Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research - Editors' Note
New phase of the Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research. Dissemination, outreach and social contribution as challenges of publishing in Educational Sciences.
In 2012 Prof. Dr. Rosabel Roig-Vila (University of Alicante) and Prof. Dr. Santiago Mengual-Andrés (University of Valencia) initiated the Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research (NAER) project within the EDUTIC-ADEI research group at the University of Alicante, of which they were both members. In July 2012 a project was born which, 12 years on, maintains the intensive editorial activity through which the joint vocation of the whole editorial team and its readers to contribute to disseminating scientific-educational knowledge has remained its driving focus.
The project began as a complement to the canonical Spanish educational science journals, which were mainly linked to scientific associations. NAER arose with the aim of covering the need to disseminate in English contributions from the Spanish national sphere in order to reach an international audience. With this premise, the journal began publishing two issues per year in English, with translations of all its texts into Spanish.
NAER has always been characterised by its innovation, by a strong commitment to the inclusion of the main novelties of mainstream publishing in digital scientific journals, and by generating a knowledge capital that has allowed us to advise other colleagues, journals and institutions altruistically, both nationally and internationally. This work has been highly satisfactory and we believe that it has contributed to improving the editorial quality of our environment and the professionalisation of journal publishing.
All this work has been developed through the selflessness of the whole group of people who have worked on the project, using their own resources and time, and with the institutional support of the University of Alicante throughout the first stage of the journal.
NAER, a generalist in the field of educational sciences, has faced the complex challenge of serving propaedeutic and generalist functions. In this sense, it has covered diverse topics, focusing on different monographs that have centred on Educational Policy, Video Games and Education, Young People in the Hyperconnectivity Era, Critical Research in Educational Technology, diversity and the improvement of the quality of education, the pedagogical implications of applied linguistics, Personal Learning Environments, Bullying and Cyberbullying in schools, the University in the Digital Era, Intercultural Education in K-12 and the scientific evidence related to STEAM areas in the classroom. All these contributions have been developed without neglecting the research section, which has covered all areas of educational sciences, from Theory and History of Education to Specific Didactics.
A total of 23 issues and 223 articles have positioned NAER in the main quality indexes, citation indexes and relevant databases. We highlight the Q1 positions in the Scimago Journal & Country Rank and in CitesCore of Scopus (97th percentile), an impact factor of 4.5 on the Web of Science in 2022, and coverage in recognised databases or products such as Proquest, EBSCO or ERIC, without neglecting the Spanish seal of quality for scientific journals awarded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT).
However, the life of the journal has not been without problems, dilemmas, challenges and the need to reach a wider audience, both in terms of readership and the number of authors and contributions. As a result of the dissemination and growth of NAER in terms of content quality and international recognition, there has been a substantial increase in the number of manuscripts received in the last three years. The overall management of NAER's editorial process was already an arduous work overload in all senses of the word for the various committees of the journal, and for the Editorial Team in particular. The control and supervision of each and every one of NAER's editorial phases in order to achieve, maintain and grow the journal's high quality standards necessitated demanding and resource-intensive work. All of this made it advisable to be able to count on professional, specialised and international management, in order to continue to provide an optimal response to authors and readers.
During all these years, intensive editorial activity has been carried out with enthusiasm. This enthusiasm, coupled with the excellent work of the editorial team as a whole – both the editorial committee and the international scientific committee – and of each and every one of the numerous referees who have always contributed the best of their knowledge and scientific experience, has always been paramount. Together they have ensured that NAER has been included in the main selective catalogues and selective indexes of international quality and impact. The editorial team as a whole has managed to contribute to the dissemination (and generation) of innovative knowledge in Educational Sciences and to the recognition of NAER as a consolidated scientific journal.
After a calm but rigorous search for a publisher that could take on our scientific publishing services, Springer Nature will now advise the NAER project in this second stage, with the aim of increasing the dissemination, quality and scope of our content.
The editorial team, its independence, and our scope, focus and thematic areas of coverage will not change. Continuous editing is established as the new periodicity; this removes the article limit that the old conditions set for us, which will hopefully help the author community to disseminate their contributions in our source, the Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research.