The American Society of International Law (ASIL) is a non-profit, non-partisan membership society founded in 1906 and chartered by the United States Congress. It is not a commercial publisher: it is a learned society whose periodicals are produced and distributed under a long-standing partnership with Cambridge University Press. Its members come from more than 100 countries and include academics, practitioners, judges, government lawyers and international civil servants, and the Society holds Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

For authors, that structure matters. ASIL's portfolio is deliberately small and highly selective rather than broad. There are four Cambridge-published periodicals, and only two of them take unsolicited scholarly manuscripts. This guide covers what each venue publishes, what open access costs, how peer review works, and how to submit.

• American Journal of International Law - founded 1907, published quarterly. Covers public and private international law, foreign relations law, and closely related questions of global governance and transnational law. AJIL generally does not publish work focused on purely private or commercial law, or on comparative or foreign domestic law.
• AJIL Unbound - the Journal's online-only, fully open-access companion. Short-form essays and curated symposia responding to developments faster than the quarterly cycle allows. All content has been published under CC BY since 2017.
• International Legal Materials - a documentary journal, six issues per year, reproducing significant primary sources chosen by an Editorial Advisory Committee and corresponding editors worldwide, each with an introductory note.
• Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting - one volume per year, the official record of the Society's Annual Meeting.

ASIL also runs ASIL Insights, a short online commentary series on current developments. Insights is editorially reviewed rather than peer reviewed and is not a substitute for a journal article on your CV.

Because ASIL's journals sit on Cambridge Core, they use Cambridge's open-access machinery. Figures below are 2026 list prices, before tax; Cambridge revises APCs annually, so check the journal's fees and pricing page before you submit.

Two routes commonly reduce the AJIL Gold OA cost to nothing. Cambridge holds Read and Publish agreements with over 2,000 institutions, and where the corresponding author is affiliated with one of them the agreement usually covers the full Gold OA cost. Separately, the Cambridge Open Equity Initiative funds Gold OA for corresponding authors in over 100 low- and middle-income countries, with eligibility established automatically during the publication process. Use Cambridge's eligibility checker before assuming you owe an APC.

AJIL is a peer-reviewed journal with a Board of Editors that screens submissions before external review, so a substantial share of manuscripts are declined without being sent out. Expect a slower cycle than in most STM fields: legal scholarship at this level is long-form, footnote-heavy, and reviewed accordingly. AJIL Unbound essays and symposium contributions are editorially commissioned or reviewed on a much faster timetable, consistent with their 3,000-word ceiling. ILM content is selected by its Editorial Advisory Committee rather than refereed. Confirm the current review model in the Instructions for Contributors, which ASIL and Cambridge update periodically.

1. Pick the venue. Full-length scholarship goes to AJIL; short interventions to AJIL Unbound; primary documents to ILM.
2. Read the AJIL Style Guide and Instructions for Contributors before you write, not after. The Journal enforces its own style guide, and citations follow Bluebook conventions adapted for international-law sources.
3. Respect the word limits. They include footnotes - which, in international legal scholarship, is the binding constraint.
4. Prepare the file in .doc or .docx. PDF submissions are not accepted.
5. Submit online. AJIL accepts manuscripts through ScholarOne and through Scholastica; the Instructions for Contributors names the current route for your article type.
6. Check funding before choosing OA. If you intend to publish Gold OA in AJIL, verify Read and Publish or Open Equity eligibility first.

ASIL's journals are published under Cambridge University Press's research-publishing ethics framework, which follows COPE guidance on authorship, conflicts of interest, corrections and retractions. Authors are expected to disclose any professional engagement - government service, litigation, advisory work - that bears on the subject of the article, a disclosure norm that carries particular weight in a field where many contributors also practise before the tribunals they write about.