ECDLR welcomes original and high-quality contributions in the fields of copyright law, digital law, artificial intelligence, platform regulation, data law and related areas of European and comparative law.

We are particularly interested in contributions that combine analytical depth, clear legal reasoning and relevance to current developments in European and international digital law.

What We Publish

ECDLR accepts different types of contributions, including:

• scholarly articles
• case notes and case comments
• legal analyses
• shorter commentary pieces
• contributions on current legal and regulatory developments

Submissions should present a clear legal argument and make a meaningful contribution to academic or professional discussion.

Languages

Submissions are accepted in:

• English
• German
• Turkish

For contributions written in German or Turkish, authors may be asked to provide an English title, abstract and keywords in order to improve international discoverability and indexing.

Submission Requirements

Manuscripts should normally include:

• title of the contribution
• author name
• institutional or professional affiliation
• ORCID, if available
• abstract
• 4–8 keywords
• main text
• complete and consistent references
• information on any prior publication or preprint version

Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts in an editable format such as Microsoft Word.

Suggested lengths depend on the type of contribution. As a general guide, Current Developments are usually 800–1,500 words, Analysis pieces 2,000–4,000 words, and Scholarly Articles approximately 5,000–10,000 words. These ranges are indicative rather than absolute.

Originality and Prior Publication

Submissions should be original and should not infringe third-party rights.

Prior circulation as a working paper, preprint or manuscript on platforms such as SSRN does not automatically exclude publication in ECDLR. Any previous publication or publicly available version must, however, be disclosed at the time of submission.

Where a contribution has previously appeared elsewhere, publication in ECDLR will depend on the applicable rights and permissions.

Editorial Review

All submissions are subject to an initial editorial review.

The review considers, in particular:

• relevance to the scope of ECDLR
• legal quality and accuracy
• analytical depth
• originality
• clarity and structure
• relevance to current academic or professional debate

ECDLR may request revisions before accepting a contribution for publication.

Acceptance is not automatic and remains subject to editorial discretion.

Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain copyright in their contributions.

Unless otherwise stated, scholarly articles published by the European Copyright & Digital Law Review (ECDLR) are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

This license permits sharing, redistribution, adaptation and reuse, including for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author and the original publication in ECDLR.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that quotations, images, charts, tables and other third-party material may lawfully be used. Third-party material is not automatically covered by the CC BY 4.0 license unless this is expressly indicated.

DOI and Publication Metadata

Published scholarly articles may be assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

ECDLR aims to provide structured publication metadata, including:

• author information
• affiliation
• ORCID
• title
• abstract
• keywords
• publication date
• DOI, where applicable
• citation information
• links to previous or external versions, where relevant

This metadata is intended to improve the discoverability and citability of published contributions.

Citation and External Versions

Where a manuscript has previously been made available on SSRN, another repository or another publication platform, authors should provide the relevant link and citation information.

ECDLR may identify such earlier versions transparently on the article page.

How to Submit

Please send your manuscript together with the required metadata to:

editor@ecdlr.org

The subject line should preferably read:

Submission to ECDLR – [Author Name] – [Short Title]

Manuscript Style and Formatting

Authors submitting scholarly articles are requested to follow the ECDLR Style Guide, which sets out the journal’s standards for manuscript structure, formatting, footnotes, citations, abstracts, keywords, and publication metadata.

Download:
ECDLR Style Guide (PDF)

Submission Checklist

Before submitting your manuscript, please make sure that it includes:

• title
• author name
• affiliation
• abstract
• keywords
• ORCID, if available
• complete references
• information on prior publication or preprint versions
• disclosure of any relevant third-party material
• current contact details

Questions

For editorial questions or questions regarding submissions, please contact:

contact@ecdlr.org