Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Division
AEJMC 2026 Paper Call
The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. CDT. The online paper submission site is available here.
The Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk (SHER) Division invites fulllength paper that represent original research related to science, health, environment, risk, and other topics relevant to the communication of scientific information to the public or specific populations. SHER welcomes submissions from all disciplinary approaches and methodological orientations, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. SHER is committed to highlighting research that showcases diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice issues and international perspectives.
In any one year, an individual can appear as an author or coauthor on a maximum of two (2) submitted research papers. If one individual appears on more than two submissions, the SHER Executive Committee reserves the right to disqualify some or all the papers in question from the research competition.
To acknowledge research excellence of SHER members, all nonstudent papers will be considered for Top Paper Awards, which are determined by overall reviewer rankings. Authors of awarded Top Papers are invited to present their research on a panel at this year’s conference and are honored at the SHER Business Meeting.
Further, in honor of former University of Texas doctoral candidate Lori Eason (1957–2002), SHER offers the Eason Prize for the top three student papers. The Eason Prize remains the largest overall student award at AEJMC and includes $500 for first place, $300 for second place, and $200 for third place. Student submissions competing for the top student paper and the accompanying Eason Prize are judged together with other faculty submissions. Eason Prize submissions cannot be coauthored with faculty and must be clearly identified as an Eason Prize entry on the cover page of the submission. If not identified, they will be disqualified from the competition.
SHER will not accept Research-in-Progress submissions (formerly known as extended abstracts). Only full-length paper submissions are accepted. All submissions should follow APA format and the AEJMC Uniform Paper Call Guidelines (no more than 25 pages of double-spaced text with 12-point Times New Roman font and 1inch margins, plus references, tables, figures, and appendices).
All accepted papers must be presented by a listed author. Authors unable to present must find another person to present their work and inform the Research Chairs in advance. Failure to appear to present may result in the author(s) losing eligibility to submit to the Division for one year. Direct questions to the Research Chair, Shupei Yuan, at syuan@niu.edu.
The Division encourages all submitters to carefully review their submissions for self-identifying information, including metadata embedded in submitted documents. Submissions containing any identifying information will be rejected without review. Before uploading your submission (including PDF and Word documents), exercise extra diligence to remove all author identification from the document, including file properties or any obvious self-citations. AEJMC’s Uniform Call for Papers offers guidance on managing self-citation.