The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) is the national medical specialty society for emergency medicine in the United States. It was founded on 16 August 1968 by eight physicians in Lansing, Michigan, is headquartered in Irving, Texas, and today represents roughly 40,000 emergency physicians.

Unlike a commercial publisher, ACEP owns just two peer-reviewed journals, and it does not run its own production platform. Both titles are produced under contract by Elsevier: Annals of Emergency Medicine, the society's flagship since 1972, and JACEP Open, its fully open-access journal, which transferred from Wiley to Elsevier in January 2025. That means the author-facing machinery - submission system, open-access price list, institutional agreements - is Elsevier's, while editorial control sits with each journal's independent editorial board.

With only two venues the choice is straightforward, and it usually comes down to selectivity and whether you need immediate open access.

• Annals of Emergency Medicine - launched in 1972 as the Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians and renamed in 1980. Monthly, published by Elsevier on ACEP's behalf. It publishes original research, systematic reviews, clinical reports, research letters, health policy analysis and evidence-based medicine features. Although it is the society's official journal, its content is chosen by the editorial board and is editorially independent of ACEP policy.
• JACEP Open - launched in 2020 as ACEP's open-access companion journal. Online-only, fully gold OA, and covering the same specialty scope with a sound-science acceptance standard rather than a novelty threshold. Published by Wiley until the end of 2024 and by Elsevier from January 2025.
• Non-journal publications - ACEP Now (news magazine), Critical Decisions in Emergency Medicine (CME) and PEER (board review). Educational products, not peer-reviewed research venues.

Because Elsevier handles publication for both titles, ACEP authors use Elsevier's open-access routes and pricing rather than a society-specific scheme.

Two cost reducers are worth checking before you pay anything. Elsevier applies Research4Life waivers and discounts automatically when all authors are based in eligible low- and middle-income countries. Separately, many institutions hold Elsevier read-and-publish agreements that can cover or discount the charge - ask your library whether these titles are in scope. ACEP has also covered the APC for a limited number of College committee papers each year.

Both journals use single-anonymised external peer review: reviewers know who the authors are, authors do not learn reviewer identities. Annals of Emergency Medicine is known for an unusually thorough process, often involving methodological and statistical review alongside content review, and multiple revision rounds are common. JACEP Open reviews for methodological soundness and reporting quality rather than perceived impact, which generally makes it a faster route to publication. Check each journal's current author pages for up-to-date turnaround statistics.

1. Choose the journal. Selectivity and your open-access requirement will usually decide between Annals and JACEP Open.
2. Read the instructions for authors. Each journal has its own article types, word limits and structured-abstract rules; letters to the editor at Annals, for instance, are strictly capped.
3. Format to AMA style. Both titles use AMA numbered citations. Prepare your manuscript with the SciSpace ACEP templates.
4. Follow the reporting guideline for your design - CONSORT for trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews, STROBE for observational studies.
5. Submit through Editorial Manager. Annals submissions go to its Editorial Manager site; JACEP Open submissions run through Elsevier's editorial system since the 2025 transfer. Register your trial prospectively and declare all conflicts of interest at submission.

ACEP's journals follow COPE guidance on authorship, corrections and retractions, and require ICMJE-style conflict-of-interest disclosure. Editorial independence from the society is stated policy at Annals of Emergency Medicine: published content reflects the editorial board's judgement, not ACEP positions. Data-sharing statements are expected for clinical research, consistent with ICMJE recommendations and Elsevier's research-data policies. Neither title appears on predatory-publishing watchlists; both are conventionally indexed society journals.