About Australasian Mine Safety Journal

Australasian Mine Safety Journal

Overview

The Australasian Mine Safety Journal (AMSJ) is an Australian trade journal devoted exclusively to safety and health in the mining industry, published as a quarterly print magazine and a daily online news service at amsj.com.au. It is published by APRS Media, the Brisbane-based specialist publisher that also produces Australasian Mining Review and the Queensland Mining & Energy Bulletin. The journal targets the people responsible for safety in the resources sector — mine managers, safety and environment professionals, ergonomists, regulators and the suppliers of safety equipment and services — across Australia and the wider Asia Pacific region.

AMSJ occupies a deliberately narrow niche. Where general mining publications cover safety as one topic among many, the journal covers nothing else: incident reporting and alerts, safety legislation and regulation, mines rescue and emergency management, occupational health, safety research, training and the products and systems used to control mining hazards. Industry directory listings describe it as the only independent publication in Australia specifically targeting safety professionals in the resources sector, and it has carried that specialisation continuously since 2005.

History

The Australasian Mine Safety Journal was established in late 2005 by John Ninness, a mining health and safety professional who was then travelling between mine sites as a consultant. Ninness repeatedly saw safety initiatives at individual operations that would have benefited the whole industry but were not being communicated by governments or industry bodies, and he founded the magazine as a means of sharing health and safety information and initiatives across the sector. The magazine quickly found a following among mining safety practitioners and mine managers, and among suppliers of safety products and services looking to showcase their own initiatives.

In 2007 the magazine's masthead was acquired by APRS Media (Australian Publishing Resource Services), and Ninness left the publication in that year. Under APRS the title developed along the multi-platform lines its publisher applies across its list: the quarterly print magazine was joined by an online platform carrying daily news, an eMagazine edition of each print issue and a monthly e-newsletter. Ninness himself later returned to the journal as consultant editor, a role in which he has commented publicly on mine safety statistics and practice, and the publisher states that it has followed his founding philosophy of sharing safety practice across the industry.

When the journal marked fourteen years of publication in 2019, APRS Media's chief executive Garth Wright reported that its online platform held more than 3,000 searchable case studies and stories created by health and safety professionals, mining journalists and industry commentators. The journal's work was recognised at the Publishers Australia awards in 2014 and 2015, as recorded by its sister title the Queensland Mining & Energy Bulletin. Its website remains live and publishing, leading with current Queensland mine safety legislation, incident reporting and industry news.

Content and Coverage

The journal's online coverage is organised into specialised channels that map the working concerns of mine safety practice: emergencies and mines rescue; emerging issues in mining safety; environment; FIFO workforces; government and legislation; legal commentary; managing mining risks; mine safety research; mining incidents and alerts; personal protective equipment; procurement news; safety culture; safety events; supply chain news; and training and education. Dedicated strands follow mining hazards and miners' health, carrying stories on topics such as respirable dust, fatigue, mental health in fly-in fly-out workforces and regulatory medical requirements.

News reporting is incident- and regulator-led: the site reports mine accidents and dangerous occurrences, republishes and analyses regulator alerts and investigation findings, and follows prosecutions and coronial and board-of-inquiry processes after serious incidents. Its archive holds extensive reference material on historical mine disasters and on the incident notification schemes of the state regulators, and its consultant editor has publicly analysed official statistics — commenting, for example, on Western Australia's mine safety record for 2015 to 2020, in which thirteen mineworkers died, and on the social consequences of workplace accidents for injured workers and their families. Longer-form content includes case studies of safety programs at individual operations, research reviews — one representative feature examined fifty years of mine disaster inquiry reports across five countries — and historical case studies of disasters such as Gretley, Moura and Mt Kembla that remain reference points in Australian safety training. The quarterly print magazine is positioned differently, carrying what the publisher calls "evergreen" safety content intended to remain useful as a reference after publication.

Audience and Reach

AMSJ is distributed to safety decision-makers in the mining industry: mine site managers, health and safety managers, emergency response managers, environmental managers, purchasing and procurement officers, academics and regulators. The print magazine is delivered at mine sites across Australia and to head-office personnel, with additional copies distributed at industry conferences and expos, and each edition is also available as an eMagazine through the website.

All reach figures in the public record are the publisher's own. At the journal's fourteenth anniversary in 2019, APRS Media's chief executive reported that the online platform engaged more than 100,000 unique users a month and that the journal had more than 40,000 social media followers across the mining industry. The journal's own About page repeats the substance of those claims, stating that it reaches more than 100,000 mine management, mine safety and environment professionals, academics and regulators each month through its daily online articles, and that the quarterly print magazine is read by more than 25,000 industry personnel. No independently audited circulation is published for the title, and those figures should be read as the publisher's reporting rather than verified measurement.

Digital Presence

The journal's digital presence is centred on amsj.com.au, a news site publishing daily articles across its safety channels, with an archive of several thousand case studies and stories. The site also hosts the eMagazine editions of the print journal, and readers can subscribe to a monthly e-newsletter. AMSJ maintains social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, through which it distributes daily safety news; APRS Media has described the journal's social following as among the larger ones in Australian mining media. The publisher's corporate site, aprs.com.au, presents the journal alongside its sister mining titles.

Ownership and Organisation

The Australasian Mine Safety Journal is owned and published by APRS Media, an Australian niche publishing company headquartered in Brisbane, Queensland, whose mining list also includes Australasian Mining Review and the Queensland Mining & Energy Bulletin. APRS acquired the AMSJ masthead in 2007 from founder John Ninness, who subsequently returned as consultant editor; Garth Wright has served as the group's chief executive and as the journal's managing director. Editorial and commercial work for the journal is organised within APRS Media's Brisbane-based specialist structure. Although this directory listing associates the journal with Perth and Western Australia — reflecting the weight of Western Australian mining in its coverage and readership — no Perth office for the publication is recorded in the sources consulted, and the publisher's documented base is Brisbane.

Contact and Availability

The Australasian Mine Safety Journal is available online at amsj.com.au, where its daily news, case studies and eMagazine editions can be read and newsletter subscriptions arranged; the print magazine is distributed quarterly to mining industry workplaces and at industry events. Publisher information is available through APRS Media's website at aprs.com.au. The public business email field for this listing is intentionally left blank.