at any stage, whether submission, review or publication.

Submit through the Journal's submission system or by email, sending the following as separate files:

• Anonymised manuscript
• Title page
• Declaration of originality
• Conflict of interest statement, if applicable

Before submitting, the Call for Papers asks authors to review the Author Guidelines, the Peer Review Policy, Publication Ethics and the Copyright Policy. All four are linked below.

The Call for Papers page carries a single address, journal@bdlawdigest.org, and signs off "Editorial Board, BDLD Journal (Bangladesh Law Digest)" followed by "Questions: journal@bdlawdigest.org". Every journal policy page (Peer Review, Publication Ethics, Copyright, AI Use) closes with the same line for questions about that policy.

The site-wide footer separately invites submissions at editor@bdlawdigest.org or bdlawdigest@gmail.com. The BDLD contact page lists three addresses under "Email Us", labelled Editorial (editor@bdlawdigest.org), Research (research@bdlawdigest.org) and General (bdlawdigest@gmail.com), and two numbers under "Call Us", a Primary line +880 1813-132383 and a Secondary line +880 1676-853160. The source does not tie either number to a named person or to a particular desk, and the Editorial Board page publishes no editor names. The contact page also offers a WhatsApp channel for urgent queries on submissions or partnerships, linked below.

Postal address, as given on the contact page: Department of Law, University of Dhaka, Kazi Motaher Hossain Building, Ground Floor.