Mission and editorial purpose

The central purpose of AAAI is to strengthen the evidence base for asthma, allergic disease, and clinical immunology—while also making that evidence understandable, reusable, and actionable for the communities who need it. In practice, that means we aim to publish work that: (a) advances scientific knowledge in respiratory and immune-mediated diseases, (b) improves patient outcomes through clinical translation, and (c) supports responsible public-health and healthcare decision-making for chronic respiratory conditions.

The journal’s focus reflects the real-world burden of respiratory and allergic diseases. Asthma is a chronic condition with variable airflow obstruction, inflammation, and bronchial hyperreactivity; allergic conditions represent hypersensitive immune responses to allergens or exposures; and broader respiratory diseases include both infections and chronic disorders affecting the nasal passages, bronchi, and lungs. AAAI’s publishing program emphasizes research and guidance that helps clinicians and patients understand how factors such as environmental exposures and medication use influence respiratory health, and how self-management and interventions can support shared decision-making.

What AAAI publishes

Core topic areas

AAAI welcomes submissions spanning the full continuum of asthma, allergy, and immunology—from mechanistic insights and translational science to pragmatic clinical work and population-level interventions. While the detailed topic map is outlined in the journal’s “Aims and Scope,” the journal broadly covers:

• Asthma and airway disease: phenotypes and endotypes; severe asthma; exacerbation prevention; biomarkers; pediatric and adult asthma; comorbidities and overlap syndromes.
• Allergic disease: allergic rhinitis; food allergy; drug allergy; venom allergy; urticaria and angioedema; atopic dermatitis and atopic march; anaphylaxis recognition and management.
• Clinical and translational immunology: immune dysregulation; hypersensitivity mechanisms; immunotherapy approaches; immune biomarkers; inflammation pathways relevant to respiratory and allergic disease.
• Respiratory health & exposures: tobacco and smoking-related harms; environmental and occupational exposures; indoor air quality; medication adherence patterns; prevention strategies.
• Patient-centered care and self-management: shared decision-making; education and communication; behavior change interventions; outcome measurement; quality of life and functional outcomes.

Article types and “fit”

AAAI is designed to serve both specialists and a broader clinical audience. We therefore value a wide range of manuscript types—provided the research question is clear, methods are appropriate, and conclusions are supported by evidence. Commonly suitable article formats include:

• Original research (clinical studies, translational work, observational cohorts, trial reports, methodology papers)
• Reviews and short reviews (focused updates, evidence syntheses, clinically oriented reviews)
• Case reports (rare presentations, diagnostic challenges, novel management lessons—written with strong clinical reasoning)
• Editorials and commentaries (contextualizing evidence, highlighting research gaps, improving practice patterns)

A quick “fit test” that authors can apply before submission: if a reader working in asthma/allergy/immunology (or a closely related respiratory discipline) would learn something new and reliable that could reasonably influence research direction, diagnostic thinking, therapeutic choices, or prevention strategies, the manuscript is likely within scope.

Who AAAI serves

AAAI is built for a diverse, global audience. Typical readers include allergists and immunologists, pulmonologists, pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, ENT specialists, emergency clinicians managing acute reactions, nurses and allied health professionals supporting chronic disease care, public-health researchers studying exposures and prevention, and basic/translational scientists exploring immune mechanisms.

Because respiratory and allergic diseases are influenced by environment, behaviors, and access to care, AAAI encourages research that reflects real-world contexts: community settings, resource-variable environments, and populations historically underrepresented in research. Clear reporting and careful interpretation are especially important when translating findings across geographies and healthcare systems.

Open access, reuse, and licensing

AAAI is an open-access journal. Open access is more than a distribution model—it is a commitment to making scholarship readable and reusable for clinicians, researchers, policymakers, educators, and patients worldwide. Articles are made available online without paywalls so that evidence can be accessed when it is needed most (for example, at point-of-care, in guideline development, or in education and training).

As part of this commitment, AAAI content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows others to share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as appropriate credit is given and changes are indicated. For authors, CC BY supports broad dissemination, reuse in educational materials, and easier integration into evidence syntheses—while ensuring attribution remains attached to the original research.

Practical examples of permitted reuse (CC BY 4.0)

• Teaching: an educator reuses figures in a lecture with proper citation.
• Clinical guidelines: a committee quotes results and reproduces a table with attribution.
• Systematic reviews: reviewers integrate data into meta-analysis and share extracted datasets with references.
• Translation: a team translates an article for local clinician training while crediting the authors and journal.

If you are unsure whether your intended reuse is compliant, a safe approach is: cite the article, link to the license, identify any modifications, and avoid implying the original authors endorse the reuse unless they explicitly do.

Editorial integrity and publication standards

AAAI’s credibility depends on editorial integrity. The journal’s editorial program emphasizes transparent decision-making, ethical publishing practices, and a peer-review process designed to improve manuscripts—not merely to filter them. While individual policy pages describe procedures in detail (e.g., peer review, plagiarism, publication ethics, and withdrawal), the expectations below summarize how AAAI approaches quality and integrity.

Peer review as quality improvement

Peer review should increase clarity, strengthen reasoning, and detect methodological weaknesses or incomplete reporting. For authors, the most useful peer review is specific, evidence-based, and respectful. For readers, the most important outcomes are that claims are proportionate to evidence and that limitations are disclosed honestly.

We encourage authors to submit manuscripts that are already prepared with reporting discipline: a clearly stated research question, prespecified outcomes when appropriate, a transparent methods section, and a discussion that separates what the data show from what the authors hypothesize. This approach improves review efficiency and reduces avoidable revision cycles.

Plagiarism prevention and originality

AAAI expects original writing and properly attributed scholarship. Authors should cite prior work, use quotation marks when quoting, and avoid close paraphrase. Where similarity checks identify overlap, authors may be asked to revise language, add missing citations, or clarify reuse of previously published materials (for example, extended methods that require appropriate attribution). The aim is not punitive; the aim is to protect the scholarly record and ensure that readers can trust authorship and provenance.

Ethical research and patient protection

Human-subject and animal research must follow recognized ethical standards. Authors should include relevant approvals (IRB/ethics committee, informed consent when applicable, and animal welfare approvals), and should explain how privacy and confidentiality were protected. For case reports, de-identification and consent are essential, especially when images or rare presentations might make a patient identifiable.

Publishing model and processing charges

Open access publishing requires sustainable editorial and production operations. AAAI uses an Article Processing Charge (APC) model to support peer review coordination, editorial handling, production, online hosting, and publication services.

The APC listed on the journal’s APC page for AAAI is $2949. Authors should always consult the current APC policy and any applicable waiver/discount rules before submission, especially if institutional or grant requirements apply.

Waivers and discounts (principled, documented)

The journal indicates that partial waivers or discounts may be available for authors with genuine reasons and for authors from underdeveloped countries, and that waiver requests should be made at the time of submission. A transparent waiver approach matters for research equity: it supports authors with limited funding while maintaining a consistent and accountable publication process.

To improve outcomes for authors, we recommend the following best practice steps when requesting a waiver:

• Submit the waiver request at initial submission (not after acceptance).
• Provide a brief funding statement (e.g., “no grant funding,” “institution does not reimburse APCs”).
• If applicable, note country or institutional constraints and any supporting documentation.
• Keep the request factual and concise; avoid sensitive personal details.

Discoverability, archiving, and long-term access

AAAI is designed for long-term accessibility. For readers, that means stable online access to full-text HTML and PDFs. For authors, that means predictable citation formats (including DOIs where assigned) and a publishing record that remains part of the scholarly conversation over time.

In modern scholarly communication, “discoverability” is not a single switch—it is a set of practices. Strong metadata (titles, abstracts, keywords, references), consistent author identifiers where available, and the use of machine-readable formats all improve indexing outcomes. AAAI supports practices such as structured article pages and consistent citation information to help search engines and scholarly tools interpret the content correctly.

Authors can actively improve discoverability by:

• Using precise, search-friendly titles (avoid overly broad phrasing).
• Writing structured abstracts that clearly state methods and results.
• Choosing keywords that match community terms (e.g., “allergic rhinitis,” “severe asthma,” “immunotherapy”).
• Ensuring references are complete and correctly formatted.
• Providing data availability statements and repository links when possible.

How to engage with AAAI

AAAI aims to be straightforward for first-time and experienced authors alike. If you are considering a submission, start with the journal’s Author Guidelines and Submission Guidelines, then confirm scope alignment. If you are invited to review, the Reviewer Guidelines and Peer Review Process pages describe expectations and confidentiality requirements.

Common submission scenarios (real-world examples)

Below are examples of manuscript types that often fit well, along with what reviewers typically look for:

• Clinical observational study (e.g., asthma outcomes): clear inclusion criteria, validated measures, appropriate confounder handling, and clinically meaningful interpretation.
• Allergic rhinitis intervention report: patient selection, dosing/adherence description, outcome timing, and safety reporting.
• Case report of diagnostic challenge: logical differential diagnosis, rationale for tests, and explicit learning points that generalize beyond the single case.
• Mechanistic immunology paper: reproducible methods, controls, statistical justification, and a careful boundary between mechanism and speculation.

Editorial office contact

For pre-submission questions, policy clarifications, or technical issues, authors can contact the editorial office using the journal contact details.