Editorial Policies

Updated in August 2022

I. Focus and Scope

The University of Brasilia Law Students' Journal (Revista dos Estudantes de Direito da Universidade de Brasília [RED|UnB]) seeks, through publication of unpublished articles, which present useful thoughts to the understating of Law, provide space for dissemination of academic works that cover legal topics of national and international interest, in order to democratize access to knowledge.

The online version of RED|UnB’ journal is available in open access for consultation and use by the national and international academic community. In this way, RED|UnB offers free and immediate access to its website as a way of collaborating for the democratization of knowledge.

RED|UnB does not charge authors any financial compensation for the submission or publication of approved articles.

 

II. Thematic Areas

The board of reviewers of the RED|UnB follows the guidelines of the Postgraduate Program of the Law School from the University of Brasília.

Research Line Social movements, conflict and human rights.

Research underlines:

  • Law found on the streets, Legal Pluralism, and Human Rights.
  • Bioethics, access to justice, ethnography
  • Transitional justice

Research Line Constitution and Democracy

Research underlines:

  • Political philosophy, Constitutional Theory and Democracy
  • Legal Institutions, Separation of Powers and Constitutional Process
  • Constitutional History and Historiography

Research Line Internationalization, Labor and Sustainability

Research underlines:

  • Internationalization: Public and private aspects
  • World of labor, Constitutions and Transformations in the Social Order
  • Sustainability, Environment and Human rights

Research Line Transformations in the Social and Economic Order and Regulation

Research Underlines:

  • Regulations and Transformations in the Economic Order
  • Social Regulation and Public Policies in Education, Science, Technology and Innovation
  • Transformations in the Private Law, Companies, Market and Concurrence.

Research Line: Criminology, Ethnic-Racial Studies and Gender.

Research Underlines:

  • Criminology, Criminal Policy and Public Safety.
  • Gender studies and Ethnic-Racial relations.
  • Critical Dogmatics and Human Rights.

 

III. Interest conflicts situations with the Board of Reviewers 

The Board of Reviewers of RED|UnB is composed of professors and lawyers postgraduate from various areas of law, carefully chosen by the Board of Directors.

As the evaluation process is the double blind peer review, through the distribution of articles (without indication of authorship) to ad hoc reviewers, the reviewers must inform the Editorial Board if the identity of the author, in any way, is known to them.

 

IV. Editorial process of RED|UnB

The Editorial Board of RED|UnB is committed to maintaining high quality and relevance of the publications, assuring that the evaluation of the submitted journal articles is objective, fair and carried out according to the norms and standards of scientific research. 

It is the responsibility of the Board to forward the submissions to reviewers compatible with the article to be evaluated, preserving the anonymity of the reviewers responsible for the evaluation. The appointment of reviewers will be based on the area, sub-area or specialty of the reviewer and of the respective article to be analyzed.

In case a member of the Editorial Board identifies any conflict of interest with the research or with the author of the journal article that is going to analyze, the responsibility for the decision should be designated for another member who has no conflict of interest.

Journal articles submitted to RED|UnB should have a maximum of 4 authors. Submissions with more authors must be accompanied by a justification, which must be included in the cover sheet.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to choose, among the approved journal articles, those that will compose the edition of the journal, according to criteria of convenience and opportunity and considering the limitation of journal articles that can be published.

 

V. Editorial Policies

  • Articles

Section intended for the publication of the articles submitted in accordance with the editorial policies of the Journal and appreciated by the double-blind peer review method. All the editions of RED|UnB must have, at least, 75% of the articles submitted to the double-blind peer review system (the remaining 25% are at the discretion of the Board of Directors, which can be distributed among invited articles).

  • Guest articles

Section intended for the publication of the articles of prestigious jurists, at the invitation of the Board of Directors.

  • General submission rules

The submitted article must be unprecedented and can not be under evaluation by another  journal. If the article has been published in a scientific event, the authors must inform the editor in the appropriate field. Exceptional cases will be analyzed in accordance to the discretion of the Board of Directors.

The  originality requirement does not apply to the guest articles.

  • Forwarding of the articles

The articles must be submitted between March 07th and 28th, at 11:59pm (Brasília time), on the website <http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/redunb/about/submissions>.

  • Languages 

Only articles written in Portuguese, English and Spanish will be accepted.

  • Submission limits

The number of submissions per author per Submission Notice is limited to two, independently of whether author or co-author.

  • Formatting of the articles

All the articles must correspond to the formatting rules that can be find in the submission tab of RED|UnB website and the Submission Notice of the first semester of 2022. Those rules must be obligatorily observed, under penalty of disregard of the works.

 

VI. Evaluation process

University of Brasilia Law Students' Journal (Revista dos Estudantes de Direito da Universidade de Brasília [RED|UnB]) adopts the double-blind peer review process in the evaluation of submitted journal articles. For this reason, when submitting an article to the journal, the author(s) will not be able to identify his (their) respective name(s) in the body of the text. If this occurs, the article will be automatically disregarded. The authorship data of the article must be registered on the article's submission page. In this way, the evaluation and acceptance process of the articles will obey the following procedure:

  • The Editorial Board will assess whether the submitted article conforms to the editorial policies of the Journal and to the basic formatting norms expressed in this document;
  • If they are adequate, the Editorial Board will send the article, with no identification of authorship, to two external reviewers in accordance with the thematic area of law for a qualitative evaluation of form and content. In the event of formatting flaws, the Editorial Board will return the work to the author, indicating a short deadline for them to be corrected so that the article can be forwarded to the reviewers;
  • After the appreciation of the article, the reviewers will send a written and reasoned comment recommending approval, disapproval, or approval with reservations, within a period to be established by the Editorial Board.
  • The evaluations may contain indications of bibliography, suggestions of changes in the structure of the texts, addition or subtraction of information, criticisms, praises, suggestions and other observations considered pertinent by the reviewers for the improvement of the article's content and for its adequacy to the criteria defined by the Journal.
  • In case of a favorable opinion to the publication conditioned to changes by the author, the author will be notified and should make them within 7 (seven) calendar days, under penalty of non-publication of the article;
  • After submission of the corrected article, in case of conditioned approval, the article will be submitted to the evaluation of the Board of Directors to verify whether the requested changes have been made or not. In case of unsurpassable inadequacy, the article will be rejected;
  • The Editors will select the articles to be published considering  the evaluations of the Board of Reviewers, the relevance of the theme, the originality of the approach, the good delineation of the research object, the adequacy to the scientific methodology and other criteria judged pertinent.

 

VII. Evaluation criteria of journal articles

  •  Originality of the article

In view of national and international research, it will be evaluated whether the article is original in relation to the treatment of the theme; that is, the theme must be relevant and the approach must be original, so that innovation can occur both in relation to empirical, problematic, methodological aspects and/or results.

  • Empirical and/or theoretical contribution

The article presents empirical and/or theoretical contributions useful to the understanding of law.

  •  Clear and consistent methodological path

The article should adequately indicate the methodology used; correlating data and results with the problem and the proposed objectives.

  • Dialogue between the theoretical framework and the description, interpretation and analysis

Criterion of analysis of the interface between the theoretical framework, description, interpretation and analysis, so that the research has theoretical consistency and the conclusion responds adequately to the problematization presented.

  • Title, abstract, keywords, introduction and completion

The article must be consistent between the title and the content of the text. The abstract should present the research theme, the techniques, the research methods used and the main results. Keywords should reflect the most important terms of the discussion. The introduction should be related to the context, the theoretical/empirical ­problem, research questions, objectives and justification; while the conclusion should resume the question of research and objectives, presenting a synthesis of the results and ­possible limitations.

  • Aspects relating to form

The article should observe the guidelines indicated in the Submission’s tab in relation to the format and norms of the ABNT, respecting the requirements of academic writing through a coherent and cohesive organization of the text.

  •  Publication and Copyright Issues

The authors, when submitting their journal articles for University of Brasilia Law Students' Journal (Revista dos Estudantes de Direito da Universidade de Brasília [RED|UnB]), declare that the journal articles are their own and that the material of third parties eventually used is referenced and used legitimately. Plagiarism, falsification or data-making will not be allowed. The authors will be properly contacted if any inconsistency is identified by the Board of Reviewers or the Board of Directors.

The submission of works implies the assignment of copyright to RED|UnB, in case of approval of the submitted articles.

 

VIII. Author’s responsibility

  • Authenticity of article data/information

Authors must assure that all data presented in the work is real and authentic. If any inconsistency is found, the authors will be contacted for clarification.

  • Authors contribution

The authors included in the research must contribute significantly to the elaboration of the article, not being allowed the inclusion of new authors after the submission of the article.

  •  Corrections and Disclaimers

If necessary, the author must provide the replacement, correction, or retraction regarding any mistakes committed.

 

IX. Final Dispositions

If the formal requirements of this document have not been achieved, the article will be rejected.

In the deadline, if the formal defect that makes the acceptance of the article impossible persists, the article will be definitely  refused. 

It is reserved to the Editorial Board the right to reject the publication of articles with offensive or discriminative content, if necessary.

Any gaps in this document will be judged by the Editorial Board.

 

X. Calendar

Submission 

13.03.2023 to 07.05.2023

Evaluation

08.05.2023 to 31.07.2023

Publication of the 23rd edition

           03.09.2023