Liikejuridiikka – Finnish Business Law is a legal journal that focuses broadly on business law. Liikejuridiikka publishes peer-reviewed articles and other types of publications such as case comments, book reviews, reviews on forthcoming legislative amendments and opponent’s statements. Writings are published in Finnish, Swedish and English. The Publication Forum rating of Liikejuridiikka is JUFO-1.

Liikejuridiikka has been granted the right to use the Peer-Review Label of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies since 20.12.2023. Liikejuridiikka’s publisher Kauppakamari has committed to following the rules set forth by the Federation. For more information on the right to use the Peer-Review Label, please see https://tsv.fi/en/services/label-for-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications.

Essential information regarding the peer-review process and documents are stored according to the rules set forth by the Federation. As for published articles, this concerns the manuscript, peer-reviewers’ statements and the publication decision. As for rejected manuscripts, the title of the manuscript and the names of the author and the peer-reviewers are stored. The information is not public.

Schedule

Finnish Business Law Journal 2/2026 (to be published in August)
Peer-reviewed articles: 1.5.2026
Other writings: 15.5.2026

Finnish Business Law Journal 3/2026 (to be published in December)
Peer-reviewed articles: 1.9.2026
Other writings: 15.9.2026

Finnish Business Law Journal 1/2027 (to be published in April)
Peer-reviewed articles: 2.1.2027
Other writings: 15.1.2027

If you are interested in publishing in the Finnish Business Law Journal, please contact the journal’s Editor at henri.halila@helsinki.fi or Editorial Secretary at eero.makela@helsinki.fi.

Liikejuridiikka can be found also from Edilex (edilex.fi) where all issues since the second one (2/2015) have been published.

Reviewer’s instructions

Liikejuridiikka is a legal journal, which has separate sections for peer-reviewed articles and other writings. All published scientific articles will be peer-reviewed. A reviewer is a third-party expert, who must be free of conflicts of interest and who must have sufficient scientific expertise to assess the quality of the manuscript.

In practice, reviewers are docents, professors, and other experts who meet the academic qualifications required in the relevant field of law. Liikejuridiikka follows a double-blind peer-review process. In other words, a manuscript will be sent to two evaluators, and the author will receive two expert statements for their manuscript.

The following principles are followed in the review process:

• Before submitting a manuscript for peer-reviewing the author must ensure that the text is proofread and that it has been written according to Liikejuridiikka’s author’s instructions. If the manuscript is written in Swedish or English, the author may be asked to provide proof of professional proofreading. Liikejuridiikka does not provide or fund proofreading or translation services.
• Once a manuscript has been submitted to Liikejuridiikka’s editors, the editors will select the reviewers, send them the manuscript and finally forward the reviewers’ comments to the author. The author and the referees will not be informed of each other’s identities.
• The duty of the reviewer is to assess the scientific quality of the manuscript. Based on their expertise the referee will assess if the manuscript meets the standards of a scientific article. The article must contain new information or new insights on the relevant research questions. The article must elaborate the research questions and assess them in a methodically sound manner based on sufficiently representative sources. An article which, for example, merely summarizes existing sources without providing independent analysis or new insights does not meet these qualifications.
• The reviewer must provide the editors of Liikejuridiikka a written statement regarding the reviewed manuscript. The statement must indicate whether the referee supports the publication of the article in Liikejuridiikka. At the end of the statement, the referee must explicitly address the publishability of the article by selecting one of the following options:
  1. the article may be published as such or with only minor revisions
  2. the article may be published after substantial revisions, and once revised, it must be resubmitted to the referee for further evaluation
  3. the article is not suitable for publication
• If the reviewer does not support the publication of the article, the statement must indicate the reasons for the rejection as well as an explanation of how the manuscript would need to be improved in order to meet the publication threshold. The referee may also state that the manuscript cannot meet the publication threshold even with revisions. Only in option 2 will the manuscript be returned to the referee for a new round of review after revisions.
• It is further recommended that the referee include in the statement a detailed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript, as well as the aspects the author should consider when finalizing the text. These comments may concern both form and content.
• After receiving the reviewer’s statement, the editors will provide the author with additional time for finalizing the article if finalizations are required. In the finalization phase the manuscript may not be amended in a manner so that it deviates significantly from the initial manuscript or the reviewers’ statements. Significant contextual changes will lead to a new review process.
• The referee undertakes to treat the manuscript with strict confidentiality. The referee must decline the review assignment if they consider themselves unable to provide an impartial assessment of the manuscript, for example due to prior collaboration, a supervisory relationship, or any other significant conflict of interest.

Download the reviewer’s instructions as a pdf-document

Author’s instructions

1. Manuscripts must be submitted to the editors of Liikejuridiikka by email by the given date. Please use Microsoft Word 2003 or a newer version and submit the manuscript in .docx form.
2. Authors will not be compensated.
3. The manuscript may not be published earlier in an essentially similar form in another publication or online.

Scientific articles

4. Liikejuridiikka publishes both scientific articles and other writings. All scientific articles must undergo an anonymous review process. Therefore, it is important that manuscripts are submitted in time for the editors. After the review the author will make changes and additions to their article as proposed by the reviewer after which the manuscript must be submitted by a given date. The author must be prepared also for a rejection if the article does not meet the contextual qualities set forth for scientific articles. A manuscript may be rejected if its shortcomings are so significant that it cannot be improved so that its quality exceeds the publishing threshold. Instructions concerning the referee process are found from the beginning of a Liikejuridiikka publication. They may also be requested from the editors.
5. Articles may be written in Finnish, Swedish and English. The recommended length for a scientific article is ca. 12–29 A4 pages with standard Word settings. If the manuscript is significantly longer, the author must discuss the issue with the editors or the main editor. The author must disable automatic features such as hyphenation, full justification, automatic proofreading, etc.
6. Authors must use the following settings:
   • Normal text
     Font: Times New Roman, 12 – spacing 1,5
   • Indented text
     Font: Times New Roman, 11 – spacing 1
   • Footnotes
     Font: Times New Roman, 10 – spacing 1
   • Title
     Font: Times New Roman, 12 – spacing 1,5
     The title should not be written with capital letters.
7. Authors must use footnotes. Common scientific documentation must be placed in the footnotes (i.e., no references in the main text). Footnotes must be numbered sequentially. Liikejuridiikka has followed a common citation practice for legal publications since issue number 2/2019. This practice is based on the guidelines issued by the five member Faculties of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. Please find the guidelines here.
8. Articles must include an abstract before the main text explaining the primary research findings. The recommended length of an abstract is ca. half page. The settings of an abstract are the same as the settings for the main text.
9. For marketing purposes, the author must provide a brief ingress; roughly 2–4 sentences long. It should encompass the main idea of the article and if necessary, the primary research findings. The ingress may be published on Liikejuridiikka’s webpages, in newsletters and in other releases. The ingress must be included in the article.
10.  If the article is written in Finnish or Swedish, the author must provide an English translation of the title. The article should not contain a table of contents.
11. Articles must include the following information: name of the author, their title, place of work and position.

Other writings

12. Liikejuridiikka publishes also other types of contributions besides scientific articles. These include, for example, case comments, book reviews, reviews on forthcoming legislative amendments and opponent’s statements. The author must indicate clearly the nature of their writing. Writings other than scientific articles are not peer-reviewed.
13. Other writings must follow, in principle, the instructions above. They are, however, not bound by the length limitation for scientific articles. Usually, other writings are ca. 3–29 pages long. Other writings should not include an abstract and the need for a list of sources should be determined on a case-by-case basis. For other writings the author does not have to provide a translation for the title.

Editorial Board

Ville Pönkä, Chair of the Editorial Board, Professor

Kirsi-Maria Halonen, Professor

Martti Häkkänen, Professor

Reijo Knuutinen, Professor

Matti Rudanko, Professor

Jarno Tepora, Professor Emeritus

Matti Turtiainen, Research Director

Veikko Vahtera, Professor

Editorial Team

Julia Ahlfors, Editor-in-Chief, Postdoctoral Researcher, Legal Counsel
Tel. +358 40 846 0455, julia.ahlfors@helsinki.fi

Henri Halila, Editor, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Tel. +358 50 343 4096, henri.halila@helsinki.fi

Eero Mäkelä, Editorial Secretary, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Tel. +358 50 472 1329, eero.makela@helsinki.fi

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