The Swiss Review accepts submissions on a rolling basis. However, we consider it in the interest of both authors and editors if submissions are published without too much delay; thus, if the next three issues of the Review are already full, we accept submissions only in exceptional circumstances and if the submission in question will not require updating before publication.
Please send your submission by e-mail to the Managing Editor (Christina.Neier@sriel.ch).
All texts should be formatted as Word documents; you may use our Word template at your convenience.
Please note that only submissions conforming to the requirements set out below will be considered. Nor do we accept work-in-progress for consideration: All submission should be ready for publication (with the exception of corrections or required alterations). As a rule, it is not possible to substantially alter or extend your submission after it has been accepted for publication.
Your submission will subject to a single blind peer review. The reviewer will recommend either acceptance, acceptance conditional upon revision, or rejection of the paper. If your paper is accepted, you will be able to read the proofs before publication; again, this serves merely to ensure that your text is printed correctly, not to implement significant changes.
Authors of articles and practice reports will receive five copies of the issue in which their contribution is printed. Authors presenting their thesis will receive two copies. All authors will also receive a PDF version of their contribution for personal use. Please contact our publisher Schulthess should you require offprints of your submission. Simultaneously with the print issue, contributions will be made available electronically on HeinOnline and Swisslex. In accordance with the guidelines of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Swiss Review also allows authors to make their contribution available, after a delay of 12 months from publication, in an institutional on-line archive (repository) of their choice.
The Swiss Review will consider scholarly submission which fit the journal’s focus and mission. By submitting a manuscript, authors confirm that their text has not yet been, and is not going to be, published elsewhere. The Review accepts submissions for editorials, articles, and short summaries of theses and post-doctoral theses (reports on contemporary practice are usually provided by a number of associated regular contributors). Contributions may be in English, German or French.
- Comment: This introductory contribution addresses a topical subject in a concise manner (1’500 - 5’000 words). The emphasis is not on thorough research and an extensive apparatus, but rather on providing a summary of a recent case or issue.
- Articles: These are scholarly contributions comprising between 6’000 and 12’000 words (including footnotes). Longer texts may be considered if their subject, quality and originality warrants and justifies a more extensive study. Please include an English abstract of no more than 150 words.
- The section Theses & Post-doctoral Theses serves as a forum to junior scholars, who may submit a text of at most 1’000 words (no footnotes or sub-headings!) providing a summary of the findings of their recently submitted theses and post-doctoral theses (Habilitation). For the sake of clarity, authors are encouraged to write these summaries using the first person (since they might otherwise be mistaken for third-party reviews). The monograph has to be generally accessible either in electronic form or through a publisher. The summary should be preceded by the following information:
We accept submissions for this section on a rolling basis; if they meet our requirements we will keep them pending and publish them once space is available. We envisage to include one to two such summaries in each issue.
Please note that the Review does not publish book reviews. Nor do we publish case notes, although a specific case may of course serve as the starting point for a more general analysis in an article. In addition, recent and prominent cases may be discussed in an editorial, which should, however, eschew the schematic structure of a case note and instead focus on readability.
Please include an English abstract of your text (max. 150 words) and 4-6 Keywords (for English contributions: Keywords in English; for German contributions: Keywords in English and German; for French contributions: Keywords in English and French).
For subdivisions, please use the following alpha-numerical formation: I. …, A. … , 1. … , a) ... , i)… . Each level carries its own heading, and each sub-level should contain at least two entries (thus, I.A is followed by I.B, I.A.1 by I.A.2). Please refrain from numbering paragraphs.
Footnotes relate either to an entire sentence or to a specific word or group of words. For the former, please set the footnote number after the punctuation mark; otherwise, the number immediately follows the respective word or words. For the first citation of a source, the full reference (in accordance with Section D below) should be included. Please note that the first footnote is marked with an asterisk, not a footnote number, and indicates your title(s) and your affiliation; you may also add an e-mail-address at which readers can contact you.
The Swiss Review covers a wide range of legal topics and fields, and authors should not assume that the readership will be familiar with all the acronyms of their respective area. Nor does the register of the bound volumes contain a list of abbreviations. Therefore, the name of periodicals should be abbreviated only if such abbreviation is self-explanatory. Do not use acronyms, with the exception of SZIER/RSDIE (infra D.4).
Please give the first citation in full, as specified below. Further references give the author's name and a cross-reference to the first citation (e.g. 'Thürer, supra n. 2, at 435'). Cross-references should be formatted using the reference function in Microsoft Word (menu 'Insert', 'Cross-references').
Authors’ names are given in full and set in small capitals. Several authors are separated by commas, not diagonal slashes; the last author is preceded by “&” (e.g. Bruno Simma, Hermann Mosler & Andreas Paulus). Editors’ names, on the other hand, are not set in small capitals; their first names may be abbreviated. Titles and subtitles are divided by a colon (e.g. A. Zimmermann, C. Tomuschat, K. Oellers-Frahm & C. J. Tams (eds.), The Statute of the International Court of Justice: A Commentary, 2nd ed., Oxford 2012). More than three authors or editors may be abbreviated using ‘et al.’ (thus A. Zimmermann et al. (eds.)). We do not list publisher’s names; several places of publication are separated by diagonal slashes (Zürich/St. Gallen). If your submission is in French or German, these guidelines apply mutatis mutandis (see below for specific indications).
As set out above, please refrain from using acronyms or abbreviations for journals, with the exception of obvious choices such as:
In general, the respective section of the Bluebook (The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 20th ed., Cambridge MA 2015, Table 13) provides a good guide to what abbreviations may be appropriate.
For the Swiss Review itself, please use the following citation system:
Citation to an internet source should, if applicable, include the name of the author(s), the title of the specific page of the website, such as a posting or comment, the title of the main page of the website, and the URL. URLs (internet addresses) are set in angle brackets: <www.swissreview.ch>.Please ensure that URLs are not formatted as hyperlinks (www.swissreview.ch). References to sources that are available in print should not be substituted by internet links. Please avoid using long URLs and general references to websites (such as “The pertinent instruments are available on <www.wto.org>"). Where available, the link to PDF documents is preferred to an html-link. You may indicate the date when the site was last accessed. If, however, you rely heavily on internet sources, a general indication in the first footnote (“all internet sources were last accessed on…”) may be more appropriate.
Where applicable, international legal materials should be referenced using their U.N.T.S.; alternatively, you may refer to other international collections such as the C.T.S. or I.L.M.; please avoid reference to national collections such as the Systematische Sammlung in Switzerland.
Please use the citation system that is customary for the respective jurisdiction (e.g. for Switzerland: BGE 119 II 177, 179 or BGE 119 II 177, consid. 3; BGer 2C_716/2014 (26. November 2015), consid. 4).
Please refer to the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI).