A note from the Editor : An agenda for the Journal (original) (raw)
Related papers
Editorial--A plea for scholarly writing
Integrative and Comparative Biology, 2008
Scientific writing is a skill that needs to be developed through concentration and practice. By the final draft of a paper, each sentence should have been crafted to convey information clearly, succinctly, and accurately. The standard of writing in current scientific journals has reached an all-time low, in terms of both poor grammar and imprecise communication. This situation has been fueled on one hand by escalating costs of publication and an attempt to shorten papers and, on the other hand, by inadequate training in the structure of the English language.
To start, the exercise of writing is a difficult task. Nothing more challenging than the whiteness of an empty page. Whether the writing outcome is a personal product or a piece to be socialized in the academic world, the writing task demands a lot from the ones that succumb by pleasure or obligation to the writing assignment. Apart from the skill of writing, authors of articles published in academic journals are obliged to stick to the specific publication's parameters. Strict datelines, number of words and specific sections to be included will shape the writer's production. The resulting texts in most of the circumstances will fit the publications' guidelines but may, in turn, restrict the writer's flow and line of thought. Authors may be restricted by limitations but if they want to publish they should stick to the parameters of the target publication. In other words, stick and publish or ignore and be ignored.
Publishing in an era of excess
Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2010
Why publish? Probably there are as many answers to this question as there are authors. Accordingly, I answer from my own perspective, as a scholar employed in a university, a journal editor, and a science educator for 47 years. Throughout my career, my purpose in publishing was to share what I had learned from my research with the science education community. I enjoyed writing for journals and books and have not personally felt pressure to publish in order to keep my employment, obtain salary increases, or be more competitive for jobs. Simply put, I continued to do research throughout my career and to the extent possible I wrote regularly for publication. It is difficult to say how successful I was in maintaining balance in terms of the requirements of being a university level teacher/ researcher. However, among the pearls of advice I was given during my doctoral studies was to routinely do research on my own teaching. The purpose of the advice was to use research to improve practice, but following the advice made it possible to maximize connections between teaching and research and not to feel that those activities were competing for my time. In the sections ahead I address the pressures on scholars to publish in high impact journals and to be cited by colleagues, implications of quantifying scholarship in terms of the number of publications in high impact journals and the number of citations, using the literature in a context of excess publication and electronic accessibility of publications, and signs of excess publishing and consideration of the implications for the quality of science education. Finally, I provide a look ahead at what is to come in this issue, pointing out that there is considerable diversity among the authors of the papers that comprise this issue, the topics addressed and the theoretical frameworks that provide a foundation for the research and methodologies. On three occasions I provide comments from Catherine Milne, Peter Taylor, and Yew-Jin Lee, members of the Editorial Board, who participated in the review of this Editorial.
AJS Review, 2004
With this issue, we launch our joint editorship of the AJS Review. It is therefore an appropriate moment to share with our readers our hopes and expectations for the intellectual direction of the journal. Some of what follows has already been articulated in a statement published in the AJS Perspectives (Spring/Summer, 2003) shortly after we assumed our tasks. We feel it bears repeating here for the sake of those who may not have seen the original article.
Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 2012
Three months into my term as coeditor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research (JMMR), and with the 2012 Mixed Methods Research Conference imminent, it seems fitting to return to the themes alluded to in my inaugural editorial: Managing Movement, Leading Change (Freshwater, 2012). In this I argued that the business of research needs to move with, and adapt to, the changing environment. Movement and change are critical and inextricably linked concepts and as such may be deemed to have a symbiotic relationship. Change needs movement to occur, and movement is kept mobile by change. In February's editorial, I highlighted the importance of challenging philosophical and epistemological stances and, more specifically, the role that journals and journal editors have in encouraging this in the not insignificant responsibility that accompanies the role. In this editorial, I would like to take one step further and contend that it is a necessity to challenge and question epistemological stances and to keep academic debate and scholarship mobile. Hence, the title of the editorial being posed as a question: Why Write? As editors, we have a moral and ethical responsibility to afford the authors the space in which to write, to contest apparently solid ground, and to contribute to our knowledge economy through academic debate. And part of how we construct that space involves diligent and ethical editorial practice, which in turn incorporates mindful and deliberative use of our editorial influence, as we manage, among other things, the peer review process. As an exemplar for this editorial, we raise the thorny issue of what it is that constitutes a paradigm, why it is so relevant for the mixed methods community, and how the JMMR can foster academic scholarship and debate in the area. We are mindful that the concept of paradigms has suffered from a series of slippery and imprecise definitions leading to uncritical, perhaps mindless, overuse (and abuse) of the term (see, e.g., Holloway's critique in Holloway, 2011). To arrive at a more informed assessment of the role and purpose of paradigms, we first consider some of the competing definitions of paradigms within the mixed methods community. There is some divergence in people's understanding, and indeed the view of the wider academic community, about what constitutes a paradigm. Thomas Kuhn (1996) conceptualized a paradigm as a set of practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period in time. This definition allows considerable room for maneuver. One school of thought exemplified by Mertens (2007, 2010) conceptualizes paradigms as sets of philosophical assumptions relating to the nature of methodology, epistemology, ontology, and axiology. According to this model, methodological assumptions can lead to a choice of methods, whether they be quantitative, qualitative, or mixed within several paradigms-most notably the pragmatic and transformative paradigms. Within this model, the conceptualization of a paradigm concerns a construct that "sires" or "begets" choices in methods. There is another school of thought that allows for paradigms to be methodological in their foundation. Denscombe (2008) and Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004) conceptualized the mixed
Improving quality : A reader's advice to C&RL editors. Author's reply
College Research Libraries, 1996
immediate past-editor of College & Research Libraries, wrote an editorial entitled "Improving Quality: An Editor's Advice to Authors" (May 1993) in which she listed reasons for rejecting articles submitted to C&RL for publication. St. Clair presented some very helpful observations and suggestions for prospective authors. This article, in response to the issues raised in St. Clair's editorial, suggests that there are many useful things that journal editors can do to help authors and to improve communication among authors, editors, and reviewers. Text Articles Over Wilson Abstracts Databas~s, Research becomes ev~n more ~cient as Wilson launch~ new full-text databases covering business, dle social sciences, the humanities and general science.