About CIJ

Founding / pre-launch

The Child Index Journal (CIJ) is an independent, founding-stage research platform dedicated to children’s rights. It combines three things in one place:

• A peer-reviewed academic journal for interdisciplinary children’s rights research, welcoming scholars across law and children’s rights, public health and medicine, education, social work and social policy, psychology and child development, economics, and development studies.
• Ask CIJ, an AI research assistant grounded in the UNCRC and published evidence.
• The Global Child Index, a transparent country-evidence index built from published international data.

Founder

CIJ was founded by Dr Clive Akpotaire. The founding advisory and editorial appointments are in progress; CIJ will only name members once appointments are formally made.

Where we are

CIJ is at founding stage. The journal is preparing its Founding Research Collection — publication fees are waived for the first 100 accepted manuscripts — and the Global Child Index is in beta, expanding coverage as verified data allows. No institutional partnerships have been formally confirmed, and CIJ does not currently claim membership of, or endorsement by, any external body.

How we work

AI tools assist our research and review processes, but AI-assisted assessments are always subject to human Academic Editor oversight. Our integrity and governance policies are published in full in the Integrity hub.