Publishing policies
Editorial procedure
Peer review
Publication ethics
Reflexivity statement
Publishing in Indigenous contexts
Preprint servers
Authorship
Ethics considerations in authorship
Changes to authorship
Inclusive language
Conflicts of interest
Funding statement
Data availability
Open access and copyright
Publishing charges
Editorial procedure
All articles submitted to Children Australia are screened for suitability on the basis of the following criteria by members of the Editorial Board:
- Significance/relevance to scope of the journal;
- Conceptual framework (connections to relevant constructs in literature);
- If relevant, the suitability and adequate description of the methods (including data collection and analysis) and reporting and discussion of findings;
- Findings/conclusions are literature or data based;
- Overall contribution to the field;
- Originality; and
- Writing style/composition/clarity.
If considered inappropriate, articles will at this stage be rejected by the Editorial Board or authors will be requested to make changes before their article is assessed again.
After initial screening, some article types progress to peer review (see article types for details).
Peer review
Peer review is the independent (of the Editorial Board) assessment by experts in the field of the validity, quality, significance and originality of an article before it is accepted for publication. Peer reviewers have expertise and specialist knowledge (through their professional practice or research) in the same field as the article they have been invited to review. Multiple reviewer reports are used by the Editorial Board to decide whether an article is accepted for publication.
Articles with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context or focus are reviewed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reviewers in accordance with our ethics policies (see Ethics considerations in authorship).
Peer review is valued by journals because the constructive criticism and recommendation of each peer reviewer assists the editor in deciding whether the article should be accepted for publication. Authors value peer review because it improves the quality of their articles. Please refer to For reviewers if you are a reviewer looking for instructions, or an author wanting to learn more about how peer review works.
In Children Australia, peer reviewed articles receive two or three, but sometimes more (if necessary to clarify polarisation of the reviewers), reviewer reports. When all reviews are returned, the Editors consider the reviewer comments, independently evaluate the article and make an editorial decision to reject, consider again after revision (and possibly further peer review), accept with minor changes or accept as is. Authors receive copies of (anonymous) reviewer comments. Although feedback will usually be provided to authors, the editor reserves the right to reject an article for publication without providing a rationale for the decision. Final decisions regarding acceptance of an article will be made by the Editorial Board.
Publication ethics
By submitting your paper to Children Australia, you are agreeing to any necessary originality checks your paper may have to undergo during the peer review and production processes.
Submission of an article to Children Australia implies that:
- The article is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own previously published work;
- All named authors have read and agreed to its content and agree to the article being submitted to the journal. Note that authors are fully responsible for the content of their article, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics;
- The article has been submitted only to this journal – it is not under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere; and
- The article contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, fraudulent, illegal, libellous or obscene.
Case Reports reporting on a specific person must provide evidence of written informed consent. It should also be clearly stated in the article that written informed consent was provided.
For original research studies involving people, medical records and human tissues, Children Australia requires authors to document that a formally constituted review board (Institutional Review Board or Ethics committee) has granted approval for the research to be done. At the end of the Methods section, under a sub-heading 'Ethics approval', please provide the full name of the Board or Committee that approved the research and state the approval number.
If the study is judged exempt from review, a statement from the committee is required. Informed consent by participants or guardians should always be sought. If this is not possible, an institutional review board must decide if this is ethically acceptable.
Investigators who do not have access to an institutional review board are required to provide a statement outlining why it was not possible to gain formal ethics approval. They should follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki regarding human experimentation, and make a statement attesting that these principles were followed while conducting the research.
Information or photographs that relate to individual people may only be used if the authors have obtained and provided written and signed consent from each identifiable person.
Using the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Children Australia will vigorously investigate allegations of research errors, authorship complaints, multiple or concurrent (simultaneous) submission, plagiarism, duplication, research results misappropriation, reviewer bias and undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Reflexivity statement – ethical and transparent research partnerships and reporting
To promote power balance and equitable authorship in research collaborations (e.g. sector–academic research collaborations, co-design), Children Australia encourages authors to provide an Author reflexivity statement that makes transparent how the study or collaboration:
- Addressed the research, practice and policy priorities of partners, and involved partners in the study design;
- Managed funding to support collaborative partners;
- Provided access and ownership of study data to partners;
- Protected any vulnerable partners;
- Reflected the leadership, contribution and ownership of the work by partners in the author list and acknowledgements of their article; and
- Facilitated or supported development of evidence creation, data analysis and writing skills for collaborative partners.
Publishing in Indigenous contexts
Studies about any Indigenous population must include appropriate consultation to ensure research is culturally sensitive and guided by the priorities of the community studied. To ensure appropriate consultation, please follow the reporting guide for meaningful Indigenous engagement developed by Maddox et al. (2023) and available in summary here with permission of the authors.
For guidance on the reporting of research involving Indigenous peoples, please refer to the consolidated criteria for strengthening the reporting of health research involving Indigenous peoples (CONSIDER) statement (see Huria et al. 2019).
In addition to showing evidence of appropriate consultation and following guidelines on the reporting of research, at least one author of an article expressing a viewpoint or reporting about an Indigenous community must be from that Indigenous community.
Children Australia supports an Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard (ICIRAS; see Lock et al. 2022). Part of this commitment is for Indigenous peoples to show their cultural identity as part of their authorship credentials, should they choose to.
We recognise that Indigenous knowledges and definitions have a long history of being marginalised in academic discourse, including by the editorial processes of journals. For articles that report on research involving Indigenous peoples, Children Australia commits to assessment and review by Indigenous people.
Preprint servers
Authors are permitted to post submitted articles on a reputable preprint server providing the journal is not named before acceptance and the preprint record is updated after publication to link to the published article.
Authorship
All persons who have a reasonable claim to authorship must be named in the article as co-authors on submission of the article. Each author should have participated in the work sufficiently to take responsibility for some part of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole.
Every author should meet all of the following conditions:
- Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; AND
- Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. People who have contributed to the work but are not authors should be named in the article Acknowledgements and their contributions stated. AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as an author or co-author. COPE provides comprehensive information about authorship.
Collaboration groups can be listed as authors in Children Australia. If a collaboration group is included, please provide a title for the group and include some notes in the spaces provided about how group membership is determined, whether the group has a nominated spokesperson and where the group is located (if a physical location exists). The Corresponding author will be responsible for signing the publishing agreement and proof approval on behalf of the collaboration group. Members of the collaboration group can be named in the Acknowledgements section of the article.
Ethics considerations in authorship
Unjustly naming a person to be an author, removing an author’s name from the author list, or replacing an author’s name with the name of other people who have made little or no contribution to the research or writing of an article is publishing misconduct.
Children Australia promotes power balance and equitable authorship in research collaborations (see Reflexivity statement) and requires that articles that include substantial commentary, research or evidence about any Indigenous community must show evidence of appropriate consultation with that Indigenous community and include at least one author from that Indigenous community (see Publishing in Indigenous contexts).
Changes to authorship
After an article has been submitted to the journal, requests to add an author, remove an author or change the order of authors should be made in writing to the journal at editor@childrenaustralia.org.au. Such changes will not be made without the written agreement of the entire author group (as per COPE guidelines).
Inclusive language
Children Australia encourages respectful language that promotes the acceptance and value of all people. Inclusive language is free from words, phrases or tones that demean, insult, exclude, stereotype or trivialise people on the basis of their membership in any group or because of any attribute.
If sex or gender is not important to your reporting, please use plural nouns (e.g. 'they' instead of 'he/she').
General principles for inclusive writing are available from the Australia Government style manual and the American Psychological Association (APA).
Conflicts of interest
Authors are asked to declare any conflicts of interest on submission of their article. Conflict of interest exists when an author has interests (financial or non-financial) that might influence their judgement, even if that judgement is not influenced. Non-financial interests that could be relevant in this context should also be disclosed. If no relevant interests exist, this should be stated. This requirement applies to all the authors of a paper and to all categories of papers If there are no conflicts of interest, include the heading 'Conflicts of Interest' followed by the text 'None.
Funding statement
Authors are asked to declare funding for the work being reported on in their article on submission. A funding statement provides details of the sources of financial and in-kind support for all authors, including grant numbers. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the author's initials. Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: 'This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.'
Data availability
To support transparency and reproducibility of research, Children Australia encourages authors to share research data used to generate the results presented in their article. If data are available in a repository, and are not presented in the article, authors are encouraged to share where they are available.
Open access and copyright
It is a condition of publication in Children Australia that authors consent to the application of a Creative Commons CC-BY licence to their published article. A CC licence gives the author copyright ownership over the work and allows readers to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of an article and to use it for any other lawful purpose without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author (in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access).
When publishing on the journal site, authors agree to the following contractual terms:
- The article is an original work;
- The authors are the only proprietors of the copyright in the article;
- The article has not been published elsewhere and is not subject to any existing licence;
- The article is not under consideration by any other publisher;
- The article does not infringe any existing copyright or other rights held by any other party;
- To the best of the author’s knowledge the article contains no defamatory or other unlawful statements; and
- The author has obtained all of the necessary permissions (in writing) for the reproduction of the article, including any text or image, prior to submission.
Prior to publication of the article, all authors will be requested to log on to the journal site and to indicate agreement to these terms. For the terms of this agreement, see the Licence to Publish
Disclaimer
Children Australia has taken all reasonable measures to ensure that material contained in this website is the authors' original work.
Readers, and their institutions, are not charged any fees to read Children Australia articles.
Publishing charges
Authors are not charged any fees or page charges for publication in Children Australia.