Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management

JHSEM publishes both peer-reviewed research articles and non-peer-reviewed submissions such as news/communiqués, opinion, and book/media reviews, as explained in detail below. Contents come from a broad array of scholars and practitioners in many fields, including engineering, political science, decision science, risk management, health and medicine, emergency management, and homeland security.

• Research articles: A research article presents an original thesis and reports results that are based on an empirical method of evaluation. JHSEM does not consider the review of existing research and findings by other authors to be a research article unless it is done in a methodical and systematic manner to reveal new theoretical/practical insights and conclusions. Research articles go through the peer-review process but are not copyedited by the journal.
• News/communiqué: News/communiqué is a short submission that provides a statement or review of a recent development or offers information that pertains to the fields of homeland security and emergency management. Examples of news/communiqué include notice of a new type of research or a new degree program, an example of collaboration, a review of or conclusions from a conference, or communication of a recent critical development that is important to students and practitioners of homeland security and emergency management. Such submissions do not offer opinion or provide evaluations; they just state the development without commentary. News/communiqué manuscripts do not go through the peer-review process but are copyedited by the journal in coordination with the submitting author.
• Opinion: Opinion articles reflect the submitting author’s evaluation of and commentary on a topic that is of interest to students and practitioners of homeland security and emergency management. Opinion submissions do not go through the peer-review process but are copyedited by the journal in coordination with the submitting author.
• Book/media review: Book/media review submissions review a recent publication and provide critical evaluation of its content. Book/media reviews do not go through the peer-review process but are copyedited by the journal in coordination with the submitting author.

This document provides authors with details on policy, copyediting, formatting, and layout requirements pertaining to final manuscript submission to this journal. All manuscripts must have correct formatting to be considered ready for publication.

The entire manuscript submission and review process is handled through an online system named ScholarOne. All manuscripts should be submitted to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dgjhsem

The ScholarOne system has been designed to improve the scholarly publication process for authors. Among the many improvements we offer over traditional journals, the most significant is that we have dramatically shortened the period between the initial submission and the final publication of a peer-reviewed article. Much of this time savings is due to the innovative use of electronic publication. These innovations, however, require certain changes in the way authors need to prepare accepted manuscripts for electronic publication.

De Gruyter does provide a light copyedit of manuscripts for this journal, but authors remain responsible for being their own copyeditors.

All manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English. If you have reasons to doubt your proficiency with respect to spelling, grammar, etc. (e.g., because English is not your native language), then you may wish to employ—at your expense—the services of a professional language editor.

Please get in touch with the Language Editors directly to discuss details.

• Alexandra Griswold
  xan3210@cs.com
  Areas of expertise: public policy, political science, education, economics, social sciences, humanities, ethics

• Cyndy Brown
  browncyndy@yahoo.com
  Areas of expertise: political science, social sciences, humanities, ethics

• Donna Reeder
  Reeder Literary Services
  Areas of expertise: political science, economics, mathematical economics, natural sciences, social sciences, technology, law, humanities, liberal arts, literary studies, health and medicine

• Dorothy Schepps
  dschepps2@gmail.com
  Areas of expertise: political science, emergency management, homeland security, community/land use planning, law, economics, cyber terrorism, and cyber security

• Jane Cotnoir
  jane.cotnoir@gmail.com
  Areas of expertise: Local government management, international crime and terrorism, emergency/disaster management, humanities, social science

• Manuscripts should be submitted as Word, docx, or rtf.

• If your manuscript contains special characters, equations, etc. please make sure to also supply a PDF version as a reference file. This will be used to ensure any formatting issues introduced during the submission process can be corrected accurately.

• Write your article in English

• Do not include a title page or abstract. (Begin the document with the introduction. The title page and abstract will be added to your paper by the ScholarOne system.

• Do not include page numbers, headers, or footers. (The ScholarOne system will add the appropriate header with page numbers).

• Do not identify author names in the actual text of your manuscript; all such information is discarded when we receive your submission. To add or edit co-authors, you must use the "revise submission" form.

• Make sure all author and co-author information is complete. Click on "Preview submission" to make sure that all your co-authors' names and affiliations appear correctly.

• Do not include acknowledgments in your manuscript. Instead, enter acknowledgments in the coverpage footnote section on the "revise submission" form, so that they may be incorporated into the title page produced for publication.

• Submit your manuscript, including tables, figures, appendices, etc., as a single file (Word, .docx, or RTF, files are accepted).

• Use the following document structure:

  1. Introduction (titling this section is optional)

  2. Subsequent sections which include tables, references to figures and figure captions.

  3. Conclusion, discussion of findings, or implications section.

  4. Appendices, no longer than five pages in total.

  5. Explanation of symbols mentioned in the text.

  6. References - Include a proper bibliography following the guidelines in the References section below.

  7. Please supply figures in separate files, as well as either in-text or pasted at the end of the document. Please see the "Tables, Figures, and Graphs" section below for more detailed instructions regarding figure submission.

  BOOK REVIEWS

• Book reviews must start with the citation of the book at the top of the first page.

FONTS

We cannot accept Type3 fonts. The following is a brief guide to fonts with respect to layout.

•  Font:

  • Main Body—12 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available

  • Equations—12 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available

  • Footnotes—10 pt. Times or the closest comparable font available

  • Tables, graphs & figures—Text accompanying graphs, figures and tables should be no smaller than 8 pt.   

FONT FACES

Use Times or the closest comparable font available, except, possibly, where special symbols are needed. If you desire a second font, for instance for headings, use a sans serif font (e.g., Arial or Computer Modern Sans Serif).

COLORED TEXT

• Set the font color to black for the majority of the text. De Gruyter encourages authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures, maps, images, and graphs. However, you need to appreciate that this will cause some of your readers problems when they print the document on a black and white printer. For this reason, you are advised to avoid the use of colors in situations where their translation to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.

EMPHASIZED TEXT, TITLES, and FOREIGN TERMS

• To indicate text you wish to emphasize, use italics rather than underlining. The use of color to emphasize text is discouraged.

• Foreign terms should be set in italics rather than underlined. Unless they are widely known, these terms should be defined in a footnote.

• Titles of books, movies, etc., should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Abbreviations

HEADINGS

Headings (e.g., title of sections) should be distinguished from the main body text:

• Clearly indicate the heading hierarchy using the numbering system of 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc.

• Be consistent in whether or not you use headline case, or you capitalize the first word and leave the rest in lower-case.

FOOTNOTES

• Footnotes must appear at the bottom of the page on which they are referenced rather than at the end of the paper.

• Excessively long footnotes are better handled in an appendix.

TABLES, FIGURES & GRAPHS

• General requirements: All illustrations must be of reproduction-ready quality and in EPS, TIF, or JPG format. They will be reduced in size to fit, whenever possible, the width of a single column. Lettering of all figures within the article should be uniform in style (preferably a sans serif typeface like Helvetica) and of sufficient size (ca. 8 pt.).Uppercase letters A, B, C, etc. should be used to identify parts of multi-part figures. Cite all figures in the text in numerical order. Indicate the approximate placement of each figure. For review purposes, please place figures in-text or past them at the end of the document. However, you must submit figures in separate files, as well. Only figures (graphs, line drawings, photographs, etc) should be labeled as ‘figures’, not tables or equations.

• Halftone figures (grayscale and color) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and be of good contrast. Authors are welcome to submit color illustrations. Online publication of color figures will be free of charge. To partially offset the cost of production, color figures will be printed with the following charges to the author: € 250.00 for the first illustration and € 200.00 for each subsequent illustration in one article.

• Line drawings must be of reproduction-ready quality. Please note that faint shading may be lost upon reproduction. When drawing bar graphs, use patterning instead of gray scales. Lettering of all figures should be uniform in style. A resolution of 1200 dpi is recommended.

• Figure legends: Provide a short descriptive title and a legend to make each figure self-explanatory on separate pages. Explain all symbols used in the figures. Remember to use the same abbreviations as in the text body.

• Permissions: It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain permission to reproduce original or modified material that has been previously published. Any permissions fees are the responsibility of the author(s).

• Offprints: The electronic files of typeset articles in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are provided free of charge; corresponding authors receive notification that their article has been published online. Paper offprints can be ordered in addition; an offprint order form will accompany the page proofs and should be completed and returned with the corrected proofs immediately.

• Please do not embed figures in the text. Instead, they should be referenced in the text and submitted in separate files.

• Number tables consecutively using Arabic numerals. Tables should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Provide a short descriptive title, column headings, and (if necessary) footnotes to make each table self-explanatory. Refer to tables in the text as Table 1, 2 etc. Use Table 1, etc. in the table legends.

• Tables must not be displayed as images.

MATHEMATICS and EQUATIONS

• Roman letters used in mathematical expressions as variables must be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Subscripts and superscripts must be a smaller font size than the main text.

• Type short mathematical expressions inline.

• Longer expressions must appear as display math, as must expressions using many different levels (e.g., such as fractions).

• Ensure that Equations are typed or created with a plug-in, such as Word Formula Editor or MathType. Mathematical expressions must not be displayed as images

• Important definitions or concepts can also be set off as display math.

• Number your equations sequentially.

• Insert a blank line before and after each equation.

• Whether equation numbers are on the right or left is the choice of the author(s). However, make sure to be consistent in this.

• When proofing your document, pay particular attention to the rendering of the mathematics, especially symbols and notation drawn from other-than-standard fonts.

• It is the author's obligation to provide complete references with the necessary information

• All citations in text should be listed in references section with full bibliographic information.

• Use Chicago Manual Author-Date system. Follow the instructions at: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html