About our Journal
European Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
The European Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (EJELS) is a peer-reviewed open access journal devoted to the empirical study of law and legal systems. The Journal is established, owned, and run by the European Society for Empirical Legal Studies (ESELS).
The Journal aims to (i) scientifically advance the field of empirical legal studies, (ii) bridge the substantive domain of law and the empirical approaches broadly conceived, and (iii) promote the use of different empirical methods when researching legal and public policy questions. In particular, it promotes methodological pluralism and strives to foster a discussion between the different fields.
In line with this vision, the EJELS’s intended readership consequently includes researchers in various disciplines, such as legal scholars, psychologists, economists, political scientists, criminologists, etc. Besides the academic community, the Journal targets readers from legal practice, policy makers, and other professionals interested in the field. Editorial decisions are based on the high quality of the research. The Journal is not restricted to any particular field of law nor any particular legal system, but submissions need to be of relevance to a European audience.
In light of its methodological and disciplinary pluralism, the EJELS is open to quantitative as well as qualitative scholars, acknowledging the richness in approaching different issues from various angles and using complementary or mixed methods approaches. The Journal aims to benefit from the domain expertise of legal scholars, as well as from their empirical methodologies, and from the methodologies of scholars from other sciences, such as social and computer sciences. The Journal is also meant to cover different types of research questions, such as explanatory as well as descriptive and explorative research.
The EJELS is strongly committed to high quality and ethical research. We therefore require that all submitted work adheres to high ethical standards, and we may require documenting that the work has gone through ethical review when appropriate. In addition, the Journal adheres to the principles of Open Science: inclusion, fairness, equity, and sharing. This is reflected in the Journal’s own publishing practices, and also means that authors are required to make studies reproducible, including sharing necessary data and code.
More information can be found on the website of EJELS.