Editorial

Abstract

Turkey heading the list. Overall submissions came from over 50 countries. To give you a flavour of the current state of play, in 2017 BJET received over 300 submissions, of which around 12% were ultimately accepted. However, a high proportion of submissions were not of a sufficient standard to send out to reviewers because, for example, their contribution to the field was limited, they were poorly presented or out of scope. The acceptance rate for peer-reviewed manuscripts was approximately 30%. To further support authors, we recently introduced a new decision category of Reject and Resubmit Before Peer Review; this enables more articles to be given a chance of publication and allows authors to improve the quality of their manuscripts by addressing the most obvious flaws before they are sent to reviewers. We are also increasing the word length from 6000 words including references to 6000 words excluding references, from January 1, 2018.A key issue which is highly pertinent for us as Editors is the ongoing need for more critical and theoretical approaches to research in the area of educational technology. We co-organised an event on this topic in April 2017 at The Open University in Milton Keynes, jointly with the BERA Educational Technology Special Interest Group, led by Christothea Herodotou. Speakers included Professor Jill Jameson, Professor Martin Oliver, Professor Eileen Scanlon and Dr Sara Hennessy on behalf of the BJET Editorial team. Issues raised included the observation that technology is not neutral, and that participatory design of technology applications needs to be authentic for sustainability. Martin Oliver pointed out that the field of educational technology has been shaped by instrumental concerns, whereas a critical orientation invites other kinds of questions and consideration of the views, interests and power of different groups. He called for researchers to consider "changes to the unit of analysis, from self-contained technology to networks of people and things." We also "need to bring in people and things that resist our work, as well as those that support it-both in the interests of sustainability and justice." As Editors, we certainly feel that some of the assumptions made by researchers in this field need to be questioned and underpinning concepts problematised far more than at present; this self-critical reflection and reflexivity should be made explicit in articles.

Revisiting five decades of educational technology research: A content and authorship analysis of the British Journal of Educational Technology

“…Indeed, it has been found that many educational technology articles lack guiding theoretical or conceptual frameworks (Antonenko, ; Karabulut‐Ilgu, Jaramillo Cherrez, & Jahren, ). In the past 18 months, this has become a key focus of the BJET editorial team (Hennessy, Girvan, Mavrikis, Price, & Winters, ), including the organisation of events at the Open University (OU), and a Special Issue to be published later in 2019 on “Developing Critical and Theoretical Approaches to Educational Technology Research and Practice,” to be edited by Professor Jill Jameson.…”

“…All articles finally accepted or rejected are considered carefully by at least two editors. Whilst only 13% of submissions were ultimately accepted for publication in 2017, many of them were outside of the journal’s scope, or were not of a sufficient quality to be sent for peer review, with 30% of peer‐reviewed articles ultimately published (Hennessy et al , ).…”

“…Approaching this important milestone prompted the editorial team and the authors of this paper to consider the contribution that BJET has made to the field, but also to question the identity of the journal and in particular to ponder how “British” the British Journal of Educational Technology actually is. In a recent editorial (Hennessy, Girvan, Mavrikis, Price, & Winters, ), the editors posited that “ BJET remains remarkably international despite its name” (p. 3), with UK contributions totalling 16% of articles in 2017, and the rest hailing from 19 different countries. Upon closer inspection of the origin of all authors who were published in BJET in 2017, 51% were from Europe, 23% from North America, 22% from Asia and 17% were from Oceania, whilst contributions from the Middle East, Africa and South America represented only 7%, 4% and 2% respectively.…”

“…Aside from the analyses identified above, the editors of BJET have also used their editorials to probe popular topics across submissions (Rushby, ) and advise of changes to the journal’s Impact Factor and ISI Journal Citation Reports Ranking (Hennessy et al , ). They have stressed the importance of increasing BJET ’s “quality, reach and impact” (Girvan et al , , p. 3).…”

Developing critical and theoretical approaches to educational technology research and practice

“…This 50th Anniversary BJET special section on Developing Critical and Theoretical Approaches to Educational Technology Research and Practice aims to generate new responses to BJET Editorial Team reflections in 2017–19 on the need for greater critical evaluation and theoretical development within the journal and indeed the field of educational technology research (Hennessy, Girvan, Mavrikis, Price, & Winters, ; Hennessy, Mavrikis, Girvan, Price, & Winters, ). These reflections are linked not only with editorials, reviews and articles over those years, but also with two seminars on Critical, Theoretical (2017) and Methodological (2018) Approaches to EdTech Research co‐organised by BJET with the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Educational Technology Special Interest Group and The Open University.…”