Submissions: African Disability Rights Yearbook

Contributor's Guide

  Download the style guidelines

The editors will consider only material that complies with the following requirements:

  • The submission must be original.
  • The submission should not already have been published or submitted elsewhere.
  • Articles that do not conform to the African Disability Rights Yearbook style guidelines will be rejected out of hand.
  • The African Disability Rights Yearbook utilises plagiarism detection software. Please ensure that submissions do not infringe other persons’ intellectual property rights.
  • Papers should average between 5 000 and 10 000 words (including footnotes) in length.
  • If the manuscript is not sent by e-mail, it should be submitted as hard copy and in electronic format (MS Word).
  • The manuscript should be typed in Arial, 12 point (footnotes 10 point), 1½ spacing.
  • Authors of contributions are to supply their university degrees, professional qualifications and professional or academic status.
  • Authors should supply a summary of their contributions of not more than 300 words.
  • Footnotes must be numbered consecutively. Footnote numbers should be in superscript without any surrounding brackets. The
    manuscript will be submitted to a referee for evaluation. The editors reserve the right to change manuscripts to make them
    conform with the house style, to improve accuracy, to eliminate mistakes and ambiguity, and to bring the manuscript in line with
    the tenets of plain legal language.

The following general style pointers should be followed:

  • First reference to books: eg UO Umozurike The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1997) 21.
  • First reference to journal articles: eg C Anyangwe ‘Obligations of states parties to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights’ (1998) 10 African Journal of International and Comparative Law 625.
  • Subsequent references to footnote in which first reference was made: eg Patel & Walters (n 34 above) 243.
  • Use UK English.
  • Proper nouns used in the body of the article are written out in full the first time they are used, but abbreviated the next time, eg the United Nations (UN).
  • Words such as ‘article’ and ‘section’ are written out in full in the text.
  • Where possible, abbreviations should be used in footnotes, eg ch; para; paras; art; arts; sec; sees. No full stops should be used. Words
    in a foreign language should be italicised. Numbering should be done as follows:
    1
    2
    3.1
    3.2.1
  • Smart single quotes should be used; if something is quoted within a quotation, double quotation marks should be used for that section.
  • Quotations longer than 30 words should be indented and in 10 point, in which case no quotation marks are necessary.
  • The names of authors should be written as follows: FH Anant.
  • Where more than one author are involved, use ‘&’: eg FH Anant & SCH Mahlangu.
  • Dates should be written as follows (in text and footnotes): 28 November 2001.
  • Numbers up to ten are written out in full; from 11 use numerals.
  • Capitals are not used for generic terms ‘constitution’, but when a specific country’s constitution is referred to, capitals are used ‘Constitution’ .
  • Official titles are capitalised: eg ‘the President of the Constitutional Court’ .