Open Journals
The end of September sees the annual European Conference on Educational Research in Vienna (ECER). For many years now, I have supported the Vocational Education and Training Network (VETNET) which forms a constituent section of the European Educational Research Association, the organisers of ECER.
Whilst VETNET has been extremely successful in organising around the conference, its attempts to form a stronger community of practice have been hampered by the lack of activities between conferences. One long discussed aim is to launch a research journal. Many hours of work have been taken up in drawing up proposals and negotiating with publishers, with little result. For some years now, I have been arguing for a web based open journal. Whilst some have seen the potential of such a development, the majority of researchers within the vocational and education training community have remained wedded to the traditional publisher led model, mainly, I think, feeling that the academic standing of a journal can only be secured through publisher involvement.
In that regard, I am delighted to read in OLDaily (welcome back from holidays, Stephen) of the launch of AISHE-J (The All Ireland Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) which has just launched volume 1 number 1. “It is an open-access, peer-reviewed, journal of scholarly research into Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” Here’s the RSS Feed. The first issue includes an article from Phil Race on assessment as learning and Kate Day on learning environments.
Open Journal do not imply any less quality than traditional closed print journals. The more examples there are of such journals, the more the sceptics will be convinced. VETNET take note!
