Figure 1: Gender of AJET authors 1985 to August 2007
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Figure 1: Gender of AJET authors 1985 to August 2007
... investigating the publication habits of a sample of the population invites conclusions about the profession as a whole. Women academic librarians are publishing in numbers that are approaching their representation in the profession. ... Article analysis, and in particular analysis of authorship patterns, can be as pivotal as citation analysis in defining the group characteristics of scholars in library and information science.[5]Whilst our modest study may require more work and years of data before there's any hope for producing significant insights, we could note one observation. The trend towards increasing representation of women in AJET authorships became clear after about 1997. That was soon after John Howard became Australia's Prime Minister, and it was the year when AJET gained a new, ASCILITE and ASET based editorial team [6]. As the Prime Minister has not claimed credit for the author gender trend, your Editors are pleased to do so!
...I am writing to ask whether you have any plans to review the current publishing arrangements for Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, and whether you would be interested in discussing these with SAGE.At present our replies are something like this:As an independent, international publishing company, we believe we have much to offer scholarly organisations as a publishing partner, and we would very much like to talk to you in more detail about what we can offer to you as a journals publisher. As testament to our strengths as a publishing partner, you may be interested to know that SAGE has entered into an exciting new relationship. On behalf of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), we will publish the Association's six peer-reviewed journals, with effect from January 2007... [7]
...The news about the AERA journals is interesting, thank you. However, we have no intention of seeking a journal publisher. Our direction of growth is firmly towards full open access, with print to be phased out within several years.Table 1 provides an example of the detail behind the idea of "keeping in touch with trends in publishing". It is intended as an illustrative sample, not a comprehensive survey.We keep in touch with trends in publishing, particularly the actions of our kindred societies and the fortunes of new journals in Australian education.... we feel happy that AJET's strategy for differentiation, growth and service to authors and readers is appropriate and productive. [8]
| Publisher | Page heading | URL and illustrative quotation |
| Blackwell Publishing | Publish with Blackwell |
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/press/societies.asp Blackwell has many years' experience of partnering with societies, and currently has contracts with over 600 societies. ... approximately 70% of the journals on our list owned or published on behalf of societies... |
| Elsevier | Society Home |
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/societyhome.societies Partnering with the world's most respected Societies for many years, Elsevier now holds an impressive list of long, fruitful and symbiotic relationships with over 500 societies and associations. |
| SAGE | Publishing on behalf of Societies and Associations |
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/socAssn.nav SAGE publishes more than 460 journals, including journals on behalf of more than 160 associations and institutions. |
| Taylor & Francis | Editors & Societies: Publish with Us |
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/authors_editorexisting~db=all We now publish journals in association with 340 society and university partners worldwide, from a network of 19 global offices... |
| HighWire | Information and Services for Publishers |
http://highwire.stanford.edu/publishers/ HighWire Press® welcomes inquiries from publishers interested in placing their journal content onto our premier web platform. The HighWire-affiliated publishers produce some of the most highly cited, peer-reviewed journals online... |
| CSIRO Publishing | Society Publishing |
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/163.htm CSIRO PUBLISHING has published journals in partnership with leading scientific societies for over 50 years. |
| RMIT Publishing | Publish with us |
http://www.rmitpublishing.com.au/publish.html As Australia's leading e-press, we are committed to pursuing the highest scholarly standards in both research and production. |
We hasten to add that Table 1 represents "routine inquiries", as they say on the telly. However, the point about "print to be phased out within several years" is likely to force its way back onto the agenda. AJET submissions are up 20% to mid August this year, compared with 2006. As indicated in Editorial 23(2) [9], we are maintaining a reasonable consistency in acceptance rate, at about 30%, and we have improved our turnaround times for the review process. However, the downside is that we now have to address the problem of increased time between acceptance of an article and publication. We have filled AJET 23(4) before 23(3) goes to our printer! Proposals to address the problem will be considered by AJET's Management Committee in the next few months, and debated, hopefully in a congenial way, at ascilite Singapore 2007.
Thank you for suggesting ...[AJET] for inclusion in one or more of our databases.After some investigation, we inquired as follows:Although the publication has been examined with interest by our Journals' Advisory Committee, and there can be no doubt that your journal represents a valuable contribution in its field, our present coverage policy prevents us from acquiring further publications this year within this subject area. Should circumstances change in the near future, we will be happy to reconsider the matter. [11]
Dear Scopus person,Elsevier's response duly arrived, with a copy of "CSAB_members.pdf" attached, and the query, "May I ask what exactly you will be using it for?" [13] Fair question, we replied promptly:Your document http://www.info.scopus.com/docs/content_coverage.pdf states on page 18 that:
"The fact that members come from all scientific and geographical areas gives a truly global, all-science representation on the CSAB [Content Selection and Advisory Board]. Names and affiliations of the board members can be requested by contacting advisoryboard@scopus.com"May I have a copy of the document containing the "Names and affiliations of the board members" please? I am conducting editorial research into the processes behind the inclusion or non-inclusion of the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology in a range of bibliographic database products (Thomson, EBSCO, Elsevier, ERIC and Google). [12]
Thank you very much, the copy of "CSAB_members.pdf" is most helpful. As to your question, "May I ask what exactly you will be using it for?", the purposes for this research were outlined in my email dated 9 June [repetitive detail omitted]Well, there we are! Report made, as promised. In reflecting over this and other correspondence concerning publishers, databases, and promotion of AJET, we need to consider the question of how much detail we should report to AJET's Management Committee, to the Society, and to authors and readers generally. On balance, for an academic audience, we feel that full reporting of illustrative examples is better than giving little or no information. One of our regrets is that on some of the most critical issues we have no information to give. For example, none of the publishers listed in Table 1 give information about the amounts paid to societies, or numbers of print version subscriptions sold. However, one publisher provides interesting commercial information about a new service now beginning to be offered by innovative publishers. We will "keep an eye" on this new kind of market and its rates:In the case of Elsevier, "non-inclusion" applies. That was specified recently in an email to me [more repetitive detail omitted]
Given that communication, I became interested in the extent to which "coverage policy", as outlined in "content_coverage.pdf", is informed by the CSAB. Upon examining "CSAB_members.pdf", I find that there are only 32 persons named, and of those, only one person is linked to Social Sciences, namely "Ms. [name deleted]". It is quite surprising to me that the claim made on page 18 of "content_coverage.pdf", namely:
"Although Scopus covers the largest number of titles of any database, its aim is to cover the relevant and high-quality titles; not just any and all titles. For this reason the Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) was established..."is not supported by a very much larger and academically more eminent composition for the CSAB. I regret that the process used by Elsevier to distinguish between "the relevant and high-quality titles", and those that are otherwise, is a mystery to me. However, as is usual, I'll report as best I can to AJET's Management Committee, and to AJET readers via the editorial pages, on our progress with Scopus and other databases. [14]
CSIRO PUBLISHING journal authors may choose to publish their papers as Open Access. CSIRO PUBLISHING charges an Open Access Author Fee for this service. [15]Roger Atkinson and Catherine McLoughlin
| Conferences advertised in AJET 23(3) |
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University of Southern Queensland Springfield Campus Sinnathamby Boulevard Springfield, Queensland http://www.usq.edu.au/pedagogies2007/ |
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2nd International LAMS Conference 26-29 Nov 2007, Macquarie University, Sydney http://lams2007sydney.lamsfoundation.org/ |  | Queensland University of Technology 29-30 November 2007 http://www.eac2007.qut.edu.au/ |
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The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology is a refereed research journal published four times per year by the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE). Members of ASCILITE receive AJET as a part of their membership benefits.
For details on submission of manuscripts, subscriptions and access to the AJET online archives, please see http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/
For editorial inquiries, contact the Editor, Associate Professor Catherine McLoughlin, School of Education (ACT), Australian Catholic University, PO Box 256, Dickson ACT 2602, Australia. Email: C.McLoughlin@signadou.acu.edu.au, Tel: +61 2 6209 1100 Fax +61 2 6209 1185. For review process, production matters and subscriptions contact the Production Editor and Business Manager, Dr Roger Atkinson, 5/202 Coode Street, Como WA 6152, Australia. Email: rjatkinson@bigpond.com, Tel: +61 8 9367 1133.
Copyright in individual articles contained in Australasian Journal of Educational Technology and its predecessor title is vested in each of the authors in respect of his or her contributions. Copyright in AJET is vested in ASET (1985-86), AJET Publications (1987-1996), ASCILITE and ASET (1997-2005), and ASCILITE (from 2006).
© 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reprinted or reproduced without permission from the publishers. ISSN 1449-3098 (print) 1449-5554 (online).
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