AJEM updates contributor guidelines and editorial policy to support your submission

Over the intervening 38 years, AJEM has established itself as a premier source of knowledge, evidence and wisdom to advance the practice of emergency management, disaster resilience and disaster risk reduction in Australasia and worldwide.

AJEM is a hybrid scholarly and professional journal, arranged to provide peer-reviewed scholarly research alongside non-peer-reviewed articles that report on practices, projects, initiatives and incidents. As the emergency management sector faces increasingly complex, contingent and inter-connected natural hazard settings, transformative evidence-based practice is more important than ever.

The publication currently has an online subscription of approximately 4,500. Reader surveys conducted in 2007, 2015 and 2017 consistently show that readers from across the emergency management and disaster sector value the magazine as a reliable and rigorous source of knowledge, and many translate that knowledge into their practice.

The 2023 researcher survey found that many authors valued AJEM for the significant and unique reach that it has into the emergency management sector and the way that AJEM research evidence is used to inform practice. But the survey also highlighted limitations to publishing in AJEM, including article length and structure.

To address this, the AJEM contributor guidelines and editorial policy have been revised. The word count for original research papers submitted to AJEM has now increased to 8,000 words, although authors can continue to submit shorter 5,000-word articles. The expanded article length aligns with cognate scholarly journals in disaster science and improves capacity for authors to include the required markers of research scholarship including a justified knowledge gap, explanation of methodology, presentation of detailed findings, discussion of findings and the industry advances implied by the findings.

In response to other findings of the researcher survey, work is ongoing to influence journal metrics and review journal governance. The revised editorial policy sets out the scope of the journal and includes revised policies on scope, permission to publish, authorship and reporting use of AI in research.

The updated contributor guidelines and editorial policy intend to make it easier for authors to understand the focus of the journal, the types of articles published in AJEM and their different requirements. Through this clearer guidance, the AJEM is better placed to promote new research and thinking to support disaster risk reduction and resilience in Australasia and beyond.

The updated guidance is available online at: https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/australian-journal-of-emergency-management-contributors-guidelines/

Melissa Parsons
AJEM Editor-in-Chief