Crawford School of Public Policy

The new Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies journal brings together many of the world’s leading experts on public policy to tackle the issues facing our region.

From Bangkok to Broken Hill, and Shanghai to Suva, policymakers throughout Asia and the Pacific face many of the same challenges—complex issues like health, education, climate change, food policy and more.

To help the search for solutions, Crawford School of Public Policy will soon launch a new peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal—Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies (APPS).

The journal, which will launch its first issue in January 2014, brings together the best and brightest academic minds to tackle the big issues facing the region. Specific themes of interest include migration, public administration, trade, foreign policy, natural resource management, and development policy.

The journal will be published three times a year by Wiley-Blackwell, with all contributions made freely available on the publisher’s website without restrictions.

Crawford School of Public Policy Director Tom Kompas will be APPS’ founding Editor-in-Chief. He will be supported by a distinguished group of editors drawn from across a range of disciplines and based throughout the world.

Kompas says the journal will play a crucial role in bringing together academics and policymakers from the region.

“The goal of the journal is to break down barriers across disciplines and generate policy impact,” he says.

“APPS will bring together the world’s best scholars to look at issues that the whole region is wrestling with, and give a platform to share the best ideas so that policymakers have the best possible evidence to draw from.

“It’s particularly exciting to be able to launch a new journal which is open access, as this means that the ideas, expertise and research can be freely available to everyone.”

The first issue will feature contributions from many of the region’s leading scholars, including Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC, Professor Stephan Haggard and Professor Ann Florini.

To whet the appetite ahead of January’s launch, Wiley-Blackwell has a number of early-release papers on their website.

The journal will have a particular focus on issues facing policymakers in the Pacific. It’s an area that Kompas says has often been neglected by academic literature until now.

“The islands of the Pacific are many and, in a lot of cases, have small, diverse and geographically scattered populations. That creates some unique challenges for policymakers,” he says.

“Those challenges have had an impact on the academic output on Pacific issues. While much of it is excellent, it has never before had a single platform to bring it all together for the good of policymakers scattered throughout the region.

“APPS changes all that. It brings the best minds together to focus on policy problems every country in the region would recognise. And it puts the problems encountered by policymakers in Port Moresby on an even footing with those being tackled in Phnom Penh. The issues and challenges that we face throughout the region are many, but we are all facing them and we can and should work together to find solutions.”

The journal’s work will also be supported by the establishment of the Asia and the Pacific Policy Society. The Society aims to create a network of academics and policymakers with a view towards sharing expertise across countries and disciplines. The membership-based association has already signed up more than 40 high-profile Fellows.