Figure 1: Total submissions and acceptance rates, years 2003-08 and 2009-11, by region or country
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Editorial 28(5)
Figure 1: Total submissions and acceptance rates, years 2003-08 and 2009-11, by region or country
Notes for Figure 1: Aust is Australia only; NZ Sth Pacific includes Papua New Guinea;Another purpose for Figure 1 is to suggest some small scale but interesting, and potentially very informative, research into scholarly journal publishing. What are the main reasons for the large differences in the growth rates in numbers of AJET submissions, with Australia in particular being slow, and the Asian and the Middle Eastern regions being rapid, though with widely diverging acceptance rates?
SE Asia includes Thailand, Philippines; East Asia includes Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea;
Other Asia includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan;
Middle East includes Turkey, North Cyprus, Israel, Egypt;
Africa includes Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritius;
UK and Europe includes Eastern Europe, Russia, Cyprus, Georgia;
Other America includes Mexico, Caribbean countries, Central and South America.
Missing data for 2010: Country of origin data not available for 3 submissions, i.e. only 233 of the 236 submissions could be counted.
Missing data for 2011: Country of origin data not available for 2 submissions. Review outcomes awaited for 10, and 6 submissions post-24 Dec 2011 were placed in the new review system. Calculations dated 22 July 2012. Total submissions for 2011 = 351; number of 2011 submissions in calculations for Figure 1 = 333 (acceptance rate 32.4%).
The sequence for the horizontal axis was obtained from the 2003-08 percent acceptance data being arranged from highest to lowest (orange triangles line).
Is the awful matter of "Tiers" continuing to depress the number of Australian submissions to AJET, notwithstanding the official abandonment of "Tiers" in 2011? [3], [4]? Could we contribute to an assessment of the impact of "Tiers" upon Australian edtech researchers and their choices of journals for submitting their work, by looking at "pre-Tiers" and "post-Tiers" submission and publication data? Were Australian researchers unduly (or perhaps "duly"!) influenced by institutional directives about seeking publication in only A*/A journals?
Why are the Asian and the Middle Eastern regions showing high rates of growth in number of submissions to AJET, and very likely to international academic journals generally? Another set of research questions may be grouped around this question. For example, what is the relative importance of factors such as rapid growth of universities in the emerging (or "non-emerging"!) economies of Asian and Middle Eastern countries, and a trend towards English language journals as the most sought after, the most highly prized avenue for publishing the work of academic research aspirants?
AJET's reviewers and the Production Editor have undertaken very considerable amounts of honorary work in providing good formative advice to the authors of submissions that were not accepted for publication. No doubt similar efforts are being made by AJET's peer journals [5], but the "% accept" data in Figure 1 suggests that the rate of improvement for some regions is very slow. What are the main reasons for this disappointing observation? What improvements, if any, can journals such as AJET undertake to give better opportunities to authors from Asian and Middle Eastern countries that are under-represented in the international academic research literature? Is the concept of "better opportunities" appropriate, relevant and warranted, given that journals tend to place high importance upon selecting only the best research articles?
Roger Atkinson
AJET Production Editor
(retirement pending)
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The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) is a refereed research journal published 8 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.
© 2012 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 inquiries concerning year 2011 submissions, and production, website and business matters, contact the Production Editor (retirement pending), 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.
For inquiries concerning year 2012 submissions, the interim editorial team is Associate Professor Sue Bennett (University of Wollongong; sue_bennett@uow.edu.au), Associate Professor Barney Dalgarno (Charles Sturt University; bdalgarno@csu.edu.au) and Associate Professor Gregor Kennedy (University of Melbourne; gek@unimelb.edu.au), with ascilite Secretariat support from Mr Andre Colbert (colbert.andre@gmail.com).
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