The Employee Relations Law Journal (Empl. Relat. Law J.) welcomes original, high-quality scholarly contributions addressing employment relations, labor and employment law, workplace governance, human resource management, and related interdisciplinary areas. Authors are requested to carefully review these guidelines before preparing and submitting a manuscript.

Scope and Relevance

Manuscripts should make a clear and meaningful contribution to the field and should fall within the scope of the journal. Submissions may include original research articles, review articles, theoretical and conceptual studies, empirical research, legal analyses, policy-oriented research, and other scholarly works relevant to employment relations and related disciplines.

Originality

Manuscripts must be original and should not have been previously published or simultaneously submitted to another journal. Authors are responsible for ensuring that all sources, quotations, data, ideas, and third-party materials are appropriately acknowledged.

Submission of a manuscript confirms that the authors have the necessary rights and permissions to submit and publish the work.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts should be prepared clearly and consistently in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format. Authors should ensure that the manuscript is well organized, readable, and free from avoidable grammatical, typographical, and formatting errors.

A typical manuscript should include, where applicable:

• Title of the manuscript
• Author information and institutional affiliations
• ORCID iDs, where available
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Main text
• Tables and figures, where applicable
• Acknowledgments, where applicable
• Ethical approval statement, where applicable
• Conflict of interest statement
• References

Title and Abstract

The title should be concise, informative, and accurately reflect the content of the manuscript.

The abstract should provide a clear summary of the purpose, principal arguments or findings, methodology where applicable, and overall contribution of the work. Authors should avoid unnecessary references and unexplained abbreviations in the abstract.

Keywords

Authors should provide relevant keywords that accurately represent the subject matter of the manuscript. Keywords should assist readers and indexing services in identifying the article's principal topics.

Author Information

Complete information for all authors should be provided at submission, including full name, institutional affiliation, country, professional or academic designation where applicable, email address, and ORCID iD where available.

The corresponding author should be clearly identified and will be responsible for communication with the Editorial Office during the submission, review, revision, and publication processes.

References and Citation Style

References should follow the journal's required MLA format and must be presented consistently throughout the manuscript.

Authors should verify that all references cited in the manuscript are included in the reference list and that all references in the list are cited appropriately in the text.

Where available, references should include the correct DOI or a direct and accessible link to the source. Authors are responsible for checking the accuracy and accessibility of DOI numbers and links before submission.

Ethical Considerations

Where research involves human participants, personal data, institutional records, or other ethically regulated activities, authors must comply with applicable ethical requirements and obtain approval from the appropriate ethics committee or institutional review body where required.

Relevant ethical approval information and supporting documentation should be provided where applicable.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that may have influenced the research, analysis, interpretation, or publication of the manuscript.

Where no conflict exists, authors should provide a clear statement indicating that there are no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Plagiarism and Similarity

The journal is committed to maintaining academic integrity and does not accept plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified content, or other forms of research and publication misconduct.

Authors are encouraged to check manuscripts using Turnitin or an equivalent reputable similarity-detection software before submission and ensure that the similarity level complies with the journal's Plagiarism Policy.

The Editorial Office may conduct its own similarity screening. A similarity score alone does not establish plagiarism; identified similarities may be evaluated in their scholarly context.

Cover Letter

A cover letter should accompany the manuscript and should include the manuscript title, article type, significance of the work, and confirmation that the manuscript is original and is not under consideration elsewhere.

Authors should also disclose any information that may be relevant to the editorial assessment of the submission.

Peer Review

Manuscripts that satisfy the initial editorial requirements may be sent for single-blind peer review. Under this process, the identity of the reviewer is kept confidential from the author, while the reviewer is provided with the author's identity.

Authors may be required to revise their manuscripts in response to reviewer and editorial comments. The final decision regarding publication rests with the Editor and Editorial Board.

Revisions

When revisions are requested, authors should submit a revised manuscript within the timeframe specified by the Editorial Office. Authors should also provide a clear response explaining how each substantive reviewer or editorial comment has been addressed.

The revised manuscript may be returned to reviewers for further assessment when considered necessary.

Author Responsibilities

Authors are responsible for:

• Ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the submitted work
• Providing complete and accurate author information
• Properly acknowledging all sources
• Obtaining required permissions for third-party material
• Disclosing conflicts of interest
• Providing ethical approval documentation where applicable
• Ensuring compliance with the journal's publication ethics policies
• Responding appropriately to editorial and reviewer comments
• Notifying the journal of any significant error discovered after publication

Publication Ethics

Authors must comply with the journal's publication ethics and research integrity requirements. The journal may investigate concerns relating to plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship disputes, fabrication, falsification, conflicts of interest, or other forms of misconduct in accordance with its applicable policies and recognized standards of publication ethics.

Open Access and Copyright

The Employee Relations Law Journal is an open-access journal. Published articles are made freely available to readers and are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, unless otherwise stated.

Authors should review the journal's Copyright Policy for further information regarding copyright ownership, licensing, permissions, and reuse of published material.