Annales de la Faculte de Droit d’Istanbul

About Annales de la Faculte de Droit d’Istanbul

Annales de la Faculté de Droit d’Istanbul — Journal Profile

Annales de la Faculté de Droit d’Istanbul (Annales of the Istanbul Faculty of Law) is a long-running, open access, peer-reviewed law journal published by Istanbul University’s Faculty of Law through Istanbul University Press in Istanbul, Türkiye. It has been published since 1951, making it one of the durable law reviews of its region, and since 2023 it has appeared twice a year, in March and September. The journal is identified by two ISSNs, 0578-9745 and 2687-4113, the identifiers recorded in this JournalsWorld record and the identifiers under which OpenAlex resolves a single source record for the title. Its approach is explicitly comparative: it follows developments in Turkish domestic law alongside German, Swiss, French, European and Anglo-American law and all fields of international law, and it welcomes theoretical, empirical, socio-legal, doctrinal and comparative work relating to any legal system.

This profile is anchored to the JournalsWorld record for the journal (post 35564, slug annales-de-la-faculte-de-droit-distanbul, ISSNs 0578-9745 and 2687-4113). That stored record carried a numeric value, “4051”, in the publisher position and an h-index of 2. A number is not a publisher: the publisher verified from the journal’s own Istanbul University Press pages is Istanbul University Press, for the Istanbul University Faculty of Law, and that is the publisher named throughout this profile. The OpenAlex h-index fetched for this profile also differs from the stored figure, and both facts — the garbled stored publisher and the metric difference — are reported in the notes accompanying this profile. Where a field could not be verified from a source actually consulted, it is stated as not published, not publicly disclosed, or could not be verified.

Quick Facts

Identity and History

Few law journals can claim an unbroken identity reaching back to 1951, and the Annales’ own About text makes that longevity the centre of its self-description: it calls itself “a well-known and long-standing peer-reviewed academic journal that reviews the latest evolutions in and developments in the legal field since 1951”. The journal belongs to the Faculty of Law of Istanbul University, Türkiye’s oldest university, whose Beyazıt campus in Fatih, Istanbul, is given in the journal’s contact information (Istanbul University Rectorate, 34452 Beyazıt / Fatih / Istanbul). A faculty law review of this vintage is more than a publishing outlet; it is part of the faculty’s institutional memory, carrying the work of successive generations of Istanbul law professors alongside contributions from abroad.

The French title is itself a statement of intent. Istanbul’s law faculty was shaped historically by continental European — especially German, Swiss and French — legal scholarship, and a journal called Annales, publishing in French, English and German, signals that the conversation is deliberately not confined to one language or one jurisdiction. That positioning has only grown more relevant as Türkiye’s legal system has interacted with European institutions and as comparative law has become a normal method rather than a specialism. The journal’s own framing notes Türkiye’s importance in the European enlargement process and as a regional actor in the Middle East and Asia Minor, and presents the Annales as “the leading forum for research and discussion of the law and legal systems of these regions”, with an editorial board that the journal describes as including national and international leading experts. Those are the journal’s own claims about itself, quoted here as its stated positioning; the verifiable structural facts beneath them — the 1951 foundation, the faculty ownership, the comparative scope statement and the trilingual practice — are set out in this profile from the journal’s own pages.

A practical milestone in the journal’s modern history is its move, from 2023, to a regular twice-yearly rhythm, with issues in March and September. Together with its presence both on Istanbul University Press’s own platform and on DergiPark, Türkiye’s national journal platform operated by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM, that rhythm marks the journal’s transition from a classic faculty annual to a modern open access periodical with predictable issue dates, online submission and a directory presence in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Scope and Subjects

The journal’s aim, in its own words, “to publish high quality articles and thus contribute to the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge in the field”, is given concrete shape by its comparative method. The Annales will focus not only on Turkish domestic law but also on German, Swiss, French, European and Anglo-American laws as well as all fields of international law — the substance is the journal’s: no legal system is out of bounds, provided the work engages comparatively or speaks across jurisdictions. It “embraces work that is theoretical, empirical, socio-legal, doctrinal or comparative that relates to any legal systems”, a deliberately method-plural scope that distinguishes it from purely doctrinal national law reviews.

Two further features of the scope deserve emphasis for authors judging fit. First, each edition, the journal explains, contains significant theoretical contributions while also serving as “a dossier of information on the cross-cultural application of a specific area of law” — that is, issues are expected both to advance arguments and to document how a field of law actually operates across cultures and systems. Second, the Annales also publishes translated texts of Turkish legislation, a service function for foreign scholars who need reliable access to Turkish legal materials in the journal’s working languages. Priority, the journal states, “will be given to authors who will present original perspective on legal issues as described above”, while remaining “open for all scholars around the world to contribute”. A single-country, purely descriptive case note with no comparative or theoretical edge is therefore a weaker fit than its author might expect; a study that puts Turkish law into conversation with German, Swiss, French, European or common-law materials, or that treats a Turkish reform as evidence in a wider international-law argument, is the journal’s centre of gravity.

Subject coverage follows from that method rather than from a fixed list: public and private law, constitutional and administrative law, civil and commercial law, criminal law, legal history and theory, and international law in all its fields can all appear, so long as the comparative, cross-system character is present. Readers browsing recent issues through DergiPark or the Istanbul University Press site will find the mix the scope statement promises, in the journal’s three languages.

Publisher and Editorial Leadership

The journal is published by Istanbul University, Faculty of Law, and presented through Istanbul University Press (iupress.istanbul.edu.tr), the university’s publishing house, whose journal page is also the homepage recorded for the title by OpenAlex. The editorial contact published by Istanbul University Press names the Editor-in-Chief as Prof. Faruk Kerem Giray, with the journal reachable at annales@istanbul.edu.tr and the press at iupress@istanbul.edu.tr. The journal describes its editorial board as including both national and international leading experts; the full current board should be checked on the journal’s own site, since board composition is a field that changes between volumes and is not reproduced here from any secondary listing. The stored JournalsWorld record’s numeric publisher value, “4051”, corresponds to no organisation and should be disregarded in favour of the publisher verified above.

Metrics, Indexing and Open Access Status

The clearest directory fact about this journal is its presence in the Directory of Open Access Journals: a DOAJ search-API query for ISSN 0578-9745 returned exactly one record, for Annales de la Faculté de Droit d’Istanbul, naming Istanbul University Press as publisher and recording that the journal has no article processing charge. The journal’s own pages independently describe it as open access and peer-reviewed, so the open access character of the title rests on both the journal’s statement and its DOAJ record.

For citation metrics, the OpenAlex route specified for JournalsWorld depth work was followed in full: the ISSN endpoint was queried first, and both stored ISSNs — 0578-9745 and 2687-4113 — resolved to the same OpenAlex source, S4210218139. That source record, fetched directly, gives 211 works and 109 citations, with summary statistics of h-index 4, i10-index 2 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.17. These are OpenAlex’s figures, attributed here to OpenAlex, and they should be read as a modest, realistic footprint for a trilingual regional law review: law is a field in which much influence runs through courts, commentaries and national scholarship rather than through internationally counted citations. The stored JournalsWorld record’s h-index of 2 differs from the OpenAlex figure of 4; the difference is noted in the accompanying corrections, and the OpenAlex value is the one this profile reports because it comes from a source record actually fetched. No Journal Impact Factor is claimed for the Annales in this profile, because no such figure could be verified from a primary source consulted here. The journal’s presence on DergiPark additionally places it inside Türkiye’s national scholarly-journal infrastructure, which is the discovery route most Turkish academic readers will use.

How to Submit

Submissions are made online. The journal’s DergiPark presence carries its author information, and DergiPark issue text states that manuscripts are to be submitted online via the DergiPark system; the Istanbul University Press journal site is the other official front door and carries the journal’s aim-and-scope and policy information, including the policies page recorded in its DOAJ entry. Practical points for authors, drawn from the journal’s own published information, are these. Write in one of the journal’s languages — French, English or German. Shape the paper comparatively, and make the comparative contribution explicit in the abstract and introduction, since that is the quality the journal says it prioritises. Expect peer review: the journal describes itself as peer-reviewed in both its own About text and its directory records. Budget no article processing charge, on the strength of the DOAJ record stating that the journal has no APC, but confirm the current policy page before submitting, as fee policies can change between volumes. And plan around the March and September issue rhythm in force since 2023, which means asking the editorial office about copy deadlines for a specific issue rather than assuming continuous publication.

What not to do is equally clear from the scope statement: do not submit work that is purely local and descriptive without an original perspective, do not submit in a language outside the journal’s three without prior agreement, and do not treat translated legislation as a loophole — translations are a curated service feature of the journal, arranged within its editorial programme, not a general submission category. Foreign scholars are explicitly welcomed by the journal, which says its editorial board “will be pleased to receive submissions from foreign scholars all over the world”, so an author outside Türkiye with a genuinely comparative manuscript is precisely the contributor the Annales says it wants.

Reading the Annales as a Research Source

For a researcher outside Türkiye, the Annales repays reading in a way its modest citation counts do not suggest. Turkish law is a reception system: its civil law was built historically on Swiss models, its administrative and public law in continuing dialogue with French and German doctrine, and its modern reforms in negotiation with European standards and international obligations. A comparative journal edited from inside that system shows the reception happening, article by article, in the words of the jurists doing the receiving — which provisions were borrowed, which were adapted, and which were resisted, and why. The translated legislation the journal publishes serves the same reader from the other direction, giving dependable access to Turkish legal texts in French, English or German without the risks of an unofficial rendering found at random online.

The journal is also a useful corrective to a common sampling error in comparative law, in which “European law” silently means the law of two or three large western states. A long run of the Annales — available through its DergiPark archive and the Istanbul University Press site — documents a major jurisdiction of eighty-plus million people working through questions of constitutional change, commercial modernisation, criminal justice and private-law reform with the same conceptual tools as its western neighbours but different social facts. Scholars preparing a comparative manuscript for the journal can use that archive practically as well as intellectually: reading how earlier contributors framed Turkish material for German-, French- and English-speaking audiences is the fastest way to learn the register the editors expect, the depth of foreign-law exposition a Turkish topic needs, and the depth of Turkish exposition a foreign topic needs, before a word of a new submission is written.

For librarians and evaluators, finally, the title’s credentials are of the verifiable kind this profile has relied on throughout: a named university publisher, a foundation date the journal itself states, a directory listing in DOAJ with an explicit no-charge record, an identified editor-in-chief with a published institutional contact address, a regular twice-yearly rhythm, and a single coherent OpenAlex source record resolving both of its ISSNs. That combination distinguishes the Annales from the many law titles whose web presence consists of a borrowed template and an invented board, and it is why the journal can be recommended, on evidence, as a legitimate home for comparative legal scholarship on and from Türkiye.

Similar Journals

The Annales sits among faculty law reviews with an international outlook. Within Türkiye, the law journals of the other great historic faculties — Ankara and Dokuz Eylül among them — and the wider family of Turkish law periodicals carried on DergiPark form its immediate national neighbourhood, while internationally its natural comparators are the continental European faculty annals and yearbooks that publish comparative and international law in more than one language, and Istanbul University Press’s own stable of faculty journals across the social sciences and humanities. What distinguishes the Annales within that company is the combination of its 1951 lineage, its trilingual practice and its self-consciously cross-system scope: a journal that has treated Turkish law as one voice in a German, Swiss, French, European and Anglo-American conversation for more than seventy years.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of Annales de la Faculté de Droit d’Istanbul?
0578-9745 and 2687-4113, as recorded in this JournalsWorld record and resolved by OpenAlex to a single source record.

Who publishes the Annales?
Istanbul University Press, for the Faculty of Law of Istanbul University, Türkiye. The numeric value in the old JournalsWorld publisher field was a data artefact, not a publisher.

When was the Annales founded, and how often does it appear?
It has been published since 1951, according to its own About statement, and since 2023 it appears twice a year, in March and September.

Is the Annales open access? Does it charge authors?
The journal describes itself as open access and peer-reviewed, it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and its DOAJ record states that it has no article processing charge.

What languages does the Annales publish?
French, English and German, according to its DergiPark journal information.

Who edits the Annales?
Istanbul University Press’s journal contact information names Prof. Faruk Kerem Giray as Editor-in-Chief.

What are the Annales’ citation metrics?
OpenAlex source S4210218139, fetched for this profile, records 211 works, 109 citations, an h-index of 4 and an i10-index of 2. The older stored JournalsWorld figure of h-index 2 differs and is flagged in the accompanying notes.

What subjects does the Annales publish?
Comparative and international law across public and private law — constitutional, administrative, civil, commercial and criminal law and legal theory among them — with Turkish law read alongside German, Swiss, French, European and Anglo-American law. Work may be theoretical, empirical, socio-legal, doctrinal or comparative, and the journal also publishes translated texts of Turkish legislation as a service to foreign readers.

How do I submit to the Annales?
Online, through the journal’s DergiPark submission route, following the author information there and on the Istanbul University Press journal site. Shape the manuscript comparatively — that is the quality the journal says it gives priority to.