For authors

 

 

The journal’s broad scope serves to provide a forum for contributions from all branches of legal history, including all historical periods, fields of law and regions.
The journal publishes contributions in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
Rg endorses and follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
All Rg articles are published under a Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0. The author retains the copyright and publication rights for all contributions they publish in Rg.
Rg collects neither ASCs (article submission charges) nor APCs (article processing charges). Authors incur no fees for the submission or processing of their work.
The German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) stores the digital data of all articles published in Rg and ensures their long-term availability.
The submission deadline is 1 April in the year of the respective volume.

Declaration and check of originality
When submitting a manuscript, please include a declaration stating

  1. whether an identical or modified version of the text has already been published or accepted for publication elsewhere (this also includes manuscript versions in other languages)
  2. that the author indicated has prepared the manuscript independently and without uncredited assistance, that all quotations are appropriately indicated, and that all sources used are properly cited
  3. your consent to an originality check by the editorial team. A form is available for download here
  4. that you have not used AI-assisted technologies in creating the article.

Peer review
In order to ensure the consistent quality of the publication, all submitted contributions are initially checked by the main editors and the editorial team regarding their general suitability. Contributions that make it to the following evaluation round are assessed by the editors as well as by at least one other researcher. The external reviewer is chosen on the basis of his/her expertise on the given topic as well as any relevant language skills. When it comes to selecting peer reviewers, the editors draw upon both a broad network of international experts and the recommendations of the editorial advisory board. The peer review process is anonymous, and authors will normally receive the decision (acceptance, rejection, need for revision) within two months.

Editing
We accept only contributions that are ready for publication. All submissions accepted for publication undergo our editing process. The editors reserve the right to amend the language and the content of the work, in consultation with the author when appropriate. The author will receive a galley proof of the piece as a PDF file prior to publication, at which point only minor changes can still be integrated. No major changes will be possible once the text has been initially typeset.

To download the guidelines on how to submit and prepare a manuscript, please click here.