Submissions

Author Guidelines

1. Formal and content requirements

Manuscripts submitted to Nullius must be:

• Original and unpublished.
• Not previously published, nor simultaneously under review by any other journal or conference.
• Submitted exclusively to Nullius for the entire duration of the evaluation process.

Authorship contribution

All listed authors declare that they made a substantial contribution to the conception, structure and preparation of the manuscript, and that they have participated in at least one stage of the research process (study design, literature review, data collection and analysis, interpretation of results, drafting and final revision).

2. Peer review

All manuscripts received are evaluated through a peer‑review system that ensures rigour and anonymity:

• As a general rule, a double blind review process is applied: at least two experts external to UTM, whether national or international, anonymously evaluate the manuscript.
• Authors may suggest potential reviewers; such suggestions will be considered by the Editorial Committee at its discretion, without any obligation to follow them.
• For manuscripts with already published preliminary versions (preprints), differentiated review protocols will be applied, which may include single blind review or other procedures that preserve the integrity of the process and take into account preprint traceability.

3. Formal presentation

• Manuscripts must be submitted in an editable format (Microsoft Word for Windows).
• Font: Times New Roman, size 12 pt.
• Line spacing: 1.5.
• Margins: top, bottom, left and right 2.5 cm.
• Maximum length: 20 pages, according to the indicated format.

If the text includes graphs, figures, images or maps:

• These must be attached as supplementary files in JPG or PNG format, with a resolution higher than 500 dpi.
• They must be numbered and cited in the body of the manuscript.

4. Structure and content of the manuscript

The manuscript should generally follow the structure below:

• Title of the article: in Spanish and English, concise and clear, with a maximum of 20 words.
• Abstracts: in Spanish and English, between 150 and 250 words (including spaces), stating the objectives of the study, the main methodological approach and the key results.
• Keywords: in Spanish and English, separated by semicolons; between 3 and 6 terms. Repetition of words already used in the title should be avoided where possible.
• Introduction: problem statement, background, justification, hypothesis (where applicable) and objectives.
• Methodology: approach and design, population and sample (if applicable), data collection instruments and techniques, data analysis procedures and ethical considerations.
• Results.
• Discussion.
• Conclusions.
• Conflicts of interest: explicit declaration of the presence or absence of conflicts of interest.
• References: formatted according to APA (American Psychological Association), 7th edition.
• Notes: where applicable, notes must appear as endnotes before the reference list, not as footnotes.
• Authorship contribution statement: using the CRediT taxonomy, indicating the roles of each author.

In all cases, authors are encouraged to include a brief note on the availability of data and materials (for example, deposit in repositories, availability upon reasonable request, etc.), in line with Nullius’ open science and data policy.

5. Anonymity for review

To guarantee double‑blind review:

• The manuscript file submitted for evaluation must not contain the authors’ names or affiliations, nor any identifying information in the text.
• Personal metadata must be removed from the file, following the instructions of the word‑processing software (for example, as described in Microsoft Office documentation).

In a separate document, uploaded as a supplementary file, the corresponding author must provide:

• Full names of all authors.
• Institutional affiliation, city and country. If a change of affiliation is expected in the coming months, this should be indicated.
• Institutional email address (preferably).
• ORCID identifier.

This information will be used for the final published version and for editorial records, but will not appear in the file sent for peer review.

6. Types of contributions

Nullius accepts, among others, the following types of articles:

• Research articles.
• Review articles (state‑of‑the‑art papers).
• Historical‑bibliographical articles.
• Theoretical or conceptual articles.
• Analytical‑descriptive articles.
• Methodological and exploratory articles.
• Case‑study articles.

In all cases, relevance to the field of Law and legal studies will be considered, as well as interdisciplinary dialogues with the humanities and social sciences.

7. Citations, references and style

• In‑text citations and reference lists must follow APA style, 7th edition, in accordance with the journal’s author guidelines.
• The corresponding author guarantees that all cited works are fully listed in the reference section, and that all items in the reference list are cited in the text.

8. Publication ethics

Nullius adheres to international ethical standards applicable to researchers, reviewers and editorial teams. In particular, the journal requires all authors to comply with the principles and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

9. Originality and similarity checks

All submitted manuscripts will undergo similarity checks using plagiarism‑detection software, under editorial supervision, before being sent for peer review. Detection of plagiarism, self‑plagiarism or any other form of scientific misconduct may result in immediate rejection or other editorial actions, in line with the journal’s ethics and corrections policies.

10. Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted exclusively in electronic form through the journal’s online submission system, available on the Nullius Submissions page.

Manuscripts are accepted on a rolling basis. In addition, the journal may announce thematic calls with specific deadlines for particular issues or special sections.

PLANTILLAS

11. Editorial contact

Authors wishing to check in advance the relevance or thematic fit of their manuscript with the journal’s scope may contact Nullius via the institutional email address provided on the official website:

revista.nullius@utm.edu.ec