Choosing a research publication outlet: Part II

My name is David. I’m an academic. It’s been 8 years since my last journal paper (but what a paper it was, thanks Shirley).

In my defence, for three of those years I was finishing the PhD, 1 year finishing a GDL&T, three years getting used to a new discipline, and generally just cynical about the whole journal process, and not having much I considered useful to say. But that has to change, otherwise I’ll have some explaining to do. This year is about writing some journal papers. So where should I publish?

I asked and answered a similar question in 2009, hopefully this time I might actually go the next step and write something.

(Note: I start the writing process by getting to know the destination. The theory being that a paper is more likely to get accepted if it fits the requirements, aims, tone etc of the destination. I already have a few ideas re: papers, finding a suitable destination is the first task.)

What’s changed since 2009?

I’ve officially moved from the Information Systems discipline to Education. But given I was originally focused on educational technology, the journals identified in that original post are still suitable.

I’m at a new university that has recently introduced awards for journal articles “designed to encourage .. researchers to make strategic decisions about the journals in which they seek to publish, in order to help them get the best return on their research efforts and as a crucial step in improving the research performance of … as an institution”. Obviously linked to the on-going ERA. This is judged largely on the Scopus SNIP (Source-Normalized Impact per Paper) index.

Obviously there is more to research impact than the journal’s “citation potential”, but it’s the current measure of choice. At the very least I’ll have to consider it.

Updating the list

For the following list I’ve

1. Taken a list of journals mentioned in the original post.

   Have excluded a couple I no longer deem interesting.

2. Added any other journals I think potentially relevant.
3. Identified/updated the following information about the journals
   • Ranking as per the Oz government approach.
     This was used in the 2009 ERA, but wasn’t used in the 2012 exercise.
   • SNIP
     Provided by this search form.
   • h5-index and h5-median.
     In my travels I’ve discovered various other types of rankings such as Google scholar’s method which generates the following for
     • e-learning
     • educational technology
       BJET #1. AJET #4.
     • distance learning
       IRRODL #1 (of a short list).
     • higher education
   • Are the papers open or closed?

     This remains an important personal consideration.

   • Position on article copyright.

     i.e. is it ok for me to put a copy of the article on my personal site? A potential proxy for being open.

   • Max paper size.
   • # Issues per year.
   • Turnaround time on review.
   • ERA FoR
     Using John Lamp’s interface to the ERA data.

Once I have that information, the plan is to look more closely at the current editorial directions and the types of papers being accepted for publication in each of the different journals.

The list and observations

The complete list is available as a Google spreadsheet.

The top 10 journals ordered by SNIP are

1. Computers and Education
2. Internet and Higher Education
3. Studies in Higher Education
4. Educational Technology Research & Development
5. IRRODL
6. British Journal of Educational Technology
7. Educational Technology & Society
8. Higher Education Research & Development
9. Teaching in Higher Education
10. AJET

The top 10 journals ordered h5-index as per Google Scholar are

1. Computers and Education
2. British Journal of Educational Technology
3. Educational Technology & Society
4. Internet and Higher Education
5. IRRODL
6. Educational Technology Research & Development
7. Studies in Higher Education
8. AJET
9. Higher Education Research & Development
10. Teaching in Higher Education

Interesting to see BJET and ET&S climb the ladder in terms of h5-index.

Could I win an institutional award?

This is not the purpose for writing, but it’s an interesting exercise in exploring how level the playing field is between various disciplines (other than the sciences).

The only results I can find for the institutional publication awards had the following SNIP values

• 1st – 3.154
• 2nd – 3.01
• 3rd – 2.181
• Student award – 3.273
• Special mention – 8.2

  An article in Nature that was in the wrong time frame.

Computers and Education is by far the highest ranked of these journals using either SNIP of h5-index. C&E’s SNIPP value was 3.29. Meaning a first place, at least for the above period.

Internet and Higher Education has a SNIP value of 2.55, making 3rd possible.

BJET, IRRODL and AJET (the most familiar journals to me) have SNIPP values of: 1.71, 1.77 and 1.16 respectively.

While a sample size of one isn’t great, it appears possible but only just if I focus on higher education or general educational technology journals.

The couple of teacher education related journals that get a mention either don’t have a SNIPP or have one just above 1. Not likely to please the “impact police”. Of course, I didn’t go searching for more general teacher education journals.

Other misc. observations on journals

Computers and Education

Apparently has a “liberal copyright policy”. Which appears to permit posting to open websites but doesn’t exactly trumpet that position, e.g. doesn’t appear to be mentioned on this page.

There is a choice to publish an article as open access, but there’s a fee required. $1800!!!!!! But as an author you do get a 30% discount on Elsevier books.

Recommends a clearly defined article structure. Wonder how many published articles follow that? Apparently not many.

Has a “turnaround time” of around 10 weeks.

Internet and Higher Education

Audience – “faculty, administrators, and librarians charged with the responsibility of fostering the use of information technology and the Internet on their respective campuses.” Potentially a good fit.

Seems Elsevier have a standard structure they like. Same here as Computers & Education.

About a 5 week turnaround time.

Educational Technology Research and Development

Two month turn around claimed.

The fee for your article being open access is $USD3000!!!!

BJET

$USD3000 cost for open. Not real clear about whether it’s okay to share versions of articles via personal websites.

So where might I publish?

No clear winner, but some thoughts include

• Publishing in Computers and Education would satisfy the “impact police” but the initial topic I have planned may not fit well.
• My preference is in open access journals and IRRODL is perhaps a closer fit for what I’m thinking of writing.
• Internet and Higher Education is a closed journal, but also a reasonable fit and it promises the fastest decision time.

Time will tell.