About Journal of Asian Public Policy

Journal of Asian Public Policy

The Journal of Asian Public Policy is a peer-reviewed journal published by Routledge, part of Taylor & Francis, that carries scholarly work and policy studies on development, policy and governance across Asia. Officially launched in 2008, it is co-published by the Centre for East Asian Studies of the University of Bristol and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Hong Kong, and it is edited from Hong Kong, where its founding editor-in-chief, Joshua Ka Ho Mok, has been in the role since 2006, during the journal's development. The journal carries the print ISSN 1751-6234 and the online ISSN 1751-6242, appears three times a year, and has become one of the major public policy journals focused on Asia from comparative and international perspectives.

Founding and launch

The publisher's own account states that since its official launch in 2008, the journal has become one of the major public policy journals with a strong focus on issues related to development, policy and governance in Asia from comparative and international perspectives. Hong Kong scholar Joshua Ka Ho Mok served as founding editor-in-chief, taking the role in 2006 while the journal was in development, two years before the first volume appeared. The joint sponsorship behind the title linked two institutions with strong Asian studies profiles: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. That arrangement gave a new journal both a Hong Kong editorial base, close to the policy debates it covers, and a British academic partner in one of the United Kingdom's established centres for East Asian research.

Publisher and publication pattern

Routledge publishes the journal on the Taylor & Francis Online platform, where it is catalogued under the journal code rapp20. Directory records list Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis, at Abingdon in England as the publisher, with the print ISSN 1751-6234 and online ISSN 1751-6242. The journal appears three times a year, a frequency recorded consistently in journal directories. Its volume numbering confirms the 2008 start: by 2025 the journal had reached volume 18, and its publisher noted in connection with its 2025 Best Paper Prize that the journal had by then completed some nineteen years of activity counting from its development period. Taylor & Francis also operates access programmes for researchers at non-profit institutions in developing countries, which form part of the distribution context for a journal whose readership is concentrated in Asia.

Aims and scope

The journal welcomes high-quality scholarly work and policy studies focused on Asia. Its publisher describes Asia as one of the most vibrant regions of the global economy, noting that the East Asian economies that developed earlier, following the Japanese lead, remain among the most important economies in the world, while the emergent regions of South and Southeast Asia have many dynamic economic sectors. Public policy, governance and development issues, the journal argues, are drawing increasing attention not only from academia but also from the wider business, professional and policy communities. Within that framing, the journal particularly welcomes contributions with strong comparative analysis relevant to current policy debates, cross-regional studies of Asian interactions with other major global regions, and interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research. Articles without an explicit Asian focus are considered when they have clear relevance to an Asian readership.

China and Greater China coverage

China figures prominently in the journal's pages. Analyses of its published output show that China is among its most frequent research topics, alongside economic growth, development economics, government and public administration, and the journal publishes extensive coverage of policy reform, social policy and higher-education policy in China and the Greater China region. Hong Kong itself is a recurring case study: a 2025 article in volume 18, for example, combined income, deprivation and social exclusion measures to propose a comprehensive measurement of poverty in Hong Kong. The journal's institutional affiliations reinforce this pattern, with the University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the former Hong Kong Institute of Education all among the institutions whose scholars have published most frequently in its pages, alongside the National University of Singapore.

Policy reform and social policy themes

Beyond its China coverage, the journal's subject matter spans the main questions of Asian public policy. Its published research addresses governance structures and policy implementation, social policy and welfare systems, poverty and social exclusion, health care and health reform, education policy, and the interplay between local conditions and global influences on policy-making. Work in its pages has examined how governments across Asia design social safety nets, how welfare provisions affect vulnerable populations, and how accountability and public administration operate in different national settings. Because it insists on comparative and international perspectives, articles frequently set one country's reforms against the experience of its neighbours, making the journal a useful record of how policy ideas travel within Asia and how they are adapted to local institutions.

Editorial leadership

Professor Ka Ho Mok, known as Joshua Ka Ho Mok, is the journal's editor-in-chief and its founding editor, in the role since 2006. The publisher's journal page directs prospective authors to consult him at his Hong Kong institutional address before formal submission, with editorial assistance provided through an editorial assistant based at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a detail that underlines the journal's Hong Kong editorial base. Mok is a scholar of comparative policy and higher education whose career has taken him from the University of Hong Kong and the University of Bristol, where he was chair professor and founding director of the Centre for East Asian Studies, to senior roles at the Education University of Hong Kong and Lingnan University. He is also founding editor of Asian Education and Development Studies, and the two journals together anchor a Hong Kong-centred network for research on Asian policy and education.

Best Paper Prize and journal life

The journal maintains an active scholarly life beyond its regular issues. It awards a biennial Best Paper Prize, and for 2025 the prize went to a paper on the measurement and determinants of multidimensional poverty in Hong Kong, published in volume 18, issue 3. In announcing the prize, the publisher stated that the award aims to highlight the exceptional research published in the journal, and recorded that the journal's 2025 Impact Factor placed it in the first quartile of Social Sciences Citation Index journals in its field, with its 2025 CiteScore likewise placing it in the first quartile of Scopus-indexed journals. Whatever the year-to-year movement of such metrics, the prize and the publisher's account of the journal's standing show a title that, from its 2008 launch, has grown into an established venue within Asian policy studies.

Indexing and metrics

Directory records based on Scopus data list the journal's Scopus coverage as running from 2010 to the present, in the public administration and sociology and political science categories. Its ISSN pair, 1751-6234 for print and 1751-6242 online, is the consistent identifier across the publisher's platform and independent journal directories. Readers should treat any single year's impact factor or ranking as a snapshot rather than a permanent attribute, since such figures are recalculated annually; the durable facts are the journal's continuous publication since 2008, its three issues a year, its indexing record and its recognised position among journals of Asian public policy.

Readership and significance

The Journal of Asian Public Policy is written for academics, business professionals and policy practitioners interested in the economic, political and governance dynamics of Asia. Its significance rests on the combination of a Hong Kong editorial base, sponsorship linking the University of Hong Kong and the University of Bristol, a global Routledge distribution platform, and an editorial insistence on comparative work that speaks to current policy debates. For this directory's purposes it is listed under Hong Kong, China, reflecting where its editor-in-chief and editorial operation are based and where much of its strongest coverage, of China and Greater China policy reform, is produced. Since 2008 it has provided one of the principal English-language venues in which the public policy of the world's most economically dynamic region is analysed as a subject in its own right.