Call for papers 2026

CALL FOR PAPERS – DOSSIERS 2026

In order to broaden its scope and the quality of the scientific articles published, the editorial board of Brazilian Journal of Criminal Procedure (Scopus, WoS, SJR Q2, Scielo, Dialnet, Qualis A1, Anvur A) announces this public call for authors to thematic dossiers that will be published on the issues of the journal in 2026, according to the following list of themes, associated-editors and deadlines:

 

Deadlines for submission

Periods of evaluation and corrections

Estimated publication

Vol. 12 n. 2

Mar. 15, 2026

Apr. and May. 2026

June 2026

Vol. 12 n. 3

July 20, 2026

Aug. and Sept. 2026

October 2026

The submission of articles must be done in the online system of RBDPP, indicating the addressed dossier. Any doubt or request can be sent to: rbdpp.editor@gmail.com or vinicius.vasconcellos@usp.br. The paper must comply with all the rules established in the Editorial Policies and Authors Guidelines of the RDBPP, so that their inattention will lead to preliminary rejection.

The article must be original, unpublished and compatible with the subject matter of the indicated dossier; it should count between 15 and 25 pages; it can be written in Portuguese, English, Spanish or Italian; the submitted file must contain title, abstract and keywords in the language of the text and in English, and a list of bibliographical references at the end. There will be evaluation through the double-blind peer review system. Preprint deposits are accepted.

For all the journal policies, scientific integrity standards and author guidelines: https://revista.ibraspp.com.br/RBDPP/about/submissions – the website may be translated to English in the right menu bar.

In addition to the specific call for papers for those dossiers, the call for the general sections of the RBDPP is always open.

  • 12, n. 2 – “Judicial Reforms and Criminal Bureaucracies in Latin America: Trust, Slowness, and the Efficacy of Courts' Work”
    • Editor-associado: Ezequiel Kostenwein (Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina)
    • To begin this special issue, it is important to revisit the traditional metaphor of the opacity of law, or more precisely, of the judicial institution. In this regard, people often speak of two kinds of secrecy which, rather than being opposed, seem to articulate and function together. One is related to the technical and cryptic nature of legal discourse, which tends to strengthen a specific type of authority. The other is associated with the composition of the judicial agency in general and its members in particular, who facilitate endogamy—a phenomenon sometimes summarized by the expression "judicial family." These two features of justice's opacity, particularly in the case of criminal justice, remain very important. Beyond these two aspects, this special issue also aims to counteract a third dimension, which relates to an opacity that we could define as "external." In this sense, it is possible to say, on the one hand, that what we currently know in the region about the reasons and justifications appealed to by those who work in the administration of criminal justice is insufficient. But also, that this insufficiency is not only a product of the traditional secretiveness that characterizes the judicial field but also due to the limited interest this field generates in academic spaces dedicated to scientific research. In comparative terms, there is much more research on the police, prisons, politics, and the media than on the above-mentioned criminal justice system. Consequently, we can point out that, while the famous "internal" opacity linked to discourse and judicial corporatism persists, the referred-to "external" opacity—the most important for us—is also observed, which is a product of the lack of systematic studies on the criminal justice system. Public claims about a lack of trust or efficacy in the performance of courts, or even the harmful effects of their excessive delay, have become pillars for many legislative changes over the last few decades. Exploring these phenomena is the central focus of this proposal. Therefore, and as the title of our special issue suggests, the objective is centered on the reform narratives of the Latin American criminal process and the concrete practices that these narratives have generated among judicial actors in the context of their daily work.
    • Deadline for submissions of articles: until March 15, 2026;
    • Period of evaluation: April and May, 2026;
    • Prediction for publication: June, 2026.
  • 12, n. 3 – “Judicial motivation and standards of justification in criminal trials”
    • Editora-associada: Flavia Carbonell Bellolio (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile)
    • Editor-associado: Ramón Beltrán Calfurrapa (Universidad de Atacama, Copiapó, Chile)
    • In criminal trials, judges issue a wide variety of rulings: from decisions that allow the proceedings to move forward to those that directly affect their development and outcome, such as those that resolve precautionary measures, nullities, dismissals, conditional suspensions, the admission or exclusion of evidence, the acquittal or conviction of the accused and, of course, those that rule on appeals against the final judgment. All of them, however, share a common requirement: the need to be duly reasoned. The duty to provide reasons not only involves a normative mandate of contemporary procedural systems, but also a genuine principle of democratic legitimacy. The provision of reasons ensures transparency, control and rationality in the exercise of judicial power and, at the same time, the right of the accused and the victim to obtain a well-founded judicial decision, that is, one based on reasons and not on mere assumptions. Hence, both procedural scholarship and theories of argumentation and jurisprudence have shaped standards of justification that guide judicial work, albeit with differences between legal systems and with no small number of challenges in their practical application. Within this framework, this monographic issue invites researchers to submit original contributions on judicial motivation in criminal proceedings, with a special emphasis on the establishment of justifying standards. Papers addressing the following topics, among others, will be accepted: a) legal, dogmatic, theoretical, and jurisprudential standards for justifying judicial decisions in criminal proceedings; b) comparative analysis of criteria for justification in different legal systems; c) the impact of justification deficits on the generation of judicial errors; and d) the identification of good practices and proposals aimed at improving the criteria for judicial reasoning.
    • Deadline for submissions of articles: until July 20, 2026;
    • Period of evaluation: August and September, 2026;
    • Prediction for publication: October, 2026.