Editorial

What are the long term prospects for the viability of Issues in Educational Research as a small scale scholarly journal published by non-profit societies? In Table 1 we list a publishing history summary for IIER. It's a pattern of "ups and downs", though we are very confident that the present "up" at 2 issues per year, about 12 articles and a little over 200 pages will be sustained and expanded. The principal bases for confidence are:

• a belief in the value of a "free to the Internet" strategy for going online;
• a tight containment of costs by use of society ownership, economical print formats, sponsored website, and all-volunteer labour for editing, production and distribution processes other than printing; and
• a growing rate of submission of good quality articles.

Volume (a)	Year	No. of issues	No. of articles (b)	No. of pages (b, c)
1	1991	1	4	42
2	1992	1	5	55
3	1993	1	4	55
4	1994	2	13	92
5	1995	1	7	104
6	1996	1	5	112
7	1997	1	5	86
8	1998	2	9	149
9	1999	1	4	54
10	2000	1	6	91
11	2001	2	9	132
12	2002	1	5	84
13	2003	2	10	184
14	2004	2d	6d	102d
Total (1991 to mid-2004)		19	92	1342
All volumes are online. Volumes 1-6 mounted in June-July 1997. Subsequent volumes were mounted at intervals of 3-10 months after print distribution (current interval is 3 months). Count includes only refereed full articles. Editorials, editorial notes, book reviews, etc, are excluded. In 2002 IIER changed page design from a printing area of 120 x 180 mm to 117 x 174 mm. However with a smaller font in use for the new design, pre-2002 pages are slightly smaller in average number of words. IIER 14(2) is certain to appear, probably in Q3 2004. Numbers of articles and pages are not finalised, though on current expectations and articles in hand, 14(2) will be similar to 14(1).

However, as prudent editors and publishers we need to conduct periodic "reality checks", testing the foundations of our confidence, by examining the experiences recorded by other, similar journals. For this purpose one very good starting point is the 1989 study of eight educational research journals edited for the Australian Association for Research in Education by Grant Harman (Harman, 1989). The year 1989 is highly appropriate as a baseline, being the year immediately before the Internet arrived in Australia. In 1989 the great majority of researchers, editors, publishers and librarians had little inkling of the new era in scholarly publishing to be enabled by the Internet within a few years.

Journal	First year	Initial publisher	Current publisher	Current status
Australian Journal of Education	1957	Australian Council for Educational Research	Same (now per ACER Press)	No free online. Indiv sub $99, 3 issues.
Journal of Educational Administration	1963	W. G. Walker and the University of New England	Emerald Group Publishing Limited, UK	No free online. Library sub $5579, 6 issues. Full online since 1994.
Curriculum Perspectives	1980	Curriculum Interest Group	Australian Curriculum Studies Association	No online (except contents pages 1996-2003), 4 issues.
Higher Education Research and Development	1982	Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia	Taylor & Francis Group, UK	No free online. Indiv sub $194, 3 issues.
History of Education Review	1972	Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society	Same	No online.
Education Research and Perspectives	1950	Dept of Education, The University of Western Australia	Same (Graduate School of Education)	Free online, 1991 to current.
The Exceptional Child	1954	Schonell Special Education Research Centre, University of Queensland	Taylor & Francis Group, UK, title International Journal of Disability, Development and Education	No free online. Indiv sub $143, 4 issues.
The Australian Universities' Review	1958	Federation of Australian University Staff Associations	Same (now National Tertiary Education Union), title Australian Universities Review	Free online since 2000, 2 issues.
Sources: Columns 1-3: Harman (1989). Columns 4-5: Publisher websites listed in References. Accessed 10 April 2004.

Harman's study encompassed eight of the "leading educational research journals" (Harman, 1989, p3). Table 2 records our findings from a simple and very brief follow up study that looked for any changes in publisher, and each journal's response to the Internet based revolution in scholarly publishing. Table 2 shows relatively low use of the survival strategies that IIER has adopted. As summarised in Table 3, only two of the eight journals in Harman's study have currently a similarity to IIER's key strategies, that is containing costs by remaining on a non-profit society basis, whilst seeking readership growth by going online "free to the Internet". Four of the eight have adopted a sharply contrasting approach, with no free online, using outsourcing to a commercial publisher or adopting a commercial approach to publishing. Two of the eight remain on a non-profit society basis, viable though with little or no Internet delivery.

Commercial, no free online (except promotional samples)	3
Same, no free online (similar to commercial)	1
Same or similar societal or non-profit, no online (or contents pages only)	2
Same or similar societal or non-profit, plus free online	2

Table 4 compares the progress of six journals, not in Harman's study, representing examples of Internet only, recent start up journals, or recent adopters or prospective adopters of "free to the Internet" publishing (portions of Table 4 appeared in Atkinson and McLoughlin, 2004). Like Table 2, it gives a mixed indication about the value of "free to the Internet". For some this strategy has failed and they appear to have ceased publication or seem to be struggling, whilst Australian Educational Researcher, the best established in years and number of issues, was a relatively late adopter of Internet distribution. Nevertheless, our observations tend to confirm the confidence we feel in the value of IIER's "free to the Internet" strategy for going online.

Year	AER first issue 1974b		QJER first issue 1985c		IEJ first issue 1999		IJET first issue 1999		Compute-Ed first issue 1995		IIER first issue 1991
	iss	art	iss	art	iss	art	iss	art	iss	art	iss	art
1999	3	20	2	na	1	5	2	13	1f	7	1	4
2000	3	25	2	na	2	10	1	7	1f	1	1	5
2001	3	19	2	na	3d	16d	1	6	0	0	2	9
2002	3	18	2	9	3e	16e	1	17	0	0	1	5
2003	3b	20b	1	4	3	19	0	0	0	0	2	10
Totals	15 99-03	102 99-03	9 99-03	na 99-03	12 99-03	66 99-03	5 99-02	39 99-02	2 99-01	8 99-01	7 99-03	33 99-03
Count includes only refereed full articles. Editorials, editorial notes, book reviews, etc, are excluded. All articles are online except for the cases noted below. Acronyms are expanded and websites listed in the References, below. 2003 is the first AER volume to be made available online; for previous years only the tables of contents are available. Currently no online availability for QJER. Prior to 1997 titled Queensland Researcher: Journal of the Queensland Institute for Educational Research. Data on numbers of articles 1999-2001 was not available at the time of writing. This count excludes two special issues of IEJ year 2001 that published conference proceedings containing 38 articles. This count excludes two special issues of IEJ year 2002 that published conference proceedings containing 14 articles. These issues of Compute-Ed were dated 1999-2000 and 2000-2001.

Roger Atkinson
A guest editorial by IIER's Business Manager and Website Editor
April 2004

References

Atkinson, R. J. and McLoughlin, C. (2004). Editorial. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(1), iii-viii. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/editorial20-1.html

Australian Journal of Education. http://www.acer.edu.au/publications/acerpress/journals/aje.html

Australian Universities Review. http://www.nteu.org.au/publications/aur

Compute-Ed. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/10253

Curriculum Perspectives. http://www.acsa.edu.au/

Education Research and Perspectives
http://www.education.uwa.edu.au/information_about/journals
http://www.education.uwa.edu.au/information_about/journals/erp

Harman, G. (Ed) (1989). Australian educational research journals: What they do and how well they do it. Review of Australian Research in Education, No.1. Hawthorn, Vic: Australian Association for Research in Education.

History of Education Review. http://www.soe.jcu.edu.au/her/
http://www.edsw.usyd.edu.au/projects/anzhes/review.html
(website under reconstruction, online policies not announced)

IEJ. International Education Journal. School of Education, Flinders University of South Australia. http://iej.cjb.net/

International Journal of Disability, Development and Education (formerly The Exceptional Child) http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/1034912x.asp

IJET. International Journal of Educational Technology. http://www.ao.uiuc.edu/ijet/

IIER. Issues In Educational Research. The Institutes for Educational Research in NSW, NT, SA and WA. http://www.iier.org.au/iier.html

Journal of Educational Administration
http://masetto.emeraldinsight.com/vl=11701501/cl=14/nw=1/rpsv/jea.htm

QJER. Queensland Journal of Educational Research. Queensland Institute for Educational Research.

Please cite as: Atkinson, R. (2004). Editorial. Issues In Educational Research, 14(1), iv-vii. http://www.iier.org.au/iier14/editorial1.html