Provisional cover for the inaugural issue, in preparation

A journal for criminal law as doctrine, as social practice, and as a site of public judgment.

Acta Juris Criminalis is being founded on the conviction that criminal law deserves both close doctrinal attention and serious engagement with its social and institutional life. The journal will publish work that knows the law in detail while refusing to treat legal doctrine as self-explanatory.

Its pages will be open to criminal law theory, comparative and international criminal law, evidence and procedure, sentencing and punishment, and empirical work that speaks to legal questions. The journal is currently in preparation; no issue has yet been published.

The journal is operated by Standard Law and is editorially independent.

StatusIn preparation
Operated byStandard Law
Inaugural issueIn preparation
Editorial teamTo be announced
Submission infoTo be added

Aims & scope

The journal will publish original scholarship on criminal law and criminal justice, with a preference for work that is doctrinally rigorous, theoretically ambitious, or alert to the social and institutional consequences of legal doctrine.

The journal’s scope is deliberately broad. It includes criminal law doctrine (刑法教义学)—the close analysis of offences, responsibility, punishment, and legal concepts—and social-science approaches to criminal law (社科刑法学), including empirical, criminological, and socio-legal inquiry. It also covers comparative and international criminal law, criminal justice, evidence and procedure, and work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

The journal does not prescribe a single method. It will publish doctrinal, theoretical, comparative, empirical, and interdisciplinary work. What matters is a clear argument, serious engagement with the relevant law and literature, and a contribution that is accessible to an international readership.

What we plan to publish

  • Research articles
  • Review articles and review essays
  • Shorter scholarly interventions
  • Book reviews
  • Proposals for special issues
  • Work across doctrinal and social-science methods

Open access

The journal will publish open access, online, with no article processing charge (APC) at present. Any change to this position will be published clearly on this site.

What we look for

Every submission should make a clear argument, situate it in the existing literature, and explain why it matters. The journal will expect authors to take doctrine seriously, engage with jurisdictions other than their own where relevant, and write in a way that is accessible to readers outside their immediate field.

Editorial formation

No editorial appointments or names are presented on this site at this stage.

Editorial appointments will be published only after they are confirmed and consented to. The full editorial team and advisory board will be published here before the journal opens for submissions.

The journal is not presenting a provisional list of editors or advisers. Doing so would imply appointments that have not been made and would misrepresent the journal’s current stage of development.

Editorial roles in preparation

  • Editor-in-Chief
  • Deputy editors
  • Section editors for criminal law doctrine and theory
  • Section editors for social-science approaches
  • Section editors for comparative and international criminal law
  • Book review editor
  • International advisory board

Expressions of interest

Scholars interested in contributing to the journal’s editorial development are welcome to express interest once contact details and procedures are announced. No editorial appointment should be inferred from this website.

Launch information

The journal is in preparation. Launch, call, editorial, and issue details will be published here when available.

ItemCurrent status
Journal statusIn preparation
OperatorStandard Law
Publication modelOpen access, online
Article processing charge (APC)None at present
Inaugural issueIn preparation
Editorial appointmentsTo be announced
Call for papersInformation to be added
Submission informationTo be added
Peer review modelInformation to be added
ISSNInformation to be added

No issue has yet been published. No publication metrics, indexing status, or editorial appointments are claimed before they can be verified.

Read the inaugural issue status

Discovery & indexing

The journal is not yet published and is not currently indexed in any database. After the first issue, the editorial office will prepare applications to the relevant legal and multidisciplinary indexes. No indexing, abstracting, or impact metric is claimed at this stage.

The journal’s metadata and content will be designed to support discovery and long-term preservation. Full details of indexing and archiving arrangements will be published once they are confirmed.

Accurate by design

We will not display journal metrics, indexing badges, acceptance rates, or editorial names before they can be verified. The site will be updated when the relevant processes are complete.

Development stages

The journal is being developed in stages. No dates are announced at this stage.

  1. Scope and planning. The journal’s disciplinary range, editorial scope, and open-access publication model are established.

  2. Editorial formation. The founding editorial team is being assembled. Appointments will be announced when confirmed.

  3. Call for papers and submission information. Submission guidelines and the first call for papers will be published before submissions open.

  4. Inaugural issue. The first issue is in preparation. Its contents and publication details have not been announced.

Contact

Contact details for the editorial office will be published when they are confirmed. The journal is operated by Standard Law. This pre-launch website does not accept submissions or correspondence.

Contact information

Editorial contact details: to be announced.

For information about the journal’s scope and status, please use the pages on this site. They will be updated as the launch develops.