Focus and Scope

Dimas: Jurnal Pemikiran Agama untuk Pemberdayaan is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to advancing research, theory, and evidence-based practice in community engagement, community empowerment, and social transformation, with particular attention to the roles of religion, religious communities, faith-based institutions, and local wisdom.

The journal approaches community service and community engagement not merely as activities to be reported but as fields of scholarly inquiry. Dimas therefore publishes studies that systematically examine community problems, engagement processes, interventions, partnerships, outcomes, and social change through appropriate research methodologies and critical engagement with relevant theories and previous scholarship.

Dimas welcomes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research examining the interaction between religion, science, technology, and society in addressing community needs and promoting sustainable social transformation. The journal encourages participatory and collaborative approaches that regard communities not simply as recipients of university services but as partners and knowledge holders in the production of socially relevant knowledge.

The journal particularly welcomes studies concerning:

  1. community engagement and community empowerment;
  2. religion- and faith-based community development;
  3. religious institutions and social transformation;
  4. participatory action research and community-based research;
  5. evaluation and impact of community interventions;
  6. religious philanthropy, social welfare, and community resilience;
  7. local knowledge, indigenous practices, and community innovation; and
  8. faith-based university partnerships and service-learning.

Dimas accepts empirical research articles, evaluation and implementation studies, research-based case studies, and review or conceptual articles that make a clear contribution to community empowerment.

Dimas does not publish descriptive reports of community service activities that merely document the implementation of training, workshops, mentoring, socialization, or other outreach programs without a clear research problem, systematic evidence, analytical procedures, engagement with relevant scholarship, and an identifiable scholarly or transferable contribution.

Through this orientation, Dimas seeks to bridge theory and practice and to develop community engagement as a rigorous field of scholarship that contributes both to academic knowledge and to meaningful social transformation.