PHRG is interested in contributions that deal with the broader human rights debate, with specific attention to issues related to actors, processes and norms that shape its global agenda.  Articles can consider these issues at either the local, national, regional and global/international level or from a multi-level perspective.

The Journal mainly publishes four types of original scholarly contributions: research articles, practitioner papers (human rights field notes), policy papers and review papers.

Research articles  

These are theoretically grounded papers which report the methods and results of an original study performed by the Authors and show how raw data/pieces of information has been collected and analysed by the Authors with conclusions drawn from the results of that analysis.

Submitted articles should engage the reader and contribute originally to the academic debate on current issues connected to peace, human rights, international relations and governance questions. They should present and follow a clear methodology. Prior consideration will be provided to those submissions that make a specific original contribution to the development of a solid multi-disciplinary and tentatively inter-disciplinary approach to peace and human rights scholarship.

The length of submitted research articles must be between 5,000 and 9,000 words (footnotes, which should be kept to a minimum, and bibliography are excluded from word count). Longer manuscripts may be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Practitioner papers (Human Rights Field Notes)

These include papers written by professionals in human rights-related fields (IGOs officers, NGOs representatives, independent experts). They are normally based on work-related experiences or observations and are expected to contribute to the broader human rights debate by presenting and establishing best practices, raising specific practical issues concerning human rights implementation, and noting trends in the field.

The length of submitted practitioner papers should not exceed 6,000 words (notes, which should be kept to a minimum, and bibliography are excluded from word count).

Policy papers

These are papers which present critical analyses of important human rights governance problems and opportunities and involve the research and development of defensible policy proposals (or recommendations) for solving the problem and/or formulate workable strategies for implementing them.

The length of submitted policy papers should not exceed 6,000 words (notes, which should be kept to a minimum, and bibliography are excluded from word count).

Review Papers

These are papers which do not report original research or methods, but generally summarise the existing literature on a human rights topic to explain the current state of the art of the academic debate on such topic.

The length of submitted policy papers should not exceed 5,000 words (notes, which should be kept to a minimum, and bibliography are excluded from word count).

All submitted articles must be original, that is, they should not be under review or published somewhere else. Only articles that fall within the purview of the Editorial policy will be considered for publication. A request to submit a contribution to PHRG is not a guarantee of publication.

PHRG accepts submissions at any time. Accepted papers are published “online first” with a DOI and then included in a periodic issue (six-monthly).

PHRG welcomes proposals for special issues and promotes thematic sections within published issues.

It is the Author’s responsibility to ensure that the manuscript is well-written, that the facts, grammar, use of punctuation and spelling are accurate and that the form and style guidelines (below) are respected. It is also the Author’s responsibility to ensure that ideas and sources are cited appropriately and accurately. 

Authors must facilitate anonymous refereeing, including by avoiding acknowledgments in the first submission, avoiding sentence constructions such as 'as I have argued previously'; 'drawing on my recent work'; and keeping self-references to a minimum.

Form and Style

Each submitted manuscript should start with a title of the article and the name of the Author/Authors, their institutional affiliation, the e-mail address of the corresponding Author/s. This should be followed by an abstract (approximately 250 words), and four to six key-words in English. The article must be provided in an open format (i.e. Microsoft Word, open office, etc). 

Manuscripts should be presented in a form and style as set out below.

The article must begin with an Introduction where the Author presents the research question/s or the objectives of the paper, the main argument/hypothesis, the original contribution to the human rights debate, the methodology and the structure of the article.

Authors are requested to format their research articles by using the paragraph styles provided in this template (please avoid adding new paragraph styles). 

Spelling: British English (use Oxford dictionary for questions of spelling).

Emphasis: To emphasise a word or phrase please italicize it in the text. Do not use bold or underline.

Quotes: Quotes of less than three lines should be run on in the text of the paragraph. Quotes of greater than three lines should be indented (see styles in the template). Use the British convention for quotes (i.e. single quote marks; double quote marks within the quotation) – e.g.  According to experts ‘the problems of the “1503 procedure” can be solved through the establishment of the Human Rights Council’ (Geenar 2004, 12).

References

Strictly use the following style (ensure that all relevant information is included)

Works should be cited in the text by the name/date system: that is, give the Author’s surname, year of publication and, where relevant, the page reference immediately after the material derived from the source, e.g. (Gull 2013, 64).

When referring to text spanning more than one page: (Wellborn 2002, 81-83).

When a source has two Authors, place both Authors’ surnames in the order in which they appear on the source, with the word and separating them.

If there are three or more Authors, only use the first listed Author’s name in the in-text citation, followed by ‘et al.’ and the publishing year in the text, but give all the Authors’ names in the reference list/bibliography.

Where there are two or more works by the same Author/s in the same year, they should be distinguished by adding letters: 2018a, 2018b, etc.

Please include page reference numbers for all direct citations. 

If footnotes are used, and the footnote number is at the end of the sentence, please set the footnote number before the full stop.

In the bibliography/list of references please follow this style exactly (punctuation, upper/lower case, italics/roman):

For monographs/books:

Surname, Initial. Initial. (Date of publication) Title, Place of publication: Press.  

E.g. Hill, C.  (2016) Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century, London: Palgrave.

For articles in journals:

Surname, Initial. Initial. (Date of publication) ‘Title of paper’, Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), x-y.

E.g. Donnelly, J. (2007) ‘The Relative Universality of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 29(2), 281–306.

For chapters in books:

Surname, Initial. Initial. (Date of publication) ‘Title of paper’, in Surname, Initial. Initial.(of all Authors) (ed./eds.), Title of the book, Place of publication: Press, x-y. 

E.g. Wettstein, F. (2020) ‘The history of business and human rights and its relationship with corporate social responsibility’, in Deva, S. and Birchall, D. (eds.). Research Handbook on Human Rights and Business, Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar: 23–45.

For online resources (non-formatted articles, blog posts, newspapers news, policy documents, videos, video interviews etc.) 

It is necessary to refer to the URL and the date of access, following this syle:  Surname, Initial. Initial. or Name of the Organisation/Institution/Association (Date of publication) ‘Title of the resource’, retrieved from: complete URL (accessed: dd/mm/yyyy).

 E.g. UN World Conference (1993) ‘Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action Adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna on 25 June 1993’, retrieved from: https:// www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/ instruments/vienna-declaration-and-programme-action (accessed: 13/11/2024).

Submit your manuscript to phrg.journal@unipd-centrodirittiumani.it