Call For Submissions: Journal On The Rights Of The Child Of National Law University Odisha

Centre for Child Rights (CCR) is the oldest and the specialized action research centre of the National Law University Odisha (NLUO) Cuttack. The Centre was inaugurated on April 12, 2015, by Justice Dipak Misra, former Chief Justice of India and the then Visitor, NLUO, in the august presence of the Chief Justice and Judges of Orissa High Court, and Secretary, Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Odisha.

CCR aims to build a rights temper and mainstream it amongst the children, state and the society, strengthening law and access to justice for children, and promoting child wellbeing by supporting and initiating research, policy advocacy, and community action on children's issues. The Centre aims to provide support and consultancy to different layers of institutional governance for protection and insurance of child rights, child protection, and understanding and reforming enabling and disabling factors to further child rights and the inter-sectionalities.

Headlined by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ved Kumari, one of the chroniclers of juvenile justice and everything child rights in the world, NLUO got its first ever Chair Professorship on Child Rights with a five-member staff team sanctioned by the CM of Odisha in 2023. This is led by the Chief Minister's Chair Professor - Prof Biraj Swain. This is the only fully functional chair professorship on child rights across India (law and non-law universities included).

The Journal on the Rights of the Child of National Law University Odisha, ISSN # 3107–4030 a Double Blind Peer Reviewed Journal is a platform initiated by the CCR, committed to plat-forming and mainstreaming pro-child rights' discourse. Submissions are invited (preferably original research papers) that explore the contemporary issues around child rights, the juvenile justice system, legislative developments, evolving socio-legal landscape of child well-being and the discourse on children and their protection and rights. It is also committed to reclaiming journalism as a public good by demanding and shaping better coverage of children in news.

Periodicity

It is bi-annual, re-launched in April 2025. The next issue is due in October 2025.

Editorial Team

• Patron-In-Chief & Editor-In-Chief, Prof Ved Kumari, Vice-Chancellor, NLUO
• Patron & Publisher, Prof Rangin Pallav Tripathy, Registrar, NLUO
• Editor, Prof Biraj Swain, Chief Minister's Chair Professor cum Director, Centre for Child Rights – NLUO

Editorial Advisory Board

• Justice Madan B Lokur, Chairperson, United Nations Internal Justice Council & Former Judge, Supreme Court of India
• Justice Geeta Mittal, Former Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court
• Prof Bernd-Deiter Meier, Criminal Justice Institute, University of Hannover, Germany
• Prof Christopher Birbeck, Professor of Criminology, Salford University, Manchester, UK
• Prof Bhabani Prasad Panda, Director, School of Law, KIIT & Former Vice Chancellor, Maharashtra National Law University

Editorial Board

• Prof Ved Kumari (Editor-in-Chief), Vice Chancellor, National Law University Odisha
• Prof Biraj Swain (Editor), Chief Minister's Chair Professor cum Director, Centre for Child Rights, National Law University Odisha
• Prof Ravinder Barn, Professor of Social Policy, & Head of Law and Criminology Department
• Royal Holloway, University of London
• Dr Frederick Phillip Fabian de Moll, Professor of Educational Science, Faculty of Education Science, Bielefeld University, Germany
• Dr Damanjit Sandhu, Professor and Head, Department of Psychology, Punjabi University Patiala
• Dr Asha Bajpai, (Former) Founder Dean and Professor, School of Law, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
• Dr Kalpana Purushothaman, Adjunct Professor, Indian Institute of Psychology and Research, Bangalore, Former Juvenile Justice Board Member, Bangalore Urban

Associate Editors

• Dr Swagatika Samal, Researcher, Centre for Child Rights, NLU Odisha
• Dr Pradipta Kumar Sarangi, Researcher, Centre for Child Rights, NLU Odisha
• Mr Ankit Kumar Keshri, UNICEF Consultant, Centre for Child Rights, NLU Odisha
• Dr Rashmi Rakha Baug, Assistant Professor (Law) and Co-Director, CCR, NLU Odisha
• Dr Shubhanginee Singh, Assistant Professor (Pol. Sci.) and Co-Director, CCR, NLU Odisha

Submissions being sought

Original Papers on ongoing research, completed research (4000 -6000 words)

1. Case Commentaries (1500-2000 words)
2. Notes and comments i.e. articles on legal challenges and implementation review of laws on child rights and child protection, in national, sub-national and global space (1500 -2000 words)
3. Book Review (1200 – 1500 words)
4. Numbers at a glance: Fact sheet on child rights / child well-being: One indicator at a time presented visually through info-graphics
5. Juvenile Justice at a glance : Summary and commentary of most important developments in the past 4-6 months gone by (3000 -4000 words)
6. Through the Pop culture lens: Review/commentary on any pop culture content i.e. film/web series/comics/anime etc. (1200 – 1500 words)
7. Children in the news: Media scan and commentary on journalism around child rights: the best reportage and the worst reportage of the 4-6 months gone by and the broad trends (2000 – 2500 words)

Themes on which articles and papers are invited

Following is a suggestive (non-exhaustive) list of themes for the submissions:

1. Any contemporary judgment / legal landscape/ research on child rights, protection, children's well-being and original data and the authors' interpretation on it

For example (suggestive not exhaustive):

• The emerging trends of teenagers being charged with Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) even in consensual romantic relationships and how does that square up with the Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health (ARSH) focus of the State too
• The latest SC judgment on Prevention of Child Marriage Act and how to not abuse that for undue criminalisation

2. Your article/commentary on any topical development and its impact on children:

For example (suggestive not exhaustive)

• Right to Education in the era of school mergers, closure of schools and para-teachers
• Continued under-funding of health and education sector and its impact on children's cognitive development, life chances
• Is anonymization possible in the digital age? And is the principle of fresh start condemned to be violated because of over-sharing on social media, digital media ingression and over-present surveillance?
• Is re-integration and rehabilitation possible in case of children charged with heinous offences?

3. Public finance/budget allocation and children: Is the imagination progressive, is the allocation adequate?
4. Any film/web series on children/juvenile justice, your review of the same with a child's best interest perspective
5. Your critic/commentary on reportage on “children in news' that stood out for you for how good/bad it was and why and any particular story/article/reportage that worked for you?
6. When they see : Photo-essay of everyday children in their everyday lives (pre-published with due compliance of consent guidelines in case of minors' photographs) and what such photos tell the author. (The photos should be from copy-left/open-source platform with no potential copyright infringement liability on the author or the journal)
7. Education/Health/Nutrition/Internet access at a glance: What the numbers speak: Infographically presented fact-sheet

Submission Guidelines

• All submissions must be original. By submitting a paper / article / commentary / review / fact-sheet / photo-essay, the author undertakes that it has not been submitted, accepted or published elsewhere.
• All submissions shall be made to ccr@nluo.ac.in with the subject line “Submission for CCR -NLUO Journal”.
• Plagiarism and extensive use of AI for writing will result in summary rejection of the submission.
• Submissions must be made in.doc/.docx formats only.
• Along with the submission please provide the Turnitin Report and AI report. Less than 10% plagiarism and similarity word count - 14 is allowed in the manuscript
• Please provide citations, references in APA 7^th edition format for any data-point used
• The content should be written in Times New Roman Font with a size of 12. Line spacing should be 1.
• All the submissions will be mandatorily subjected to anti-plagiarism check.
• Co-authorship is allowed (order of the authors need to be clearly mentioned) and the corresponding author and their contact coordinates need to be clearly mentioned.
• Self-referencing/ referencing to one's prior published work is allowed but it needs to be clearly mentioned in the Bibliography.
• All submissions must include an abstract of the submission (150-300 words) with minimum five key words
• Alongwith with every submission there should be a separate title page document clearly mentioning, the authors', authors' pen profile (50-75 words), authors' contact coordinates, social media handles separately. Additionally the title page should also contain:
• Authors' self-declaration that the submission is an original, unpublished work
• Declaration of research-funding, if any
• Declaration of conflict of interest, if any

Deadline for submissions (for October, 2025 edition): 24^th August 2025

N.B: As they are taking papers on rolling basis too, submissions not considered in October, 2025 issue will be considered in the upcoming issue.

Review Process

• Submissions for the Journal shall be reviewed on a rolling basis.
• Acceptance / rejection of submissions for the publication shall be conveyed within 5 / five weeks of the submission
• The Editorial Team will take maximum five weeks for the review of submissions along with blind peer review process. Once accepted the author cannot publish the accepted piece or any part of it in any other platform (academic, journalistic or blogspace like Medium / Substack etc.)
• The author should be prepared to make required changes as suggested by the editors
• Final editorial changes in the submitted content are subject to the discretion of the editorial board