Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

This journal publishes original articles on the latest issues and trends occurring internationally in science curriculum, instruction, learning, policy, and preparation of science teachers with the aim to advance our knowledge of innovative science education theory and practice. In addition to original articles, the journal features the following special sections:

  • Learning : consisting of theoretical and empirical research studies on learning of science. We invite manuscripts that investigate learning and its change and growth from various lenses, including psychological, social, cognitive, sociohistorical, and affective. Studies examining the relationship of learning to teaching, the science knowledge and practices, the learners themselves, and the contexts (social, political, physical, ideological, institutional, epistemological, and cultural) are similarly welcome.
  • Issues and Trends : consisting primarily of analytical, interpretive, or persuasive essays on current educational, social, or philosophical issues and trends relevant to the teaching of science. This special section particularly seeks to promote informed dialogues about current issues in science education, and carefully reasoned papers representing disparate viewpoints are welcomed. Manuscripts submitted for this section may be in the form of a position paper, a polemical piece, or a creative commentary.
  • Science Learning in Everyday Life : consisting of analytical, interpretative, or philosophical papers regarding learning science outside of the formal classroom. Papers should investigate experiences in settings such as community, home, the Internet, after school settings, museums, and other opportunities that develop science interest, knowledge or practices across the life span. Attention to issues and factors relating to equity in science learning are especially encouraged..
  • Science Teacher Education : consisting of original empirical and/or theoretical research that examines the preparation of teachers, the work of teachers, or how teachers' work is influenced by a broader context. "Teacher education" refers to development throughout the continuum of one’s teaching career, from pre-service, through induction, into advanced professional stages of teaching.
  • Science Education Policy : including reports about the goals and/or underlying principles of policies adopted by government, interest groups, school districts, etc., and their effect on science teaching and learning. Additionally, research on science education policy relates to a critical examination of how theory, research, and practice of science education are influenced by policy decisions.
  • Science Studies and Science Education : provides a forum for interdisciplinary investigations into science and science education. It informs and derives perspectives from history, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology of science as well as cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence to contribute to the theory, methodology, policy, and practice of science education.

The Journal Editorial Board invites any manuscript addressing a relevant science education topic that employs an established and recognized scholarly approach and also impacts or is generalizable to national and international populations. Quantitative research reports that employ sophisticated research designs (e.g. MANOVAs linear modeling) and qualitative research reports that rigorously follow naturalistic research methods are preferred. One or two variable tests employing simple inferential statistics (e.g. ANOVA or ANCOVA) and poorly described and argued qualitative research are discouraged. All manuscripts must provide a thorough review of the literature that establishes the research problem or the issue at hand as well as a thorough conclusion that addresses the implications and limitations of the research or argument.

 

Section Policies

Articles

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

The research article submitted to this online journal will be peer-reviewed at least 2 (two) reviewers. The accepted research articles will be available online following the journal by double blind peer-reviewing process. Language used in this journal is prefer in English, but Bahasa also can be used.

Peer review is designed to assess the validity, quality and often the originality of articles for publication. Its ultimate purpose is to maintain the integrity of science by filtering out invalid or poor quality articles.

From a publisher’s perspective, peer review functions as a filter for content, directing better quality articles to better quality journals and so creating journal brands.

Running articles through the process of peer review adds value to them. For this reason publishers need to make sure that peer review is robust.

Plagiarism Checking

The author should declare that the manuscript must be original and never publish in other journal.

Editor Feedback

"Pointing out the specifics about flaws in the paper’s structure is paramount. Are methods valid, is data clearly presented, and are conclusions supported by data?” (Editor feedback)

“If an editor can read your comments and understand clearly the basis for your recommendation, then you have written a helpful review.” (Editor feedback)

Peer Review at Its Best

What peer review does best is improve the quality of published papers by motivating authors to submit good quality work – and helping to improve that work through the peer review process. 

In fact, 90% of researchers feel that peer review improves the quality of their published paper (University of Tennessee and CIBER Research Ltd, 2013).

 

Publication Frequency

The journal was first published in June 2012.
During 2012-2018, the journal published every June and December.
Starting in 2019, the journal published every April, August, and December. There are at least 15 articles published per year.
 
 

Open Acces Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal is open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to users or / institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to full text articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is in accordance with Budapest Open Access Initiative

 

Budapest Open Access Initiative

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.

For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibilityreadership, and impact. To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access to the rest of this literature and remove the barriers, especially the price barriers, that stand in the way. The more who join the effort to advance this cause, the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access.

The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

While  the peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers, it is not costless to produce. However, experiments show that the overall costs of providing open access to this literature are far lower than the costs of traditional forms of dissemination. With such an opportunity to save money and expand the scope of dissemination at the same time, there is today a strong incentive for professional associations, universities, libraries, foundations, and others to embrace open access as a means of advancing their missions. Achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian.

To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies.

I. Self-Archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called, self-archiving. When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, then search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents.

II. Open-access Journals: Second, scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access. Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses. There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives.


Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving (I.) and a new generation of open-access journals (II.) are the ways to attain this goal. They are not only direct and effective means to this end, they are within the reach of scholars themselves, immediately, and need not wait on changes brought about by markets or legislation. While we endorse the two strategies just outlined, we also encourage experimentation with further ways to make the transition from the present methods of dissemination to open access. Flexibility, experimentation, and adaptation to local circumstances are the best ways to assure that progress in diverse settings will be rapid, secure, and long-lived.

The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal. It will use its resources and influence to extend and promote institutional self-archiving, to launch new open-access journals, and to help an open-access journal system become economically self-sustaining. While the Open Society Institute's commitment and resources are substantial, this initiative is very much in need of other organizations to lend their effort and resources.

We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish.

February 14, 2002
Budapest, Hungary

Leslie Chan: Bioline International
Darius Cuplinskas
: Director, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Michael Eisen
: Public Library of Science
Fred Friend
: Director Scholarly Communication, University College London
Yana Genova
: Next Page Foundation
Jean-Claude Guédon: University of Montreal
Melissa Hagemann
: Program Officer, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Stevan Harnad: Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Rick Johnson
: Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Rima Kupryte: Open Society Institute
Manfredi La Manna
: Electronic Society for Social Scientists 
István Rév: Open Society Institute, Open Society Archives
Monika Segbert: eIFL Project consultant 
Sidnei de Souza
: Informatics Director at CRIA, Bioline International
Peter Suber
: Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College & The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
Jan Velterop
: Publisher, BioMed Central

 

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.More...

 

Copyright Notice

Creative Commons License 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

 

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

 

Author Fees

This journal charges the following author fees.

Article Submission: 0.00 (USD)

Fast-Track Review: 0.00 (USD)

Article Publication: 0.00 (USD)