About

Focus and Scope

We live in times of climate crisis, with illegal levels of air pollution in many cities worldwide, and what has been called an epidemic of physical inactivity. Technological change alone will not solve such problems: we also need major growth in active travel (primarily walking and cycling, but also other active and semi-active types of travel, such as scooters) to replace many shorter car trips. Active modes could even (e.g. through electric assist trikes) help make urban freight much more sustainable.

Journals within many fields cover active travel, but literature remains highly segmented and (despite high levels of policy interest) difficult for practitioners to find. Established, mainstream journals are not open access, another barrier to policy transfer and knowledge exchange. Thus, while many towns, cities, and countries seek to increase active travel, the knowledge base suffers from a lack of high-quality academic evidence that is easy to find and obtain. This reinforces practitioner reliance on often lower-quality grey literature, and a culture of relying on ad hoc case studies in policy and practice.

This journal provides a bridge between academia and practice, based on high academic standards and accessibility to practitioners. Its remit is to share knowledge from any academic discipline/s (from bioscience to anthropology) that can help build knowledge to support active travel and help remove barriers to it, such as car dependency. Within this normative orientation, it is rigorously academic and critical, for instance not shying away from analysing examples where interventions do not lead to more active travel. It goes beyond immediate policy imperatives to share knowledge that while not immediately change-oriented can contribute to a deeper understanding of, for instance, why people drive rather than walk.

As well as publishing relevant new research, the journal commissions both commentary pieces on such research, and critical reviews of the existing literature. Reflecting the diversity of its audience, its content is varied, including written work of different lengths as well as audio-visual material

Publication Frequency

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

Special Issues of accepted submissions are also commissioned and published.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports the global exchange of knowledge.

Authors of published material remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons licence agreement.

Publication Fees

There are no author facing charges for publishing your work in Active Travel Studies. All fees are paid for by the University of Westminster.

Archiving Policy

The journal’s publisher focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. Content is also archived around the world to ensure long-term availability.

Active Travel Studies is indexed by the following services:

In addition, the journal is available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.

To ensure permanency of all publications, this journal also utilises CLOCKSS, and LOCKSS archiving systems.

If the journal is not indexed by your preferred service, please contact us or, if you prefer, make an indexing request directly with the service.