Call for Papers: National Law School Journal (NLSJ), NLSIU Bengaluru [Rolling Submissions; No Fee; Peer-Reviewed; UG First Authors Not Eligible]

The National Law School Journal (NLSJ) is the flagship journal of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. It is a generalist, open-access, peer-reviewed law review that has published original contributions to contemporary legal scholarship on India and the developing world since 1989. The legacy journal was relaunched in 2022 and is now published twice a year, with ISSN 0971-491X.

Its Editorial Board includes the Vice-Chancellor of NLSIU and members of the faculty. The journal has carried work by eminent scholars and jurists, including Justice Michael Kirby, Professor Ratna Kapur and Professor Brenda Cossman, in both its peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sections, and states that it is equally committed to publishing rigorous novel research by emerging scholars.

NLSIU, Bengaluru publishes eight open-access journals on its Scholarship Repository, which is hosted on Elsevier's Digital Commons platform. All NLSIU journals follow a double-anonymous peer-review and editorial process and charge no fees, and the University invites submissions to them all year round. NLSJ is the University's flagship title.

NLSJ has an ongoing general call for papers. The journal invites contributions from academics, practitioners and researchers across legal studies and allied interdisciplinary scholarship. There is no thematic restriction on the general call, and submissions are considered on a rolling basis throughout the year.

• Research Articles (peer-reviewed): 5,000 to 8,000 words, flexible in exceptional cases
• Overview Articles (peer-reviewed): up to 10,000 words
• Legislative and Case Notes (reviewed by the Editorial Board): 2,000 to 4,000 words
• Book Reviews (reviewed by the Editorial Board): 2,000 to 4,000 words

Overview Articles and Book Reviews are generally solicited by the Editorial Board. Interested authors are strongly encouraged to send a 200 to 300 word abstract in advance to the journal at nlsj@nls.ac.in.

Anyone may submit an original article, provided they own the copyright to the work or are authorised by the copyright owner to submit it. The journal does not accept unsolicited submissions from undergraduate students, and it does not accept submissions where the first author is enrolled in an undergraduate programme at the time of submission. Those pursuing postgraduate study or a PhD are welcome to submit.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book, whether in print or electronic form. Publication in a working-paper series does not count as prior publication. By submitting, the author confirms that the material is not under review elsewhere and undertakes not to submit it to another journal until the editorial decision process at NLSJ is complete.

Authors must submit an AI disclosure statement as the first page of the article. Submissions will not be processed without it, and the desk review will not begin until it is received. The statement must identify every AI tool used, including AI-assisted tools such as Grammarly, specify in detail what it was used for, and confirm that all AI-assisted output was reviewed and revised by the author.

Under the journal's June 2026 AI Policy, AI tools may be used only in a limited, assistive capacity, for example to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, make minor language improvements, format citations, or support preliminary searches. AI must not be used to write, rewrite or generate any part of the article, to shape research questions, hypotheses or arguments, to convert notes into an article, to produce a literature review, or to add citations the author has not read. False AI statements are treated as a breach of academic ethics and lead to immediate disqualification of the article.

• Use British spelling, in accordance with the Oxford English Dictionary
• Cite sources using the Oxford Standard Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA)
• Number first-level headings 1, 2 and so on; letter second-level headings A, B, C; number third-level headings (i), (ii) and so on
• Use single quotation marks for quotations and double quotation marks for quotations within quotations

There are no fees for submission or publication. Research Articles and Overview Articles go through double-anonymous peer review, while Legislative and Case Notes and Book Reviews are reviewed by the Editorial Board. Editorial Board members guide authors on revisions recommended by peer reviewers, and a professional editorial team works on structure where necessary and undertakes language editing and proofreading before publication.

Authors retain copyright in their work and license it to the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. All articles are published open access on the NLSIU Scholarship Repository.

Read the submission guidelines and the AI Policy first, then submit the paper through the journal's page on the NLSIU Scholarship Repository at repository.nls.ac.in/nlsj. Queries, and advance abstracts for Overview Articles and Book Reviews, go to nlsj@nls.ac.in.