ASPI’s publications program offers practical and influential policy advice through publications that are:
  accessible and readable
  accurate and authoritative
  well presented and cost-effective.

The key performance indicators for the program of published research are:
  Publication of the program of major studies and annuals according to schedule and within budget.
  Each publication meeting the following criteria to a high degree:
– independent and non-partisan
– rigorous, accurate and well informed
– innovative and original
– well presented and accessible to wide and diverse audiences
– integrated into wider national debates within government and in the public arena.
  Responses to publications from our customer groups and stakeholders are monitored by staff and reported to the Research Committee:
– Government’s evaluation of the products, in terms of their contribution to policy development—to be evaluated on the basis of responses and structured feedback.
– Public responses, gauged by the extent to which the publications are used and discussed in further public comment.

The flagship publications are in the Strategy series, which provides detailed analyses of major strategic policy questions of critical importance to Australia and our region and informed recommendations for consideration by government and the broader community.

Strategic Insights are shorter papers providing background information or comment on specific issues and considering policy ramifications as those issues arise in the public debate.

The Special Report series is a vehicle for the dissemination of analyses and comment on a wide range of issues. Special reports are usually focused on specific issues that require more detailed or quantitative information for deeper analysis.

The fourth style of publication is the Annual series. ASPI’s fourth Counterterrorism yearbook was produced in 2019–20. This annual report looks at those areas around the world where terrorism and counterterrorism are in the sharpest focus.

The fifth style of publication is for our International Cyber Policy Centre. Through its publications, the centre aims to facilitate conversations between governments, the private sector and academia across the Asia–Pacific region to increase constructive dialogue on cyber issues and do its part to create a common understanding of problems and possible solutions in cyberspace.

The sixth style is the ASPI Case Studies series. The third publication in this series was titled Sticking to our guns: a troubled past produces a superb weapon. The fourth publication in this series was titled: The Bushmaster: from concept to combat. This series of publications is dedicated to telling the ‘warts and all’ stories of major undertakings in Australian defence procurement and project management. The ‘dates and dollars’ of defence projects are available in reporting from Defence and the Australian National Audit Office, so this series explores the less-quantified but nonetheless crucial aspects of project management—the organisational, human and technological challenges that occur along the way. ASPI hopes that future project managers will be able to turn to this series to see how their predecessors dealt with the problems they faced and be able to see how outcomes—good or bad—were shaped by events.

The seventh style of publication is a series titled Strategist Selections. This series brings together contributions on a specific theme or by a single author. The second issue was published in October 2019 and featured Rod Lyon’s writings for The Strategist during his time at ASPI.

ASPI also occasionally produces discussion papers for distribution within the policy community. Those reports usually deal with near-term planning and management issues and discuss options, often including some not previously considered by officials.
Table 5 shows the numbers of each publication type published in 2018–19 and 2019–20.

Table 5: ASPI publications, by format, 2017–18 and 2018–19

A complete list of ASPI’s 2019–20 publications is in Annex A.