Publications and Research

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

Summer 8-1-2016

Abstract

A large regional educational research association can straightforwardly establish a scholarly journal associated with its annual meeting. However, this work underscores the complicated scholarly ecosystem that an association enters when publishing a journal. The social sciences’ scholarly literature exists in a related series of networks that could be described as a type of “audit culture.” Within audit culture, two major academic publishers, Elsevier and Thomson Reuters, have established competing, yet strikingly collinear, journal metrics systems: Scopus and Web of Science, respectively. These and other bibliometrics systems are used to assess, order, and rank the supposed value of a researcher’s work. This analysis notes that a large regional education conference likely serves its members more fully by expressly teaching researchers the rigors of the academic publishing process and the role metrics play in the longevity of their academic careers. Such work does not preclude the need for a large regional education conference to create and publish a journal. However, the importance of this endeavor pales in comparison to teaching members “scholarly publishing literacy.” The educative significance of scholarly publishing literacy is implicitly more valuable than developing a new academic journal, precisely because most graduate students and junior faculty require greater understanding of the academic publishing process writ large.

Comments

This paper was presented to the New England Education Research Organization's board at its summer meeting on June 17, 2016 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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