What is an academic journal?
What does it mean to be What does the submission the editor of The Australian process look like? Educational Researcher Journal?
What does the review process look like?
Before submitting their paper, authors
If we decide that the paper should
As Editor-in-Chief of The Australian
prepare an anonymised version of the
go for review, then we look for two
Educational Researcher, I lead a team
paper, which includes neither their name,
reviewers who have a good level of
of eight Associate Editors, so I don’t act
nor anything else that might identify
expertise in the area of the paper and
alone, but that said, the final decision
them. All papers submitted to the journal
invite them to review it. If they accept the
over what we publish rests with me.
are subject to double blind review,
invitation, we give them four weeks to
When a paper is submitted to the journal,
meaning that the reviewers don’t know
read the paper, write some constructive
our Co-ordinating Associate Editor will
who the author is (although if the paper
feedback to the author and make a
allocate it to a member of the team to
is published they eventually find out!)
recommendation to the Editorial Team.
‘manage’ (as we call it) over its life with
and the authors don’t know who the
Their recommendation can be ‘Accept’,
the journal. She tries to allocate papers
reviewers are.
‘Request Minor Revisions’, ‘Request Major Revisions’ or ‘Reject’.
according to our own areas of expertise – the team includes people with many different research interests, including educational psychology, educational sociology, education policy studies, curriculum and pedagogy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education, mathematics education, literacy education and so on – but sometimes we are also called upon to manage papers outside of our areas. She makes sure that she avoids any known conflicts of interest for the editorial team. So, for example, we don’t manage papers submitted by people who work at the same university as we do, or with whom we have research partnerships, but we also keep a keen eye on that individually.
The first thing we do upon receipt of a manuscript is to read it closely and make
In my time as a journal editor, I have
a decision about whether it should go
never known one paper to be accepted
out for review. We make this first decision
without any revisions, and I could count
on the basis of whether we think the
on one hand the number that are
paper is a good fit for our readership and
accepted after only minor revisions.
the aims of our journal, and whether
The majority of published papers would
we think the quality of the research
have been through a round of major
and writing makes the paper a potential
revisions and then a further round of
candidate for publication. If we decide at
minor ones, and sometimes more.
that point that the paper should not be sent to reviewers, we write the authors
When the reviews come in, the editor
some feedback, to give them an idea of
managing the paper makes an on-
what they might do to improve the paper
balance decision, based on their own
to get it ready for submitting elsewhere.
reading of the paper and the comments and recommendations of the reviewers. Sometimes it’s a relatively straightforward matter – for example where both reviewers recommend major revisions and their suggestions for improvement are similar – but sometimes it’s more complex, for example if one reviewer has recommended minor revisions and the other has recommended the paper be rejected. In those difficult cases, especially if the paper isn’t directly in an area where the managing editor or I have great expertise, we will go to a third
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Illuminate Research and Innovation
reviewer to help us make the decision.
