Focus and Scope
Amsterdam Law Forum is a journal specializing in international and transnational law, with a particular emphasis on security and criminal law. The Forum is edited by students of VU University's Law Faculty. The articles in this quarterly online publication provide commentary on questions of law and policy. The Journal also offers reviews of recent literature by leading experts in the field.
ALF embraces an interdisciplinary approach to its focus issues in order to provide a full view of current legal, political and social developments. ALF aims to be a platform for discussion in which both established and young scholars participate.
Last updated September 2011
Section Policies
Scientific Articles
This section contains scientific papers as researched and written by selected professors, PhDs, Master's students and other stakeholders, depending on the topic at hand. The Editorial Team has close ties to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, offering a podium and providing further impetus for the research going forward within the institution. Scientific papers should make a clear contribution to existing scholarship and have a maximum length of 10,000 words (including footnotes).
 Open Submissions |
Indexed |
 Peer Reviewed |
Opinion Articles
This section is comprised of publications by legal scholars on all aspects of law, contributing to important public debates with provocative and meaningful dialogue. Opinion pieces are editorial rather than scientific in nature, and aim at a broadest audience among the three sections of the journal, as should be reflected by relative brevity with respect to length and citation. Opinion articles should not exceed 5,000 words (including footnotes).
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Discussion Section
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Literary Reviews
The literary review sections features a diverse variety of reviews of both contemporary and historic texts. This offers an opportunity for editors and contributing authors to comment on both cutting edge scholarship and significant underpinnings of the relevant fields of law.
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Peer Review Process
Amsterdam Law Forum provides an alternative to the current scholarly publishing paradigm, allowing for innovation and experimentation in scholarly communication. The journal is not peer reviewed at this moment. It is the ambition of the Amsterdam Law Forum to offer a full peer review process in the future.
Publication Frequency
Amsterdam Law Forum will appear in four issues per annum.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides open access to all of it content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Such access is associated with increased readership and increased citation of an author's work. For more information on this approach, see the Public Knowledge Project, which has designed this system to improve the scholarly and public quality of research, and which freely distributes the journal system as well as other software to support the open access publishing of scholarly resources.
The principles of Open Access are stated in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.Disclaimer
All opinions expressed in the articles published in the Journal are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the board or members of Amsterdam Law Forum or the VU University. Amsterdam Law Forum is a platform for scholarly debate and is politically neutral. Nevertheless, the editorial team aims at a selection balance between contributions taking opposing views.
The Amsterdam Law Forum is an open access initiative supported by the VU University Library.