Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

The International Journal of Open Educational Resources (IJOER) is more than a place to publish papers—it also serves to build a vibrant community of scholars, policy makers, and practitioners dedicated to advancing social wellbeing through the open exchange of ideas and intellectual assets. From this starting point flows our vision, “to contribute to and help catalyze a global community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to advancing an open dialog about open resources and the underlying values of global inclusion.”



The overarching mission of the Journal is to contribute to the development of an ecosystem enabling the free exchange of ideas and activities associated with the advancement of Open Educational Resources (OER). We intend to do this by offering theoretical perspectives and practical techniques on OER and education. Contributors to the Journal include a global community whose expertise provides informative and thought-provoking reading on key issues pertaining to OER, while contributing to a larger constellation of organisations with similar interests and values. To meet the Journal's objectives we pursue two principal goals through multiple strategies.



GOAL 1 - The International Journal of Open Educational Resources strives to be a world-class resource that globally advances scholarship and knowledge exchange in OER. The Journal will serve as a way of focusing work and presentation on issues critical to advancement of OER across the disciplines. The Journal will embrace a global community of authors, editors, reviewers and supporters drawn from a broad set of communities, including faculty in the disciplines, global development professionals, governmental and non-governmental organizations, education practitioners, agency and foundation officers, industry stakeholders, and other self-identifying stakeholders.



  • To meet the variety of need and interest on a global stage, the publishing approach must marry rigor with low entry barriers and must tie together scholarly research in the disciplines with field-based practice.
  • Multiple publishing opportunities should exist including peer reviewed articles, non-reviewed edited articles, white & green papers, book and programme reviews, annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, editorials, and ongoing non-reviewed and non-edited short pieces.

GOAL 2 - The International Journal of Open Educational Resources, will contribute to and help catalyze a global community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to advancing an open dialog about open resources and the underlying values of global inclusion. For purposes of the Journal, OER will embrace a variety or resources including open content, open source software, educational sequences, standards, and other intellectual assets used in the educational process.



  • The development of communities of practice will required an opportunity for rich and authentic exchange between scholars, practitioners, policy makes, and other stakeholders.
  • Link relevant themes with the peer reviewed articles and an online discussion (i.e. intellectual property regimes, localization of content, tagging, RDF & Semantic Web, scalable repository strategies, etc.)
  • Do a featured programme review periodically.

 

Section Policies

Editorial Section

The Editorial section consists of:


  • Thematic opinion reports by members of the IJOER editorial team.
  • Invited opinion reports.
  • Responses to previously published materials.
  • An overview summary of all reviewed and open articles.


Materials in this section are not peer reviewed, but will be proof read and edited for grammar, spelling, and format.

Editors

Open Submissions

Thematic Articles

The Thematic Articles section consists of feature articles that address some aspect of the issue theme. Some of these articles are peer reviewed, while other manuscripts will not; all are proofread and edited. Peer reviewed articles are clearly marked.

Editors

Open Submissions

Open Articles

The Open Articles section features articles that do not address some aspect of the issue theme and are about OER. Some of these articles are peer review, while other manuscripts are not; all are proofread and edited. Peer reviewed articles are clearly marked.

Editors

Open Submissions

Open Publications

The Open Publications section consists of:


  • Book, article, product, service, software or courseware reviews.
  • Research progress, on-going project descriptions, working papers, conceptual papers, abstracts.
  • Field notes, professional development activities.
  • Tutorials, funding opportunities, conferences.

Although these works will not be peer reviewed, they will be proofread and edited for grammar, spelling, and format.

Editors

Open Submissions

 

Peer Review Process

The Journal publishes peer reviewed articles. Two members of the Editorial Board review each article and make recommendations to the Editor as to the suitability of its publication in the Journal. The review process may take up to three months.



Reviewers recommendations to the Editor will based on:




  • Relevance of the article to universities, colleges, schools, and other education providers as well as developers of open source software, standards and open content.

  • Strength of literature review.

  • Contribution to theory and practice.

  • Appropriateness of research method.

  • Results.

  • Suggestions for future research.



The Editor will send the outcome of the article to the author by e-mail. When changes are required, a summary of the reviewers’ comments will be provided to the author. Once the author returns the modified article as required, the Editors will go through a thorough review and editing before publishing. The Editor reserves the right to make editorial changes if necessary in an attempt to conform to the journal standards.

 

Publication Frequency

IJOER will be published bianually, i.e March and September. As a general guideline, to be considered for publication, authors are highly encouraged to submit their articles six months prior to the upcoming issue.



While recognising the value of thematic publications, timeliness and topical relevance can be of critical importance to the impact of a submitted work. In these cases, articles, reports, reviews, white papers, and other types of work may be submitted, reviewed, and published on a rolling basis to help ensure exposure through timely publication. Work that is published on a rolling basis will be published independently and further consolidated into a separate issue composed of other work published “off cycle”.

 

Open Access Policy

Developing a thoughtful Open Access policy, rationale, and implementation protocol will be among the earliest tasks of the IJOER Advisory Board.



Online Journal Systems (OJS) supports "open access" by reducing management and publishing costs and can be implemented in a variety of ways. The journal's content can be made free to readers or OJS's subscription module can be used to support (a) partial open access, with select items made available immediately, (b) delayed open access, with contents made available some time after initial publication, and (c) developing-nation open access, based on registering IP addresses from local institutions. In addition, editors are encouraged to join the overwhelming majority of journals that have a policy permitting authors to archive the work published in this journal in institutional repositories and eprint archives. If some form of open access can be granted or permitted, this should be described below, and it will appear in About the Journal.

 

Role: Manager / Chief Editor

In general, the responsibility of the Chief Editor is to oversee the development of IJOER. In light of this, the Chief Editor is in charge of liaising with the Editors in an attempt to ensure proper progress of the journal and its documentation. In addition, the Chief Editor is also the official spoke person on behalf of the Editorial Board and has the right to call the Editorial team members for meetings, to create new posts and designate new responsibilities as necessary for the development of IJOER.

 

Role: Advisory Board

The members in Advisory Board are made up of those who have great interest and experience in the issue of Open Educational Resources. They will be those who are willing to play a significant role in the growth and sustenance of the journal. The Editorial Board will constantly communicate with the Advisory Board on any issues related to the journal by seeking for their opinions or suggestions before making any decision.

 

Role: Editorial Boards

Generally, all members of the Editorial Board are responsible in promoting IJOER, encouraging submissions, seeking for sponsorships and looking for opportunities to create contact with academic or non-academic research-based bodies.



The Editors


The Editors act as the quality assurance officers and the point of contact for the contributors. When contributors submit their articles, the Editors will select two experts from The International Board of Reviewers as the referees to read and evaluate the articles. Besides, the Editors must coach, guide and help contributors to improve the document after the reviewing processes. The Editors will make use of the comments and suggestions by the blind reviewers in providing constructive and beneficial comments to the contributors for revision before publishing.



The International Board of Reviewers


Members of the International Board of Reviewers will blind review manuscripts submitted to the journal and make recommendations as to whether or not the articles reviewed be accepted for publication. If an article is accepted for publication but needs some alterations, the reviewers will provide constructive feedback to the author through the Editors. Some guidelines that can be used by the reviewers include:


  • Significance of the issue and / or findings.

  • Validity and reliability to the field.

  • Originality and well organized presentation.

  • Demonstration of a clear relationship between the issue and literature.

  • Appropriateness of research design and methodology.

  • Accuracy and in depth argument and analysis

  • Suggestions for education uses / practices.

  • Inclusion of implications for future research / innovations.



Layout Editors



The Layout Editors are responsible to maintain the IJOER website. Basically they ensure that all submissions approved for publication are in the appropriate format, conform to the journal’s documentation standard. In addition, they must make sure that the archives are appropriately prepared while the related website links are up-to-date and active. Besides, they are also responsible to register or update the journal’s operations with external bibliographic and indexing organisations as well as create or maintain the Journal’s presence within search engines or other equivalent web systems.



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