Editorial Process

The CJEM board provides expert advice and guidance to the staff on policy, content, organizational direction, and attracting new authors and subscribers. The editorial board reserves the final right to accept or reject submitted papers, at its discretion.

Editorial Review

The editorial board reviews the proposal/abstract submission, and decides whether to proceed with a peer review. If the decision is to proceed, the paper’s lead author will be invited to submit a full manuscript and peer reviewers will be assigned.

Peer Review

The full manuscript is reviewed by peers. Reviewers may decide to reject the manuscript, to ask the lead author to revise the manuscript based on accompanying comments, or to proceed directly to the final stage.

Categories

1. Research Papers: Research papers are typically from 3,000 to 6,000 words. They highlight theoretical, strategic, or policy issues that require further study; additionally, they recommend “first steps” for practitioners to consider in their program or operational practice of emergency management in any of the four phases. They do not necessarily need to represent an original research question and methodology, but are sufficiently novel that they warrant theoretical exploration. Research papers are peer reviewed.
2. Bridging the Gap Articles: These articles are between 1,000 to 3,000 words and are focused on programmatic and operational practice. They are explorations and discussion of the practice of emergency management in a specific subject area or context, and conclude with practical recommendations for practitioners and/or take-aways for the policy and scholarly community to consider. Suitable citations must be included. Collaboration with multiple authors will enhance their validity and coherence.
3. Communication: Communications are short articles between 1,000-2,500 words, intended to provide rapid dissemination of important insights, experiences, or contributions, particularly on time-sensitive topics.
4. Book Reviews: Book reviews are constructive critiques of books about any subject in Disaster & Emergency Management, written about any book or author and assessed for relevance, strength and clarity of the review, and value to building a body of knowledge. They are 500 to 1,000 words in length.
5. Comment & Response: The Journal welcomes comments on papers published in CJEM in the last 12 months. If the comment is critical, authors of the original piece will be allowed a reasonable opportunity to provide a response. Both comment and response will be published concurrently. Both comment and response must be concise, impersonal, contribute to knowledge production, and advance informed debate.