For authors

The Editorial Board of Pravova derzhava. Annual Scientific Journal invites authors to submit original scholarly works addressing current issues of state and law.

Publication in the Annual is free of charge. No fees are charged for manuscript submission, evaluation, peer review, or publication. The journal is published with financial support from the V. M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Before submitting a manuscript, authors are requested to familiarize themselves with the manuscript preparation requirements, editorial policies, and peer-review procedure. Submission of a manuscript constitutes confirmation that the authors have read the journal's editorial policies and agree to the established manuscript evaluation procedure.

1. Manuscript Submission

The journal accepts original scholarly works that fall within its aims and scope and comply with the requirements for scholarly publications.

Manuscripts may be submitted by researchers, academic and teaching staff, doctoral and postgraduate students, legal practitioners, and other specialists whose research falls within the journal's academic scope.

Languages of publication: Ukrainian, English.

The journal accepts: research articles; review articles; reviews of scholarly publications; reports on academic events; commemorative articles on the lives, scholarly activities, and academic contributions of legal scholars.

A manuscript must be original, must not have been previously published, and must not be under consideration by another scholarly journal at the time of submission. If the manuscript is based in part on results previously published by the author, conference materials, a preprint, or another version of the work, the author must inform the Editorial Office and provide an appropriate reference to the previous publication.

Manuscripts should be submitted by email to: pravova.derzhava.idp@gmail.com

The Editorial Office will acknowledge receipt of the manuscript within five working days.

2. Before Submitting Your Materials, Please Make Sure That:

• the manuscript falls within the journal's aims and scope;
• the article has not been previously published and is not simultaneously under consideration by another publication;
• all persons listed as authors have made an appropriate contribution to the research, have reviewed the final version of the manuscript, and have approved its submission;
• all materials (files) have been prepared in accordance with the journal's requirements;
• complete information has been provided for all authors, including institutional affiliation, country, email address, and ORCID;
• a corresponding author has been designated;
• the title, abstract, and keywords are provided in both Ukrainian and English;
• all sources used have been properly cited and the reference lists have been prepared in accordance with the journal's requirements;
• a correct DOI has been provided for every source to which a DOI has been assigned;
• all required declarations concerning funding, conflicts of interest, and the use of generative AI have been provided.

3. Files to Be Submitted

For a manuscript to be considered, the author should submit:

• Manuscript in DOCX format. As the journal applies double-anonymous peer review, the file must not contain the authors' names, affiliations, email addresses, ORCID identifiers, acknowledgements, or any other information that could reveal their identity (see the template in Section 10).
• Title Page as a separate file. It should contain the title of the article, complete information about all authors, details of the corresponding author, and declarations that may reveal authorship (see the template in Section 10).
• Supplementary Materials, where applicable — high-quality figures, tables or datasets, appendices, permissions from copyright holders, and any other necessary materials.

Note: The Licence Agreement is not required at the initial submission stage. The author signs the Licence Agreement for the use of the work after the manuscript has successfully completed peer review and the Editorial Office has issued the relevant notification (see the template in Section 10).

4. Author Information

The following information must be provided for each author (in Ukrainian and English):

• full first name and surname;
• academic degree and academic title;
• position;
• full official name of the institution (affiliation);
• country;
• ORCID;
• email address.

One of the co-authors must be designated as the corresponding author. This author is responsible for communication with the Editorial Office during submission, peer review, revision, and preparation of the manuscript for publication.

Authors are responsible for ensuring the correct spelling of their names, institutional names, and ORCID identifiers. Authors are advised to use the official English-language name of their institution.

5. Manuscript Requirements

The recommended length of a research article is 20,000–25,000 characters excluding spaces, not including abstracts and references.

The manuscript must be submitted in DOCX format and formatted as follows: A4 page size; Times New Roman, 14 pt; 1.5 line spacing; margins: left — 20 mm, right — 10 mm, top — 20 mm, bottom — 20 mm; first-line indent — 10 mm; pages must be numbered.

The manuscript should contain:

• UDC index;
• title of the article in Ukrainian and English;
• short abstract and keywords (in Ukrainian for Ukrainian-language articles; in English for English-language articles);
• main text of the article;
• List of Sources Used;
• References;
• extended abstract and keywords (in English for Ukrainian-language articles; in Ukrainian for English-language articles).

The main text of the article should include the following sections:

• Introduction.
• Analysis of Recent Research and Publications.
• Aim of the Study.
• Research Results.
• Conclusions.

6. Article Title, Abstracts, and Keywords

The title should be informative and specific and should accurately reflect the subject of the research. Overly general titles, unnecessary abbreviations, and cumbersome constructions should be avoided.

The title must be provided in Ukrainian and English.

Abstracts: 

The article title should be followed by a short abstract in Ukrainian (in English for English-language articles) consisting of 3–4 sentences and keywords: 5–7 words or phrases in Ukrainian (in English for English-language articles).

Extended abstract with keywords: in English for Ukrainian-language articles (1,800–2,000 characters); in Ukrainian for English-language articles (1,800–2,000 characters).

The English-language abstract should be written in clear academic English and should not be a mechanical translation of the Ukrainian text.

Keywords should reflect the principal concepts, legal institutions, subject matter, jurisdiction, historical period, or methodological approach relevant to the study. Authors are advised not to merely repeat words from the article title.

7. Citations and References

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of citations, completeness of bibliographic information, and correspondence between citations and the sources actually used.

References to sources should be provided in the text in square brackets. The number in square brackets corresponds to the source number in the List of Sources Used. When referring to a specific passage, the relevant page number(s) should be indicated: [2, p. 25], [3, pp. 41–43]. References to several sources should be separated by semicolons: [4; 7; 12] or [4, p. 18; 7, p. 36].

Footnotes may be used for substantive explanations and authorial comments; standard bibliographic references should not be duplicated in footnotes.

The List of Sources Used should be arranged in the order in which the sources are first cited in the text and formatted in accordance with DSTU 8302:2015. Bibliographic details of sources published in languages other than Ukrainian should be given in the original language, without translating their titles into Ukrainian.

The List of Sources Used should reflect the current state of research on the subject and include relevant Ukrainian and international scholarly publications. The selection of sources should be determined by the subject, aim, and methodology of the study.

Authors are encouraged to use current and relevant scholarly publications with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). For each cited source to which a DOI has been assigned, the author must include and verify the DOI in the bibliographic entry. The Editorial Board recommends that at least one-third of the scholarly publications cited in the study have a DOI.

A separate References list should follow the List of Sources Used. It is intended to facilitate international indexing and accurate identification of cited sources by bibliographic and scientometric databases.

The References list should contain the same sources, in the same order as the List of Sources Used, and should be formatted in accordance with APA Style (7th ed.), subject to the following journal-specific rules: 

Bibliographic details of sources published in Cyrillic script should be transliterated without independently translating their titles into English.

Where official English-language bibliographic metadata are available for articles, monographs, or other publications originally published in Cyrillic script, particularly in DOI metadata, these official data should be used.

For legislation, court decisions, and other documents that have official titles in a language using the Latin alphabet, those official titles should be used.

Sources originally published in languages using the Latin alphabet should be listed in the original language.

Guidelines for Formatting the List of Sources Used and References. 

8. Author Declarations

Author declarations should be provided on the separate Title Page, following the author information, and should not be included in the anonymized manuscript submitted for peer review.

Authors should provide the following declarations:

Originality and simultaneous submission. The author confirms that the manuscript is original, has not previously been published in an identical form, and is not simultaneously under consideration by another publication.

Authorship. All listed authors have made a substantial contribution to the research, have approved the final version of the manuscript, and are accountable for its content. Persons whose contributions do not meet the criteria for authorship may be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section.

Funding. Where financial support was received for the research and/or preparation of the publication, the author should identify the funding source and, where applicable, provide the name and number of the grant, project, or programme. If no such support was received, a funding declaration is not required.

Conflict of interest. Authors must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other interests that may have influenced, or could reasonably be perceived as influencing, the research, its evaluation, or publication. If no such circumstances exist, the following statement should be provided: “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest”.

Conflict of Interest Prevention Policy. 

Use of generative AI. A declaration concerning the use of generative AI in the creation or substantive development of the manuscript is mandatory for every manuscript, regardless of whether the author used generative AI in a manner requiring disclosure under the journal's AI Usage Policy. 

AI Usage Policy

If generative AI was not used for the creation or substantive development of the manuscript, the following statement should be provided:
“Generative AI was not used in the creation or substantive development of this manuscript”.

If generative AI was used in a manner requiring disclosure, the following statement should be provided:
“During the creation or substantive development of this manuscript, [name of tool, version if applicable] was used for [brief description of the purpose and nature of use]. The authors reviewed the outputs generated through its use and accept full responsibility for the content of the manuscript”.

Note: The use of automated or AI-assisted tools solely for checking spelling, grammar, punctuation, technical formatting, or making other purely technical corrections that do not alter the content, the authors' argumentation, or conclusions does not require disclosure and is not considered substantive use of generative AI for the purposes of this Policy.

Compliance with ethical requirements. If the research involved human participants or animals, their biological materials, or non-public personal or confidential data, the authors must state that the applicable legal requirements and ethical standards were observed and, where required, that informed consent and/or ethics committee approval was obtained. In other cases, this declaration is not required.

Declarations concerning originality and simultaneous submission, as well as confirmation of authorship, are intended for editorial purposes and will not be reproduced in the published article. Information concerning conflicts of interest and the use of generative AI and, where applicable, funding and compliance with ethical requirements will, following acceptance of the manuscript, be included in a separate “Declarations” section in the final version of the article.

9. Editorial Consideration of Manuscripts

1. Initial screening. The Editorial Office checks whether the submission is complete, whether the manuscript falls within the journal's scope and complies with the basic requirements, whether the metadata and declarations are correct, and conducts an automated text-similarity check. Results generated by automated systems, including indicators of the likelihood of generative AI use, do not in themselves constitute evidence of a breach of publication ethics and are subject to expert assessment.
2. Editorial assessment. Manuscripts that meet the formal requirements are assessed for their relevance to the journal's scope, scholarly quality, and suitability for peer review.
3. Peer review. The manuscript undergoes double-anonymous peer review in accordance with the journal's Peer Review Policy. 
4. Revision. Authors receive the reviewers' comments and, where revision is requested by the Editorial Office, submit a revised version and, where appropriate, a response to the reviewers indicating the changes made.
5. Editorial decision. Following consideration of the manuscript, one of the following decisions may be made: accept; accept subject to revision; refer for further peer review; or reject.
6. Licence Agreement. Following acceptance of the manuscript, the author signs a Licence Agreement / grants a licence for publication in accordance with the journal's policy.
7. Production. Accepted manuscripts undergo editorial processing, proofreading, and typesetting. Authors receive proofs for review. At this stage, errors may be corrected, but substantial changes to the content of the accepted article may not be made without the Editorial Office's approval.

10. Downloadable Templates

To minimize technical errors, the Editorial Office provides the following templates:

Title Page — DOCX
Manuscript — DOCX
Licence Agreement — PDF/DOCX

11. Contact Information

Pravova derzhava. Annual Scientific Journal 
V. M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
4 Tryokhsviatytelska St., Office 227, Kyiv 01001, Ukraine. Tel.: +380 44 278 51 55

Manuscript submissions: pravova.derzhava.idp@gmail.com
General enquiries: pravova.derzhava.idp@gmail.com
Website: https://pravova-derzhava.org/