What makes a good Risk Analysis article?

Risk Analysis: An International journal publishes original research articles, perspectives, book reviews, and occasional biographical profiles and Current Topics essays that identify topics of wider public interest that might benefit from the methods and insights of risk analysis. 

Our main focus has traditionally been on public health, safety, and environmental (HS&E) risk analysis, including risk assessment, modeling, and model validation; risk perception; risk communication and deliberation; and risk management decision-making, policy-making and evaluation. We especially seek important real-world applications where analysis demonstrably improves the management of HS&E risk. Papers that focus purely on reliability engineering, inventory management, financial risk engineering, quality control, project management, healthcare management or other single-discipline topics that involve risks are usually better suited to journals that specialize in those areas. Risk Analysis papers are usually characterized by cross-disciplinary methods applied to important real-world HS&E problems; they typically advance the theory and practice of risk analysis in ways that are useful to other practitioners.

We seek to expand Risk Analysis as a trusted and trustworthy source for the most-cited, most-used innovations in the theory and practice of HS&E risk analysis; as a preferred outlet for the best work of top authors in the field; as a reference for authoritative and accessible explanations of advances, disseminating useful knowledge and improvements in risk analysis theory and practice; and as an intellectual hub linking and applying progress in multiple disciplines to improve important real-world risk management and policy decisions. Going forward, we encourage authors to consider submitting policy-oriented papers showing how risk analysis has been used successfully to inform and to demonstrably improve policy decisions and decision processes. This could include papers on global risks and risk management policies and results in areas such as Infrastructure risks analysis; HS&E risks in supply chain networks; import/export hazards; and risk analysis of cybercrime and cyberphysical hazards. We also encourage papers that forge tighter links between risk analysis and benefit-cost analysis. 

Further discussion of the historical scope of the journal and what makes for a good Risk Analysis paper are offered in Cox et al., 2008 and Guikema and McClay, 2014.

Cox, LA Jr., Greenberg MR, Bostrom A, Haas C, Haimes Y, Landis W, Lowrie KW, Moolgavkar S, North W. (2008) What is the scope of the journal Risk Analysis.  Risk Analysis 28(5): 1135-1136
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01138.x/full

Guikema S, McClay L. (2014)  Guidance on publishing in the mathematical modeling area for Risk Analysis.  Risk Analysis 34(10): 1778-1779
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/risa.12291/full