The Journal of Law and Social Sciences is a quarterly journal of the University of Zambia (UNZA). Although the name suggests that the journal focuses on articles on law and the social sciences, it also publishes articles from the fields of education and humanities. The journal therefore welcomes article submissions that meet the criteria of excellence, significance and contribution of new information to the scholarly world.
The journal is open for submission of two types of articles:
  1. Individual or joint papers written by non-students (lecturers, researchers, etc)
  2. Articles written jointly by students and their supervisors or lecturers. In this case the student is the first author while the lecturer/supervisor is the second author. This is to ensure quality and avoid the submission of mere summaries of the dissertations or theses. In this regard then lecturers who are supervising students are encouraged to co-submit with the students they supervise. Conversely postgraduate students are encouraged to approach their supervisors, or any other lecturer, for help in working on their paper before submitting.
    3. The guidelines are provided below:
    • Each article must be accompanied by an Abstract of not more than 300 words, italicised. No more than seven key terms may be included at the bottom of the abstract.
    • The article must not be a mere compression or summary of the dissertation or thesis: it must be an article that not only flows but is also logically constructed. The article must exhibit:
    • A clear line of inquiry, research problem/interest/objectives and logical flow of argument;
    • Clear theoretical substantiation
    • Clear methodological approach
    • Grounding in relevant literature/discourses
    • Clear findings and conclusion
  3. All articles must be organised as follows: abstract, text of the main body, and references. Appendices may only be allowed in exceptional cases where their use is justified or necessary.
  4. Your article will be subjected to peer review for further quality controls.
  5. Submit your article in soft copy version. For ease of copy editing, every page of the article must meet these minimum margin standards:
    • Top: 25mm
    • Bottom: 25mm
    • Right: 25mm
    • Left: 40mm
    All articles must fit within these margin requirements (including tables, page numbers, figures and graphs). The margins used should be consistent throughout the article. No headers or footers giving the titles of the chapters, sections or headings are allowed.
  6. The article must be submitted using 12 points Times New Roman standard font.
  7. All articles must be written using the Harvard referencing system as it is the house style of the journal. Ensure that you follow the guidelines of the system to avoid having your work returned for rewriting and resubmission.
  8. The length of the article must not be more than 35, 000 words (i.e., not exceeding 20 pages) and must be spaced one-and-a-half. This must be consistent throughout the text. It is expected, however, that the submitted article can be even significantly shorter than the indicated maximum number of words.
  9. The article must be written in British English using British spelling. Ensure that your article does not mix British and American spellings.
  10. Every page of the article must be numbered in Arabic numerals and centred at the bottom of the page.
  11. The title of the article should be centred upper-and-lower-case format (eg., An Analysis the Nature and Function of Nouns in Silozi) and should be followed by the author(s) name(s), address(es) with an *indicating the corresponding author’s name if there are several authors. In a case where there are several authors, use superscript (a, b, c….) to number the authors for purposes of indicating their addresses. The corresponding author’s email address should be indicated.
  12. Measurements, unless required by context, should be in metric or SI (Systeme Internationale).
  13. Non-English words and phrases used in the text should be in italics.
  14. Enumeration should be by words or figures, but not both together (eg., not “ten (10)”). In general, numbers up top ninety-nine may be spelled out, and numbers over ninety-nine written as figures.
  15. The word “per cent” should be used to denote such values in the text, but in tables the symbol % should be used.
  16. Exterior quotation marks should be single, and interior ones doubled. Thus, for example: ‘He ran off crying, “Leave me alone!” while the crowd laughed and clapped.’ The full stop, as shown above, should be placed inside the final quotation marks except for the purpose of setting off a citation.
  17. Sources of tables and figures (e.g., diagrams) or of the data contained therein, should in all cases be clearly stated in the caption of such a table or figure concerned.
  18. Effort must be made to ensure that the article also contains references from some latest publications.
  19. All articles must be submitted to the Chief Editor of JLSS, Dr Cheela Chilala using the following email addresses: jlss@unza.zm, cheelafkc@yahoo.co.uk, c.chilala@unza.zm.
    NOTE: Please send to all the three email addresses.
  20. Every submitted article will be reviewed by reviewers both within and outside the editorial board of the journal. It is expected that reviews of the submitted articles will be completed within four weeks of the submission.
  21. Once the article is submitted it cannot be submitted to another journal or publisher without the knowledge of the editorial team or the Chief Editor.
  22. The deadline for submission of articles is 21 August 2020.
  23. Note that there will be no hard copy of the journal because it will only be available online. This is in order to increase the visibility and accessibility of the journal.
  24. Any article that fails to meet the basic requirements/guidelines as indicated above will not be considered for peer review.
Cheela Chilala (PhD)
Chief Editor, University of Zambia Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS)