About

Aims and Scope

The International Journal of First Aid Education is a fully open-access journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles to advance the knowledge and practices of those involved in first aid and first aid education. Through our publications and community we aim to improve and increase the action taken to help people in health emergencies through high quality education, evidence-based medical application, and strong social and public policy to build resilience.

Each year millions of people are hurt or die unnecessarily due to acute illness or injury. High-quality first aid education, based on the best available evidence, contributes to developing helping behaviors and resilient communities.

The journal is founded on the Chain of Survival Behaviors which is central to all articles we publish. The chain conveys the wide scope of first aid’s educational domains:

  • Prevention and preparedness for emergencies large and small;
  • Early recognition of acute illness or injury;
  • Provision of help, directly or by accessing Emergency Medical Services; and
  • Support for recovery by the individual or through a health system.

These domains are relevant to everyone, everywhere regardless of context or medical training. Their application supports emergency response, encourages self-care, and public health. Giving a voice for evidence across these domains offers training providers the potential to produce confident, competent, and willing responders.

We accept a variety of manuscripts, from original research to views from the field to support a range of authors, recognizing that much of first aid practice is developed in the field by non-academic practitioners. Combining the talents of these experienced practitioners with the rigor brought through robust academic processes, we aim to publish innovative, novel, and unique manuscripts relevant to diverse audiences. 

We also strive to support the development of new authors and peer reviewers. If you are interested in becoming a peer reviewer, please contact the Editor.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issues throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available.

Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All articles will be published under Creative Commons licenses. See the Copyright and Licensing Policy for more information.

Copyright and Licensing Policy

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms. If a submission is rejected or withdrawn prior to publication, all rights return to the author(s):

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Provided they are the owners of the copyright to their work, authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
  • Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's resonsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.
  • It will be the responsibility of the authors to secure all necessary copyright permissions for the use of third-party materials in their manuscript. Authors will be required to provide written evidence of this permission upon acceptance of their manuscript.

Publication Fees

There are no fees to publish in this journal.

Indexing and Archiving

The journal’s publisher focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. This journal is indexed by DOAJ, Google Scholar, CINAHL, Asian Science Citation Index, and EBSCO Discovery Service. Content is preserved through CLOCKSS, a secure, decentralized preservation system for scholarly literature. In addition, all article metadata are openly available for harvesting by indexing services via OAI-PMH.

Advertisement policy

The journal does not normally display adverts. On occasion, the editorial board may decide to display advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. upcoming conferences). All advertising space is provided free of charge and the editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts not related to the journal.