AlterNative An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

About AlterNative An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

Overview

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal for scholarship on Indigenous worldviews and on experiences of decolonisation, written from Indigenous perspectives and addressed to an international readership. It was launched by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence at the University of Auckland, to give Indigenous scholars a forum in which they could set their own agendas, content and arguments, and it has been published by SAGE four times a year — in March, June, September and December — in its modern publishing arrangement. Since its founding in 2005 it has become, in its founders' description and in the field's practice, a leading source for scholarship by Indigenous peoples and for those working alongside and with Indigenous communities.

That founding purpose still defines what counts as a suitable submission, more tightly than the journal's wide disciplinary range might suggest. AlterNative is multidisciplinary — it publishes across the social sciences, humanities, education, health, business and law — but it is not a general journal for any paper that happens to mention an Indigenous population. A paper belongs here when it substantively addresses and critically engages with Indigenous issues from a scholarly Indigenous viewpoint, engages current national and international literature and Indigenous theory, and makes a significant contribution to Indigenous studies. Editors and referees apply that test first, and authors should apply it to their own work before anyone else does.

Identity and bibliographic record

The print ISSN is 1177-1801 and the online ISSN is 1174-1740. Authors should note the assignment carefully, because listings present the two numbers in both orders: the Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga page states the assignment explicitly as print 1177-1801 and online 1174-1740, and that is the form used here and the form to cite. The journal code on the SAGE platform is ALN. The editorial contact given by the founding centre is editors@alternative.ac.nz. The JournalsWorld record names SAGE Publishing, which is correct as publisher; the geographic picture needs both halves — a New Zealand, Māori-centre origin and continuing editorial identity, with international publishing and distribution through SAGE, whose publishing addresses are in the United Kingdom and the United States. A record that gives only a British or American country is describing the publisher's operation, not the journal's intellectual home.

The title's capitalisation — AlterNative, with its internal capital N — is deliberate and should be reproduced in citations. It signals the journal's project: an alternative account of the native, and a native alternative, to colonial description. Variant titles in catalogues, including forms that add the word 'Scholarship' to the subtitle, refer to the same journal when the ISSNs match; as always, the ISSN pair, not a subtitle variant, is the reliable identity check. The journal should also not be confused with the many unrelated titles that use the ordinary word 'alternative' in medicine or agriculture; none of those shares these ISSNs or this publisher record.

At a glance

Article length guidance issued with the journal's calls for papers — research articles of 5,000 to 7,000 words including title, abstract, keywords and references, and commentaries of 3,000 to 4,000 words on the same inclusive basis — is the most concrete preparation detail an author needs early. Always confirm the current figure in the SAGE author instructions for this title before submitting, since publisher instructions are the controlling document.

History and development

AlterNative began in 2005, at a moment when Indigenous studies was consolidating as an international field with its own theories and methodologies, but when Indigenous scholars still routinely had to fit their work into journals whose questions, refereeing norms and ideas of rigour had been set without them. Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, established as a Centre of Research Excellence focused on Māori and Indigenous development, created the journal as infrastructure for a different conversation: one that would showcase Indigenous knowledge and epistemologies and, just as importantly, document the emergence of Indigenous methodologies and value systems inside academic practice.

The move to SAGE as publisher internationalised distribution while the editorial project remained anchored in Aotearoa New Zealand. That combination — a Māori-centre founding, a global commercial publisher, and an author and reader base spanning the Pacific, the Americas, Australia, and Indigenous communities in Asia, Africa and northern Europe — is characteristic of the field the journal helped build. Its Scopus coverage in SCImago's record runs from the mid-2010s onward, but the journal's own history and influence begin a decade earlier, and authors doing a literature review for submission should search the full run from 2005, not only the years a particular database covers.

Over two decades the journal has helped normalise expectations that now shape Indigenous studies publishing generally: that Indigenous peoples are theorists of their own experience, not only subjects of study; that community accountability is part of research quality, not an optional extra; that language revitalisation, land, law, health and education are connected questions under continuing colonisation rather than separate policy topics; and that a paper's relationship to the community it discusses is itself something referees may legitimately examine. A submission that understands that history will read as fluent in the journal's conversation; one that treats Indigenous people as a demographic variable will read, immediately, as written for somewhere else.

Scope in depth

The journal's stated themes span transforming places, peoples, communities, cultures, histories and colonialism, and its calls for papers have elaborated the thematic field as origins, place, peoples, community, culture, history, heritage, colonialism, power, intervention, development and self-determination. Its disciplinary reach is deliberately wide: cultural studies, education, human geography, health, business, law, history, politics, philosophy, literature, visual and performing arts, environmental studies, psychology and sociology are all named, within the larger frame of the social sciences, humanities, education, health, business and law.

What unifies that breadth is perspective and purpose. The journal aims to present research on Indigenous worldviews and experiences of decolonisation from Indigenous perspectives worldwide, and to build bridges between academic study and practical or empirical issues in the modern world. Articles are expected to link theory and practice in a way that illuminates the present state of Indigenous theory, thinking and practice and makes sense of concrete issues at local, national or global level. A purely theoretical paper must therefore show its stake in lived Indigenous questions; a purely empirical or service-delivery paper must show its engagement with Indigenous theory and literature. Either half alone is usually insufficient.

• Indigenous health, education and rights: Health equity, Indigenous-led services and healing, schooling and language education, and rights in practice — the leading clusters on the JournalsWorld record.
• Culture, history and heritage: Indigenous cultures and histories, oral and place-based knowledge, heritage and memory, told under Indigenous authority.
• Law, rights and self-determination: Indigenous peoples' rights in national and international law, governance, treaties, land and resource questions, and decolonial legal thought.
• Place-based and environmental studies: Relationships with land, water and environment, Indigenous ecological knowledge, and environmental change as a colonial and cultural question.
• Research methods and ethics: Qualitative and Indigenous research methodologies, research ethics, community partnership and the politics of knowledge production itself.
• Decolonial thought across regions: Decolonial theory and epistemologies, including Indigenous studies in Latin America, Australia, the Pacific and other regions, in comparative perspective.

A useful negative test follows. Papers about an Indigenous population that use no Indigenous scholarship, state no relationship or accountability to the people discussed, treat culture as background colour for a standard intervention study, or extract a community's data to answer a question the community did not ask, are outside this journal's project however strong their conventional methods. Conversely, work by non-Indigenous scholars working genuinely alongside and with Indigenous communities, under Indigenous direction or in accountable partnership, is part of the journal's stated community — the test is the nature of the engagement, applied to the paper as written.

What the journal publishes

The journal publishes full research articles and shorter, timely commentaries on critical issues concerning Indigenous peoples. Research articles, per the journal's call guidance, run between 5,000 and 7,000 words including title, abstract, keywords and references — a length that requires a real literature engagement and a developed argument, and that rules out both the brief report and the sprawling monograph chapter. Commentaries, at 3,000 to 4,000 words on the same basis, suit a focused intervention: a response to a policy change, a legal decision, a moment of public debate, or a development in the field that needs a scholarly Indigenous voice quickly and in citable form.

Special and themed collections have been part of the journal's practice, and prospective guest editors or contributors should approach the editorial office through the SAGE and journal channels rather than assuming an open call is current. Whatever the format, every published paper must do the same three things the aims require: engage current international and national literature, engage academic and/or Indigenous theory, and contribute significantly to Indigenous studies. Manuscripts should be drafted so a referee can find each of those three engagements easily — in the framing, in the literature discussion, and in an explicit statement of contribution — rather than having to infer them.

Readership and community

The audience is the international Indigenous studies community in the first instance: Indigenous scholars, postgraduate researchers and community-based researchers across the Pacific, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, North and South America and beyond, together with scholars in the many disciplines the journal spans whose work centres Indigenous questions. Practitioners and policy readers — in health, education, law and community development — form an important second audience, which is why the journal insists on the theory–practice bridge: a paper should be usable by the people working on the concrete issue it analyses, not only citable by other academics.

Writing for that audience imposes courtesies that are also intellectual standards. Name peoples, nations and communities specifically and in the forms they use for themselves, rather than with generic labels; give place its Indigenous name alongside any colonial name where that is the community's practice; treat Indigenous-language terms as knowledge, glossed with care, not as decoration; and assume that members of the community discussed may read the paper — because in this journal, they very likely will, and may respond in its pages.

Editorial process and peer review

AlterNative is peer reviewed, and submissions are made and managed under SAGE's author instructions for the title, which authors should read in their current form for formatting, referencing, ethics declarations, and any anonymisation required for review. Refereeing in Indigenous studies characteristically assesses more than technical method: referees will test the paper's engagement with Indigenous scholarship, the appropriateness of its methodology to its claims and community relationships, the ethics of how material was gathered and is presented, and whether the contribution is genuinely to Indigenous studies or only adjacent to it. Authors should make the answers to those questions explicit in the manuscript, including positionality, partnership, consent and community review arrangements where they apply.

No review timeline or acceptance rate is stated in the official material consulted for this profile, and none is quoted here. SAGE production and any open-access option, including arrangements under institutional agreements or the publisher's optional programmes, are governed by the publisher's current terms for the title at acceptance; authors who need open access for funder compliance should establish the route and any charge with the publisher before or at submission, rather than assuming the journal's subscription-era practice still applies. Charges or their absence should never be taken from a third-party listing.

Open access, fees and licensing — what is verified

AlterNative is published by SAGE in a model in which the journal is available through institutional and individual subscription channels, with open-access publication routes handled under SAGE's current programmes and agreements. This profile deliberately states no article processing charge and no charge-free status for the standard route, because neither was established from the publisher's current title-specific terms in the material consulted; the controlling source is the SAGE author gateway and the instructions for this journal at the time of submission and acceptance.

Authors should also plan for the afterlife of the paper in community terms, not only in publisher terms. Where a paper draws on community knowledge, discuss with partners, before submission, how the published version will be shared back, whether a plain-language or Indigenous-language summary is owed, and what repository deposit is appropriate and permitted. Green archiving and re-use follow the publisher's archiving policy for the version concerned; community sharing that goes beyond that policy needs agreement, and raising it early protects both the authors and the relationships the research depends on.

Indexing, metrics and how to interpret them

Citation indicators for AlterNative differ markedly by source, and this profile presents them labelled rather than selecting the most flattering. SCImago, drawing on Scopus, gives an SJR for 2024 of 0.579 with a Q1 placement and an h-index of 29, and classifies the journal in History, Anthropology and Cultural Studies. The JournalsWorld template record carries an h-index of 46, which will reflect a different database, most plausibly a broader scholarly index, and a different date. Both can be honest measurements; neither is a Journal Impact Factor, and the gap between them is itself the lesson — in a humanities and social-science field with strong book and community-literature traditions, database choice changes the picture more than it does in laboratory sciences.

Secondary listings report the journal in the Emerging Sources Citation Index of the Web of Science. No Journal Impact Factor figure is stated in this profile, because none was verified from Clarivate's own record during this research; authors whose institutions count such a factor, or count ESCI status in a particular way, should check the Clarivate Master Journal List for ISSN 1174-1740 / 1177-1801 directly at the time they need the answer, since index placement and institutional rules both change.

For most of this journal's authors, the more meaningful indicators are field-specific: whether the paper is taken up in Indigenous studies syllabi and literature reviews, whether it is cited by the scholars and communities working on the same question, and whether it contributes to the ongoing theoretical conversation the journal curates across its four issues a year. Those forms of influence are slower and less countable than a two-year citation window, and they are the currency in which this journal has traded since 2005. Choosing AlterNative for that conversation, rather than for a metric, is the decision its editors would recognise as well made.

How to judge fit before submitting

The fit test for AlterNative can be done in one sitting and should be. First, list the Indigenous scholars and Indigenous theory your paper engages: if the list is empty or tokenistic, the paper is not ready for this journal. Second, state your paper's contribution to Indigenous studies in two sentences without mentioning your dataset or site: if you cannot, the contribution is probably to another field. Third, describe your relationship and accountability to the people the paper concerns: if the manuscript itself does not make that clear, expect referees to ask, and prepare the answer in the text, honestly, rather than in a defensive response letter later.

Read, as calibration, a recent full issue — the journal appears quarterly, so a single issue gives a representative spread — and notice the common features: openings that locate the author and the question in relation to Indigenous peoples and places; literature discussions in which Indigenous writers are the theorists, not only the topic; methods described as relationships and responsibilities as well as techniques; and conclusions that return something to practice, policy or community understanding. A manuscript that naturally shares those features is at home here; one that would need to be disguised to share them belongs in a different journal, where it may well be the stronger for it.

• The paper addresses Indigenous issues substantively and from a scholarly Indigenous viewpoint, not as background context.
• Current national and international literature and Indigenous theory are engaged by name, in the framing and the argument.
• The contribution to Indigenous studies is stated explicitly and is significant beyond the single case or site.
• Methodology, positionality, partnership, consent and community accountability are described as they actually were.
• Theory and practice are linked: the paper illuminates a concrete local, national or global issue, and draws the theoretical lesson from it.
• Peoples, places and Indigenous-language terms are named specifically and in the forms the communities themselves use.

Submission checklist

Follow SAGE's current author instructions for AlterNative as the controlling document. The checklist below reflects the journal's stated article and commentary lengths, its aims, and standard SAGE preparation requirements.

1. Confirm the article type and length: research articles 5,000–7,000 words and commentaries 3,000–4,000 words, each including title, abstract, keywords and references, per the journal's call guidance — and verify against current SAGE instructions.
2. Prepare title, abstract and keywords that name the peoples, place and Indigenous theoretical framing precisely, so the right referees and readers find the paper.
3. Include declarations appropriate to the work: ethics approval where applicable, consent and community partnership arrangements, funding, and conflicts of interest.
4. Use the referencing style and manuscript format specified in the current SAGE instructions for this title, and check Indigenous-language terms, macrons and other diacritics character by character.
5. Write a cover note that states, briefly, the paper's engagement with Indigenous literature and theory and its claimed contribution to Indigenous studies.
6. Clear permissions for any reproduced material — images, artwork, extended quotation, community-held material — before submission, with the holders' own terms respected.
7. Decide, with any community partners, how publication, repository deposit and sharing back to the community will be handled, and confirm the publisher route allows what you have promised.
8. Keep correspondence and submission records through the SAGE system, and respond to referee reports on engagement and ethics as fully as on method.

Length is counted inclusively for this journal's article types, references included, which surprises authors used to body-only counts. Budget the reference list inside the word limit from the first draft; a paper that is compliant in its body and 800 words over once references are added will be returned for shortening at the least convenient moment.

Strengths, limits and cautions

AlterNative's strengths are a clear and consequential editorial project, two decades of continuity since 2005, a founding base in a Māori Centre of Research Excellence combined with SAGE's international distribution, a genuinely interdisciplinary reach held together by a consistent Indigenous-studies test, and a quarterly rhythm that keeps themed debate current. For scholarship that meets its test, it offers the field's own audience — the readers most able to use, challenge and extend the work — and a venue whose citation in a paper itself signals the conversation the author is joining.

The same test is the limit: work that is about Indigenous people without being in Indigenous studies will not fit, and no strength of conventional method compensates. The audience outside the field is narrower than a general social-science journal's; citation figures vary widely by database and should not anchor a promotion case without direct verification; SAGE's current open-access and charge arrangements must be established from the publisher rather than assumed; and community-engaged work takes longer to prepare properly, because partnership, consent and review cannot be retrofitted in a revision round. Authors should count those costs honestly — they are the price of the journal's credibility with the communities it serves.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded AlterNative and when?

Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence at the University of Auckland, launched it in 2005 to provide a forum where Indigenous scholars set their own agendas. It is published by SAGE.

Which ISSN is print and which is online?

Print is 1177-1801 and online is 1174-1740, as stated by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga. Listings that show the pair in the other order are presenting eISSN first, not assigning them differently.

How long should my article be?

Research articles of 5,000 to 7,000 words including title, abstract, keywords and references, and commentaries of 3,000 to 4,000 words on the same basis, per the journal's call guidance. Confirm in the current SAGE instructions before submitting.

Must authors be Indigenous to publish here?

The journal's requirement, as stated, is about the work: it must engage Indigenous issues from a scholarly Indigenous viewpoint, with genuine engagement with Indigenous literature and theory. It publishes scholarship by Indigenous peoples and by those working alongside and with Indigenous communities.

Is the journal Q1?

SCImago placed it Q1 for 2024 with SJR 0.579 in its categories. Quartiles are year- and category-specific; verify the year you need in SCImago or Scopus directly rather than relying on any summary.

How often does it appear?

Four times a year, in March, June, September and December, per the founding centre's description of the SAGE arrangement.

Bottom line

AlterNative is the journal of record for an international, Indigenous-led scholarly conversation that it helped create: interdisciplinary in reach, disciplined in its insistence that papers engage Indigenous theory, literature and lived practice together, and accountable to the communities its papers concern. Its SAGE platform gives that conversation global reach without detaching it from its Māori-centre founding in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Submit here when your work is genuinely part of that conversation — when Indigenous scholars are your theorists, Indigenous peoples your partners and intended readers, and Indigenous studies the field your paper aims to move. Prepared to that standard, and to the journal's stated lengths and SAGE instructions, a submission will be read by exactly the referees and readers it was written for.