Editorial

Another year of hard and highly interesting work on manuscripts has ended. Educational Studies in Mathematics continues to receive many manuscripts, roughly in line with the previous 5 years. In 2023, ESM published three volumes, each with three issues, and a total of 82 articles. There was one special issue, edited by Pietro Di Martino, Francesca Gregorio, and Paola Iannone (Volume 113, Issue 1)—Transition from school into university mathematics: experiences across educational contexts. Currently, there are a few special issues in process, some of which we expect to see published in 2024. There is also a “supplement issue” visible online, comprising five old contributions such as ICMI study calls that had been sitting in “online first” for 12 years, which is supposed to be a place to see the most current articles. It might be an interesting sign of the automatization of publication processes that the only way to remove these old contributions from this space was to put them into an “issue”. (The articles from this supplement are not included in our article counts.)

But of course, the most important part of the publication process, the generation of its contents, is not to be automatized; it is an intense work of striving for quality. Thereby, quality refers to different types of publications. As shown in Table 1, the nine issues published in 2023 include 71 regular articles, 8 book reviews, 1 response to a book review, and 2 editorials. Of the 71 regular articles, 57 were primarily empirical, 6 theoretical, 4 review articles, 2 conceptual, 1 methodological, and 1 commentary. (We note that it is not straightforward to classify the articles in this way, so we acknowledge that others may classify the articles differently.) We particularly draw attention to the theoretical, conceptual, methodological and review papers: even if they are few, they are highly welcome in ESM. These kinds of papers can extend or deepen our field, as they often contribute perspectives that are new to us and to most ESM readers.

Table 1 Types of articles published in ESM in 2023

High-quality papers are written by individual authors, and to an increasing degree by author teams: Of the 82 articles, only 15 are single-authored, 28 had two authors, and 39 had three or more authors. These author teams are remarkably international: Of the 67 collaborations (i.e., 28 + 39), 34 of them had author teams all from the same country, 20 had author teams comprising two countries, and 13 had teams including three or more countries. We are pleased to see the diversity in this, including single-authored work and dynamic collaborations represented in the journal. It is important to us that the journal represents the perspectives and concerns of diverse people. Multi-country author teams can be part of this, but also a single-authored article can contribute to diversity by representing underrepresented people.

One vision that we have articulated for the whole journal is the better representation of all regions of the world (Mesa & Wagner, 2019). As Table 2 reveals, authors from 34 different countries contributed to ESM papers published in 2023. Given the regional flexibility in individual careers, it is complicated to read author demographics because we see many instances of people from one country working in another. In our counts, we have used the institutional affiliations and their locations as they are identified by the authors. To compare the regional coverages quantitatively, we have calculated weighted author sums so that, for example, a paper with five authors is counted in the weighted author sums with 5 × 0.2, according to the countries. This calculation reveals that ESM author country coverage still reflects the journal’s European origins, but the Americas and Asia and Pacific are getting stronger. Whereas the East–West representation is getting more equilibrated, the North–South representation is still dominated by Europe and the USA, perhaps related to the availability of research funding in these countries. We continue to encourage and support submissions from regions underrepresented in the journal.

Table 2 Countries of authors who published in ESM in 2023

In addition to the authors, more people contribute to the quality development process: It is an immense work to select good manuscripts among the many submissions and work on them with the authors so that high-quality research turns into high-quality papers with concise documentation and coherent lines of argumentation. This work is done by 11 editors (Associate Editors and Co-Editors-in-Chief) and more than 60 Editorial Board members, and by an uncounted number of reviewers.

We would like to express our gratitude to the Associate Editors, all Editorial Board members, and reviewers who continue to write high-quality reviews that help the authors and the field of mathematics education research. This has been a difficult year for so many people, so we appreciate your dedication to serving in this way. Thank you all!

We say farewell to two former Editors-in-Chief who passed away in 2023, Anna Sierpinska (serving from 2001–2005) and Alan Bishop (serving from 1977–1988). We are thankful to them both for their stewardship and leadership in our field, which came in countless ways, beyond their leadership in ESM. This issue includes a tribute for each of them.

Tommy Dreyfus has retired from our Advisory Board. We thank him not only for his work as Editor-in-Chief (serving from 2006–2008), but also for his continuing advice to subsequent Editors-in-Chief, from which we could learn so much.

Angelika Bikner-Ahsbahs and Hamsa Venkat have stepped away from their roles as Associate Editors, both of them serving in this role since 2021. We appreciate the thoughtful guidance they gave to authors while encouraging them in their work. We heartily thank Angelika and Hamsa for their service to the field!

With the departure of Angelika and Hamsa, we welcome two new Associate Editors, Mellony Graven (South Africa) and Cristina Sabena (Italy). They each bring strong expertise in mathematics education, and a wealth of international connections. In the new team, we will continue to work every day to support authors in their reporting on interesting high-quality research to produce high-quality papers.