|
Editorial
We welcome readers to IIER volume 18, number 1, our first edition to be published online only. In the past, many of our readers received their notification of publication by postal delivery of traditional hardcopy. Now that IIER's print version has been retired, as advised in Editorial 17(2), your notification will arrive by email.
Our reasons for changing to online only were set out in the previous Editorial as follows.
After 17 years of publication in print format, including 10 years of dual print and online publication, the time has come for Issues in Educational Research to make the transition to an online only journal. The printed version cannot be sustained owing to increasing costs per copy, a factor exacerbated by a decreasing number of copies being ordered, increases in postal expenses, and the need to economise with the amount of honorary work required for producing and distributing copies.There will be other advantages to our readers and subscribers as well as cost and conservation issues. The publication process is expected to take less time, ensuring a more rapid turnaround time. We already have a good reputation for speedy turnaround time compared with many commercial publications, and we aim to have this continue. We believe authors prefer to have their work published before their research is out of date.
Issues in Educational Research was set up originally to encourage new researchers to begin writing for publication, and to be assisted through the review and rewriting stages within a supportive environment. This continues to be our main function. Many of our contributors write their first article for Issues in Educational Research. Sometimes they write jointly with their supervisors, sometimes with colleagues and sometimes by themselves. We make a point of encouraging our reviewers to be constructive and helpful and aim their comments at improving the article, rather than criticising it.
However the journal is also available for more experienced researchers. One of the chief advantages is, as already mentioned, the rapid turnaround. Academics needing to get something into print in the current year, become frustrated with the long lead times encountered with many journals.
We recommend that supervisors of postgraduate students encourage their students to submit to this journal, remembering of course that it is a research journal, and submissions are required to have a research component. 'Opinion pieces', or reviews of the literature are not normally accepted, unless it can be claimed that they break new ground. Just occasionally we do publish a paper which deals specifically with research methods or methodology, because just occasionally such papers are judged to be valuable for postgraduate students or for lecturers in that they present known material in a new light or that they bring a field of research up to date.
Note also that we enter this new stage of the journal with a new design for the home page and a new Editorial Board from Australia and New Zealand. We hope to extend this to include Singapore in the near future, to better represent our regional readership. Our thanks to Dr Lou Siragusa from Curtin University for the web page design and welcome to the members of the new Board.
Many of our readers may already know that we have set up an Alerts list to keep list members informed of new editions of the journal when they are published, or special issues being planned. To subscribe to this list, or to unsubscribe, please refer to the instructions on the IIER Website at http://www.iier.org.au/about/alerts.html
Commencing with 18(1), we will adopt the practice of making all articles available in both HTML and PDF file formats. Readers will be invited to select file format, window width, font and font size to suit their personal preferences for screen reading comfort.
Clare McBeath
Editor
| Please cite as: McBeath, C. (2008). Editorial. Issues In Educational Research, 18(1), ii-iii. http://www.iier.org.au/iier18/editorial18-1.html |