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| Baharuddin Aris Helen Carter Chen Chwen Jen Cheung Wing Sum Gráinne Conole Geoffrey Crisp Iain Doherty Mark Freeman |
Peter Goodyear Cathy Gunn Barry Harper John G Hedberg Jan Herrington Tony Herrington Dale M Holt Gregor Kennedy |
Mike Keppell Colin Latchem Kar-Tin Lee Catherine McLoughlin Carmel McNaught John O'Donoghue Ron Oliver Meg O'Reilly |
Rob Phillips Quek Choon Lang Thomas C. Reeves Rod Sims Alan Smith Elizabeth Stacey Gail Wilson Allan H.K. Yuen |
After reviewing the Editorial Board details published for a number of journals including BJET, C&E, ALT-J, JCAL, JETS, JTaTE and others [3], the Management Committee agreed to form a conventional Board, by invitation, initially with 32 members. In choosing a list of invitees, Committee considered academic and research leadership and distinction; significant previous connections with AJET and ascilite Conferences in one or more of the roles of author, reviewer, Conference keynote or organiser; links with and representation of countries that are prominent in AJET's vision of an Australasian regional emphasis; the inclusion of persons from a range of educational technology topic areas, educational sectors and institutional roles; and a modern view of gender balance. We thank our invitees very warmly, and report a 100% acceptance rate.
We envision the Board's primary role to be acting as an independent monitor of AJET's editorial standards, with particular reference to comparing AJET with similar international journals. The principal method for providing feedback to AJET's editorial staff and the Management Committee will be responding to an annual open ended questionnaire, although other avenues may be used. Board members may also be members of AJET's Review Panel [4], for which the contribution per reviewer per year is usually in the range 1-3 articles, and we would like members of the Board to be general ambassadors for AJET within their spheres of influence. Editorial Board appointments are honorary, are made by AJET's Management Committee for a period of five years, and renewals may be offered.
Whilst we have been well aware of the benefits and advantages of an international Editorial Board for AJET, for example as noted in Editorial 23(4) in October 2007 [5], the most recent and blunt stimulus to proceed was due to the Australian Research Council's document Tiers for the Australian Ranking of Journals, dated 12 June 2008 [6]. In relation to editorial boards, the prescriptive excerpts from Tiers are:
| A* (top 5%) | ... the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions. |
| A (next 15%) | ... an editorial board which includes a reasonable fraction of well known researchers from top institutions. |
| B (next 30%) | ... editorial boards that have few leading researchers from top international institutions. [6] |
The Tiers document gives Australian based journals such as AJET (a Tier "A" ranked journal, [7]) a compelling incentive to move towards an editorial board dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions. However, the Australian Government's ARC, the proponents for Tiers for the Australian Ranking of Journals, is not the only constituency to which AJET is linked, and obliged to respond to. The briefing paper for AJET's Management Committee recognised that there are other constituencies, or needs, or principles, to which AJET should respond, including some or all of those listed below, which are in addition to the ideals of academic and research excellence in educational technology and related fields [8]:
Of course the weights assigned to each constituency or need may vary quite widely, and may be quite subjective or even idiosyncratic, but in giving this list we can show that we have at least tried to represent the purposes underlying our initiation of the new editorial board a little less superficially than the Tiers quotes given above.
- AJET is an international journal with an Australasian regional emphasis. How can AJET form a board which can help to address the under-representation of the non-Western, non-native English speaking countries, at least within the scope of our regional emphasis?
- AJET's board should be a reasonable reflection of the range of educational technology topics, sectors of education, kinds of research methodologies and perspectives, etc, included in AJET's recent volumes. AJET seeks to present an emphasis upon research that applies or relates well to the day to day activities of front line academics, whether they be discipline based subject experts, or educational designers and other support persons in the team. The perspectives of these different persons within typical teams or groups need to be represented.
- Journal review processes need to consider a career development perspective, from two directions. Firstly, AJET can follow the example provided by ascilite Conference review panels which provide specifically for the induction of novice reviewers, who will become the next generation of experienced reviewers. Secondly, AJET seeks to project a reputation for giving good formative advice that facilitates improvement and progress in an author's research career.
- AJET and ascilite Conference proceedings have monitored and published data on gender balance, to help ensure that reviewer and author populations are a fair representation of the composition of the population of practitioners. The same attention to gender balance should be applied to an editorial board.
- A journal's editorial board should receive an input from office bearers or other designated representatives of the society that publishes it. [8]
The point was expressed succinctly by Peter Goodyear in the email discussion [9]:
I think it's sensible to be influenced by the ARC/ERA criteria for 'top journals', but I don't think one needs to be *driven* by them.....As an editor of 15 years, I'd be tempted to say that the primary function of the editorial board is to work directly on the improvement of the journal and its profile.... I *would* expect them to be advocates for the journal, e.g. in persuading people presenting good stuff at conferences to write something up for the journal, developing ideas for special issues, etc....
So I think I'm saying - be driven by the (internal) needs of the journal rather than by the machinations of research assessment. [9]
| Year of receipt | No. rec'd | No. rejected editorially (b) | No. reject ext review (b) | No. with- drawn (c) | No. pending | No. accepted (d) | No. published | % accepted (e) |
| 2003 | 61 | 34 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 24 | 21.3% |
| 2004 | 97 | 51 | 13 | 2 | 0 | 31 | 21 | 32.0% |
| 2005 | 91 | 47 | 9 | 5 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 33.0% |
| 2006 | 100 | 59 | 9 | 3 | 0 | 29 | 28 | 29.0% |
| 2007 | 119 | 67 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 34 | 30 | 28.6% |
| 2008 | 127 | 71 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 35 | 42 | 27.6% |
| 2009(a) | 60 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 54 | 5(a) | 5 | - |
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Whilst it does not diminish our concern about sustaining the benchmark of three months maximum for AJET's review process, we do note occasional examples of longer times. Examples that we know about are "occasional", because in general journal editorial staff and authors seem to avoid discussion of the problem. Here is one example, written by Lisa Robins [13], noted recently in relation to a brief investigation (by Roger Atkinson) that touched upon "doctorate by publication" or "PhD by publication" in the context of "E-theses" [14]:
The need to fast-track publishing of highly context-specific research findings is further emphasised by the lengthy publication timelines shown in Figure 1 - which ranged from 199 to 469 days, and averaged 334 days, from submission to publication for the six research articles published at the time of writing this article. [13]The word "lengthy" is a polite and restrained understatement. An average of 334 days is not "fast track", it is more like "appallingly excessive"!
Roger Atkinson and Catherine McLoughlin
AJET Production Editor and AJET Editor
| Conferences advertised in AJET 25(2) |
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 Same places, different spaces Auckland, 6-9 December 2009 http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/ |  http://conference.herdsa.org.au/2009/ |
The Student Experience Charles Darwin University Darwin, 6-9 July 2009 |
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The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) is a refereed research journal published 5-6 times per year by the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite). AJET retired its printed version (ISSN 1449-3098) at the end of Volume 23, 2007, and from Volume 24, 2008, the journal is open access, online only (ISSN 1449-5554), and does not have paid subscriptions.
© 2008 Authors retain copyright in their individual articles, whilst copyright in AJET as a compilation is retained by the publisher. Except for authors reproducing their own articles, no part of this journal may be reprinted or reproduced without permission. For further details, and for details on submission of manuscripts and open access to all issues of AJET published since the journal's foundation in 1985, 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: Catherine.McLoughlin@acu.edu.au, Tel: +61 2 6209 1100 Fax +61 2 6209 1185.
For review process, production and business matters, 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. Desktop publishing (PDF versions) and HTML by Roger Atkinson.
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