Business and Human Rights Journal: Scopus, Scope, Fees and Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is Business and Human Rights Journal?

Business and Human Rights Journal is an interdisciplinary academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. Its central subject is the relationship between business enterprises and human rights, including environmental rights, labour rights and the collective rights of vulnerable groups. Cambridge describes the journal as a platform for open, critical scholarly debate and welcomes theoretical, empirical, policy and reform-oriented perspectives.

The journal’s current Cambridge pages list print ISSN 2057-0198, online ISSN 2057-0201 and a frequency of three issues per year. The supplied journal record identifies Scopus Source ID 21100830164. Researchers whose institution requires a currently active Scopus source should open that exact Scopus record before submission rather than relying only on an older article or third-party ranking page.

A manuscript may be a good candidate when its main research problem genuinely sits at the business-and-human-rights intersection and it contributes original scholarship or carefully grounded field analysis. Authors should still confirm current indexing, fees, article type, formatting rules and institutional eligibility before submitting.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press.
• Journal identity: print ISSN 2057-0198; online ISSN 2057-0201; supplied Scopus Source ID 21100830164.
• Scope: interdisciplinary business-and-human-rights scholarship, including environmental, labour and vulnerable-group rights.
• Content types: scholarly articles, Developments in the Field pieces and book reviews, with separate routes for special issues and blog content.
• Peer review: double-anonymized according to Cambridge’s current review-process page.
• Open access: research content is Gold Open Access from 2024; Cambridge currently lists an APC of GBP 2,610 or USD 3,655 where a charge is required.
• Submission: manuscripts are submitted through ScholarOne and corresponding authors must provide ORCID.
• No guaranteed outcome: journal fit and manuscript readiness can improve a submission, but neither editing nor publication support can guarantee acceptance.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• Journal identity, publisher, ISSNs and Scopus source record
• Aims, scope and subject areas
• Article types and recommended manuscript lengths
• Peer review, submission system and author requirements
• Open-access model and current APC information
• Publication ethics, transparency and AI-use expectations
• How to assess manuscript fit and common mismatch risks
• How Contentxprtz can support ethical publication readiness without promising acceptance

Methodology and Sources

This profile was prepared from the supplied journal record and authoritative sources, principally the official Cambridge Core journal page, its About this journal page, author preparation guidance, peer-review information, and fees and pricing. The supplied record points to the official Scopus source profile for Source ID 21100830164.

Journal metrics, database coverage, APCs, editorial roles and policies can change between reporting years. Where a current authoritative value was not available in the sources reviewed, this guide says to verify the current value rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

What Does Business and Human Rights Journal Publish?

Cambridge positions BHRJ around the interface between business enterprises and human rights. The scope is deliberately broad within that intersection: it includes human rights impacts of corporate activity, environmental rights, labour rights and collective rights affecting vulnerable groups. The journal welcomes contributions from academics and practitioners across regions and disciplines, which makes it relevant to legal scholars, business ethics researchers, management scholars, political scientists, policy researchers and interdisciplinary teams when the human-rights dimension is central rather than incidental.

The journal welcomes theoretical, empirical and policy or reform-oriented perspectives. In practical terms, that creates room for normative legal analysis, conceptual work, qualitative and quantitative empirical research, governance and accountability studies, policy evaluation, comparative research, corporate due-diligence studies and evidence-based reform arguments. This should not be read as a promise that any topic using the words “business” and “human rights” is in scope; the paper still needs a clear contribution to the journal’s scholarly conversation.

Recent journal content illustrates the range: corporate accountability and remedy, extractive industries, international crimes and corporate complicity, arms-industry responsibility, free prior and informed consent, and the extraterritorial reach of corporate sustainability due-diligence rules. Researchers should review several recent issues and FirstView articles to see how the journal frames research questions, evidence and contribution.

Article Types and Recommended Lengths

Cambridge’s current preparation page identifies three principal journal content types. Scholarly Articles should make an original contribution and examine a business-and-human-rights issue from a theoretical, empirical or policy/reform perspective. The recommended length is 9,000–12,000 words including footnotes.

Developments in the Field (DiF) pieces are shorter contributions connecting readers with policy, legal, regulatory and practical developments; Cambridge recommends 2,000–3,000 words including footnotes and provides additional DiF guidance. Book Reviews are typically 1,000–1,500 words. The journal also provides separate instructions for special issues and a companion blog. Authors should choose the content type based on the nature and depth of the contribution, not merely on the length of an existing draft.

Understanding Its Scopus Coverage and Journal Metrics

The primary journal input supplied for this task identifies the source as a Scopus-listed journal and provides Scopus Source ID 21100830164. That identifier is useful because journal names can be similar or can change over time. Researchers checking university rules should use the source ID, ISSN and publisher together to confirm that they are viewing the correct record.

Current CiteScore, SJR, SNIP and quartile values are reporting-year metrics and can change. Cambridge has a journal-metrics page, but the accessible content currently surfaced includes historical data, such as an older CiteScore and historical Clarivate information. It would be misleading to label those figures as the journal’s current 2026 metrics. For a decision requiring a specific quartile or metric threshold, verify the latest value in Scopus and the latest applicable SJR or Journal Citation Reports record and record the reporting year and subject category.

The same caution applies to Impact Factor. Do not substitute CiteScore, Journal Citation Indicator or a third-party “impact score” for a Journal Impact Factor. If an institution specifically requires a JCR Impact Factor, confirm that metric in the current Clarivate record.

Who Should Consider Submitting?

BHRJ may be a strong candidate for researchers whose manuscript makes business-and-human-rights questions central to the argument. This includes PhD scholars turning thesis chapters into journal articles, faculty working on corporate accountability, lawyers studying due diligence or remedy, management researchers examining responsible business conduct, political scientists analysing regulatory governance, and practitioners offering evidence-rich field insights that match the journal’s accepted content types.

Researchers should be cautious when the human-rights element is peripheral, when the paper is primarily a generic corporate-social-responsibility study without a substantive rights framework, or when the article is mainly descriptive and does not make an original scholarly or field contribution. A strong journal fit is not just topical. It also involves method, framing, literature positioning, article type, depth and relevance to the journal’s readership.

Submission and Manuscript Requirements

Cambridge states that BHRJ accepts submissions throughout the year on a rolling basis. Manuscripts are submitted through ScholarOne, using the submission link reached from the official Cambridge journal page. Authors should prepare their files according to the journal’s detailed instructions and the Business and Human Rights Journal Style and Citation Guide.

Corresponding authors are required to identify themselves with ORCID. The submission guidance also requires a Conflicts of Interest declaration in the title page, including declarations relevant to all contributing authors. Cambridge’s ethics guidance requires transparent funding information and responsible authorship. Figures, tables and multimedia must meet accessibility requirements, including appropriate descriptions or alt text where applicable.

The preparation guidance also addresses the use of artificial-intelligence tools. Generative AI tools do not qualify for authorship. Uses that generate text or images, or analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, should be declared as described in the publisher’s policy. Minimal non-generative uses such as basic spelling checks may not require the same declaration, but authors remain accountable for accuracy, originality, references and unintended errors.

What Happens After You Submit a Manuscript?

The journal’s official peer-review page states that it uses a double-anonymized model: reviewers do not know the authors’ identities and authors do not know the reviewers’ identities. This makes careful anonymization important. Authors should remove or mask identifying information where the journal’s instructions require it, while keeping a separate title page and submission metadata complete.

An official acceptance rate and an official average peer-review duration were not found in the authoritative sources reviewed here. It is therefore safer not to use estimated review times or acceptance percentages from scraped journal directories. After acceptance, Cambridge manages copyediting, proofing, typesetting and publication. Contributions may appear online as FirstView before assignment to a scheduled issue.

Open Access, APCs and Author Rights

Cambridge states that from 2024 all research content in Business and Human Rights Journal is published on a Gold Open Access basis. This includes scholarly articles and Developments in the Field pieces. Non-research content such as book reviews is not Gold OA by default.

Where an APC is required, Cambridge’s current fees page lists GBP 2,610 or USD 3,655, with additional taxes potentially applicable. The fee should not be interpreted as automatically payable by every author. Cambridge notes institutional open-access agreements, funding routes, equity initiatives, waivers and discounts that may cover or reduce the APC. Eligibility should be checked before assuming personal payment is necessary.

Cambridge also states that authors retain copyright and grant the Press a licence to publish; Gold OA articles use a non-exclusive licence. The journal supports green-open-access routes for permitted manuscript versions, subject to Cambridge policy.

Publication Ethics and Research Transparency

BHRJ follows Cambridge University Press research-publishing ethics guidance. Practical implications include accurate affiliations, responsible authorship, appropriate acknowledgement of contributions, conflict-of-interest transparency, funding disclosure, avoidance of plagiarism and duplicate publication, and proper citation and permissions. Authors should also follow research-ethics requirements relevant to their methods, participants and data.

As a publication-readiness step, researchers should audit every factual claim against the cited source, confirm quotations, check references for existence and accuracy, document permissions, resolve authorship before submission, and ensure that any use of AI or editorial assistance complies with the journal and institution’s disclosure rules. Ethical editing should improve expression and organization without fabricating data, references, results or author contributions.

Journal-Fit Checklist Before Submission

1. Can you state in one sentence why the manuscript is fundamentally about business and human rights?
2. Does the paper make an original theoretical, empirical, policy or reform-oriented contribution?
3. Have you reviewed several recent BHRJ articles for topical and methodological fit?
4. Is your selected content type correct: scholarly article, DiF piece or book review?
5. Is the manuscript within the journal’s recommended length?
6. Have you followed the BHRJ Style and Citation Guide?
7. Is the manuscript properly anonymized for double-anonymized review?
8. Does the title page include conflict-of-interest and other required declarations?
9. Is the corresponding author’s ORCID ready for ScholarOne?
10. Have you checked current Scopus status and any metric or quartile requirement imposed by your institution?
11. Have you confirmed APC coverage, waiver or institutional agreement eligibility?
12. Are references, permissions, ethics statements, data statements and AI-use disclosures accurate and complete?

Common Reasons a Manuscript May Be Unsuitable

Some mismatch risks are visible before submission. A paper may be poorly aligned if it treats human rights as a brief background theme rather than a substantive analytical framework; if it describes a corporate initiative without a clear research contribution; if it ignores the international and interdisciplinary literature relevant to the question; or if its article type and length do not fit the journal.

Other problems concern readiness rather than scope: unclear research questions, unsupported legal or policy claims, inconsistent terminology, weak explanation of methods, references that are incomplete or inaccurate, excessive self-identification in an anonymized manuscript, or failure to provide required declarations. Addressing these issues cannot guarantee acceptance, but it can reduce avoidable reasons for editorial return or negative reviewer attention.

How to Prepare a Stronger Journal-Aligned Manuscript

Start with the journal rather than with formatting. Read its aims and scope, then examine a small set of recent articles that are close to your topic or method. Note how authors formulate the business-and-human-rights problem, position the contribution, structure evidence and connect findings to law, governance, business practice or policy reform. Use that comparison to clarify what your paper adds.

Next, conduct a manuscript-level audit. The abstract should make the problem, method or approach, main finding and contribution easy to identify. The introduction should explain why the issue matters to BHRJ readers. Literature review sections should synthesize rather than list sources. Methods and evidence should be transparent enough for readers to understand how claims were produced. The discussion should distinguish what the evidence shows from what the authors infer or recommend.

Finally, apply the journal’s technical requirements: word count, citation style, anonymization, title-page declarations, ORCID, tables and figures, accessibility materials and supplementary files. Run a reference check against the original sources. A polished manuscript is one where journal fit, argument quality, evidence, ethics and formatting reinforce each other.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can provide optional professional support for researchers who already own and remain responsible for their work. Relevant services may include journal publication support, academic editing, manuscript editing, proofreading, language polishing, journal formatting, reference and citation consistency, cover-letter editing, reviewer-response editing and publication-readiness assessment.

Ethical support does not include inventing data, fabricating references, creating false authorship, manipulating peer review or promising publication. The journal’s editors and reviewers make the acceptance decision. Contentxprtz can help researchers present their genuine scholarship more clearly and consistently while preserving the author’s intellectual responsibility. At Contentxprtz, we don’t just edit; we help ideas reach their fullest potential.

Conclusion: Decide on Fit Before You Decide to Submit

Business and Human Rights Journal is a Cambridge University Press journal with a clearly defined interdisciplinary role at the intersection of business enterprise and human rights. Its scope is broad enough to include legal, empirical, theoretical and reform-oriented work, yet focused enough that authors should be able to explain precisely how their manuscript advances business-and-human-rights scholarship or field understanding.

Before submission, verify the live Scopus source record, any institutional metric requirement, the current APC and your funding route, then work through the journal’s preparation and submission instructions. A strong submission aligns the research question, evidence, article type, style, ethics and reader relevance. Professional editing can support clarity and readiness, but it cannot guarantee journal acceptance or publication.