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IIER Editorial 35(1): (i) Revisiting "A crisis ...?" (ii) Editorial miscellanea
Roger Atkinson and Clare McBeath
IIER Co-Editors, Australia
One editorial project that we must try to reserve some time-for-progressing is the compilation of a list of journals that emulate, or nearly emulate, IIER's important features that attract authors. In brief, in no particular order, these include ... (p.iii)Late one recent night, I (RA) contemplated the lack of a list of journals that could help with the question "Can you suggest another journal?", and how to make a contribution, however small it may be, to easing our crisis in academic journal publishing capacity. An idea popped up, about promoting the emergence of 'sibling journals', such as 'Issues in Educational Research Southeast Asia (IIER Southeast Asia)', or 'IIER Indonesia', 'IIER Philippines', 'IIER Pasifica', 'IIER Africa'. Many variations and implications for this kind of name floated up in my mind, so I'll use IIER-XXX as a convenience label. New journals "that emulate, or nearly emulate, IIER's important features that attract authors" [1, p.iii]. New journals that could be catalysed by sharing in the large flow of submissions that is overwhelming IIER.
[main purpose being]
... to help answer more positively the question in the minds of IIER's disappointed authors, "Can you suggest another journal?" (p.vii) [1]
To illustrate the idea of "sharing in the large flow of submissions", consider the current scenario for IIER, averaging about 800 submissions and 80 to 84 acceptances per year [2]. So there are a little over 700 rejections per year. For illustrative purposes, informed by over a decade of intensive editorial work for IIER, let's say that 150 to 200 of these rejections are not based on a lack of educational research merit, but are based mainly upon IIER's publishing capacity limitations. Suppose that we could recommend 150 to 200 articles per year to a 'sibling' journal, and that the authors for about 100 to 150 articles accept such a recommendation. Would 100 to 150 good quality articles per year be an attractive and sufficient catalyst?
An unequivocal "Yes" may be hard to attain. There are limitations and challenges to emulating IIER's features [1], identified below, though not comprehensively, and in no particular order. An IIER-XXX would have to aim for at least 40 articles per year in 4 issues. Sustaining volume, frequency and regional reach will require a consortium of institutions rather than a single institution. Providing an expert, high standard, free copy editing service is essential. Considering that requirement, I drifted into wondering why, in all my reading of EFL/ESL teaching and learning articles submitted to IIER, I had not encountered the idea of commissioning small groups of EFL/ESL students to undertake editing of a journal article submission, as a credit carrying, optional project in their degree studies. How's that for an omission or 'research gap'?
There are diverse technical and organisational challenges. An IIER-XXX editor group would have to obtain a domain name registration containing iier, e.g. iier-sea.org.xx (where xx could be any appropriate country associated with the participating institutions; iier-indonesia.org.id; iier-philippines.org.ph; iier-pasifica; etc. Thinking about domain name registrations reminded me about several attempts, now some years ago, by a domain name registration agency in China seeking to sell us registration of iier.org.cn (each time I declined, politely). An IIER-XXX editor group would have to arrange a website, perhaps from any regional supplier of low cost hosting (creation and operation could be outsourced to local students undertaking this work as a credit carrying, optional project in their degree studies - they could copy freely from IIER's very simple website, hosting model and 'Google-optimisation').
The organisational challenges include sustaining an IIER-XXX editor group indefinitely into the future, including induction of newcomers to the group. Another organisational challenge is obtaining national or regional education-related professional association support (as IIER enjoys from WAIER, NSWIER and SAIER), that may supplement or even surpass institutional support. Another potential avenue for attaining improved size and sustainability is a merger with an existing journal, for example an activity undertaken by IIER with the Queensland Journal of Educational Research in 2004 [3].
Some organisational activities should be avoided to save on an editor group's time and funds. One example is to avoid buying digital object identifiers - not really necessary ('DOIs') [4]. Another is to avoid associating with social media sites controlled by hyper-wealthy tycoons ...
Unfortunately, at about that point in dreaming over a way forward, I woke up. In a 'reality check' sweat, with thoughts that prevented going happily back to sleep. Two of the 'reality check' items concerned the undue influence of journal ranking and citation counts (especially "Scopus-indexed"), and government measures intended to promote international recognition of their country's academic research.
Attaining "Scopus-indexed" status has become almost mandatory for a journal. As we noted in Editorial 34(4) [1], Scopus states "We seek out and ensure that only the most trusted, peer-reviewed scientific articles ... are available on Scopus." (read again recently in [5]). A worthy aim from a highly influential publisher, but depending on how it is implemented the editor group for a new journal may find "Scopus accession", as outlined in "Scopus content" [5], "Content policy and selection" [6] and the "Scopus title suggestion" form [7], to be very challenging. For example, phrases such as "... must not contain information that might mislead readers or authors, including any attempt to mimic another journal/publisher's site", and "The Journal name shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal or that might mislead potential authors and readers about the Journal's origin or association with other journals." [7] may preclude use of the IIER-XXX idea as outlined above.
An illustrative example of impact from a government measure intended to promote international recognition of a country's academic research has been provided in IIER by Indonesian author Toni Indrayadi, who chronicled "my long journey toward publication in reputable international journals" [8]. Indonesian Government policies, a large number of aspiring academic researchers, and IIER's good representation of Indonesian authors in earlier years, have combined to create a 'spike' in IIER submissions from Indonesia. Whilst this level of interest (and creativity) from Indonesia is welcome, it magnifies the problem of "A crisis in academic journal publishing capacity". To illustrate further, during January-February 2024 IIER received 119 submissions, including 30 lead-authored by Indonesians, a number far exceeding the next largest contributions in the same period (South Africa 8, Philippines 6, India 6).
To illustrate IIER's editorial 'feelings' on these matters three years ago, the reader is invited to view Editorial 32(2) [9], containing pleas such as "... what we would really like to see ... is a good number of emulators of IIER". Regrettably, that is not happening, though one sentence in Editorial 32(2) warranted a re-reading, "But on the bright side, the 21 articles in IIER 32(2) show a pleasingly high diversity in source countries, including Indonesia represented in three fine articles. [9]
Is my hesitant perspective upon "the crisis in academic journal publishing capacity" perhaps a little too gloomy? Please contrast with a more spirited perspective offered by Dr Allen Espinosa in this issue's invited guest editorial, "Who owns knowledge? The fight for open educational research" [10]
In recent weeks, Scholastica has been deeply concerned by the flurry of executive orders in the United States aimed at suppressing scholarly research with a focus on topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), including imposing bans on the use of specific words ... (Scholastica, 2025) [13]Is there any reasonable, scholarly rationale for "imposing bans on the use of specific words ..."? The White House's rationale is remarkably ideological, and very specific about DEI:
... the Secretary of Education shall ensure that the allocation of any Federal Department of Education funds is subject to rigorous compliance with Federal law and Administration policy, including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label "diversity, equity, and inclusion" or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology. [18]
Miscellanea 2: Will ERIC survive?
Numerous generations of educational researchers have used ERIC (Education Resources Information Center, https://eric.ed.gov/) as the 'go to' database for literature searches. Even in current times in competition with other databases such as Elsevier's Scopus [5], Google Scholar and Clarivate's Web of Science, ERIC retains a 'go to' status. For example, ERIC features, with others, in the two most recent review articles published in IIER [14, 15]. But there is a highly significant difference between ERIC and the "others". ERIC is owned and operated by a U.S. government agency, the Department of Education, in domain Trump. Try https://www.ed.gov/, but do not be optimistic about clarity emerging. Two days ago some reading gave us an impression that the Department is being trollied into 'palliative care' [16, 17, 18]. But then, only a few minutes into the last hour check before we upload 35(1), we found an unexpected, same day 'walk back' [19] that declared:
Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them—we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs. We're going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working through Congress to ensure a lawful and orderly transition. [19]Does that really 'muddy the waters'. A reader may wonder who is actually in charge, the Department or the White House? In sharper and much clearer contrast, the "others" we referred to above are businesses (for example, see Table 1 in [14] and p.1266 in [15]). Mostly non-American or multi-national businesses, these are beyond the reach of any outcome from a Trump v. U.S. Department of Education demarcation dispute (at least for now).
Scopus, Scholar, WoScience, and diverse "others" can take up the 'lit search load' for educational researchers, should ERIC be shut down along with other U.S. Department of Education activities. However, as outlined below in Miscellanea 3, ERIC is also a great repository, sometimes revealed during our IIER copy editing of references lists to have the world's only findable and Internet-accessable copy of an article.
Miscellanea 3: Appending web addresses in References lists
There is a very practical reason for this topic arising. In many IIER articles the reader will encounter references with an ERIC web address appended, often inserted by RA during IIER's copy editing process. But as the Trumpian agenda seeks to shuts down ERIC along with other U.S. Department of Education activities, as outlined above in Miscellanea 1 and 2, all ERIC web addresses that RA has appended may need to have replacement addresses inserted, or simply deleted. One way to counter this potentially looming problem is to append additional references. To illustrate with a citation in an IIER 35(1) article [20]:
Joseph, S. (2015). Curriculum politics in higher education: What educators need to do to survive. International Journal of Higher Education, 4(3), 14-20. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1060563 [also https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v4n3p14] [also https://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/view/6795/4172] [also https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275894248]If in doubt, add additional citations, as illustrated above, to avoid trying to guess which one will be the most reliable, longer term. Sadly, uncertain times is the new norm for academic publishing services such as copy editing. Sighing very deeply, we have to say, stand aside AI, conflict zones, multiculturalism, and many other reliable generators of significant issues in educational research, we have a difficult new and badly behaving kid in IIER's lifelong learning school, name is "Chaos Theory" (Google him/her/it).
| Please cite as: Atkinson, R. & McBeath, C. (2025). IIER Editorial 35(1): (i) Revisiting "A crisis ...?" (ii) Editorial miscellanea. Issues in Educational Research, 35(1), ii-vii. http://www.iier.org.au/iier35/editorial35-1.pdf |