Academic journals and the politics of publication in adult, continuing and lifelong education

On 9 September 2016, the Triennial Conference of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) hosted a symposium on ‘The politics of publishing in research journals within the field of adult education and learning’. For the occasion, the editors of five research-based journals in adult, continuing and lifelong education had been invited to reflect on and debate two issues: How do articles submitted to and published in these journals contribute to constructing the ‘field’ of adult education and to shaping ‘trends’ within it? In what ways do these journals see themselves as ‘international’, and what geographical and linguistic concerns come with such an attribution or aspiration? The journals were the Adult Education Quarterly (AEQ), a US-based journal published by SAGE on behalf of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education; Studies in Continuing Education (SiCE), an Australian-based journal published by Taylor & Francis; Studies in the Education of Adults (SiEA), a UK-based journal published by Taylor & Francis in association with the Standing Conference on University Research and Teaching in the Education of Adults,¹ and our own International Journal of Lifelong Education (IJLE). The organiser himself is an editor of the European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults (RELA), a more recently established research-based journal hosted by a Swedish university, but published on behalf of ESREA.

Those of us representing IJLE at the symposium enjoyed the discussion and found it positive that the editors of different journals involved in publishing in adult, continuing and lifelong education came together to reflect on and debate – as a ‘visible’ college, to paraphrase Larsson (2010) – such important issues.

Still, a few matters are worthy of further debate. Particularly, the politics of publication that goes beyond journal editors’ gate-keeping function. Although the editors present spoke from different theoretical, cultural and scientific positions, they all agreed that they can only work with the manuscripts submitted for publication. What is not submitted will not be considered. But what contributes to an author’s choice to disseminate his or her research through an English-speaking, internationally oriented, journal? And on which ground does she or he opt to submit a manuscript for consideration to this or that journal?

In a previous editorial, we discussed the politics of journal listing and rating that result from measurements such as the ‘Impact Factor’, and particularly how they currently shape national practices in distributing research funds and regulating academic careers. At that time we concluded that:

there is a need to explore further the bibliometric logics that emerge from the ‘economy of publications and citations’ in our field, and the effects of journal listing and rating on research funding and career advancement. (IJLE, Vol. 34(3), 2015, p. 249)

Our reflections now, just over a year later, are informed by further bibliometric (Fejes & Nylander, 2015) and mapping (Rubenson & Elfert, 2015) exercises undertaken in our field: their results have been published, but were also presented at the 2016 ESREA Triennial Conference. This work has expanded slightly the selection of journals under consideration, including, for example, the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education (CJSAE), published thanks to a multi-university initiative started by a Canadian university, on behalf of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, and the International Journal of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning, published by the University of Hong Kong School of Processional and Continuing Education from 2008 until it was sadly discontinued in May 2016.

From this developing literature, a number of further issues relating to the politics of publication in adult, continuing and lifelong education emerge.

Research-based journals that – regardless of the geographical location where they were ‘born’ – use English as their working language and see themselves as ‘international’, follow two main pathways to pursue their aspirations and to survive ranking and rating pressures and latest developments in the academic publishing market. This seems true whether they are published independently or on behalf of a scientific or professional organisation. On the one hand are journals published by large commercial publishing groups such as Taylor & Francis (e.g. IJLE, SiCE, SiEA) or SAGE (e.g. AEQ and the Journal of Adult and Continuing Education). On the other hand are those that publish open source at zero costs to their authors as well as their readers under creative commons copyrights: examples in our field are RELA and CJSAE.

While each option has advantages and disadvantages, both contribute to the politics of publication in different ways, and are of course not independent of the broader trends in academic publishing (such as the ‘rating & ranking’ mentioned above). Each contributes to reinforcing a kind of cultural hegemony, to use Gramsci’s (1971) term. Inseparable from political hegemony, this concept captures the capacity to guide the symbolic elaboration of academics’ publication choices by those holding the power to decide how highly journals are valued, in ways that influence academic careers but remain bound to the country (and at times institution) in which an academic resides and works.

This is especially significant for doctoral students when, for instance, they are given the option (or even encouraged by their supervisors), to submit a thesis on the basis of published work rather than in the traditional form. (The precise format of doctorates by published work varies, but may for instance require three or four papers considered ‘publishable’ by refereed journals, complemented by an introduction and a conclusion.) Advocates of such theses stress that in this way the overall length of the final product is reduced to approximately half the length of a conventional thesis (i.e. the doctoral student will write less), and that the research will be made available to a larger community (so the student’s work will be more widely recognised). Opponents emphasise the time pressure that comes with it (students must write for a wider public from early in their studies), and the constraints on the type of knowledge that can be produced when conveyed in manner that must fit the length and requirements for journal articles (students must opt for research topics that do not require in-depth, lengthy exposition).

But this is also significant for mid-career researchers who, for instance, may be under pressure by their institutions or colleagues to write more journal articles than books to enhance academic ‘productivity’ or to achieve greater academic recognition (such as the number of citations). Advocates to privileging journal articles rather than books stress the importance of sharing research results faster so that the scientific community, practitioners and policy-makers can make better use of them; opponents tend to stress the importance of more extensive development of an argument in order to make a really novel contribution to knowledge.

Arguably late career academics alone maintain a higher degree of individual autonomy on when and how to publish – yet even they must preserve their status and position in increasingly competitive environments, at least until formal retirement.

One of the risks of the ‘publish or perish’ imperative is that too much may be published too soon, thus affecting the quality of the research that is published. This is particularly so in those areas of scholarly work that attract higher policy attention, and may be under the demands for instant results. Yet, scholarship is about developing knowledge, and this at times requires a different pace that policy may request. Also externally funded research tends to be framed from the funders’ demands and expectations for instant or quick ‘deliverables’, but well-grounded empirical work like theory development usually require longer time for data to be gathered and analysed, and reflection to mature.

In conclusion, we value high-quality research and scholarship in all its forms and recognise that not all contributions to the field of adult, continuing and lifelong education can be produced quickly or disseminated through journal articles. This is why different forms of writings are to be valued, including book reviews that are usually not counted in terms of ‘academic productivity’. We think the field would not have been as strong as it is if work such as Richard Edwards and Robin Usher’s work on Globalisation and Pedagogy² (Waters, 2008) or Peter Jarvis’ trilogy on Lifelong learning and the learning society³ (Jansen, 2007; Rogers, 2009), just to mention a few examples, had not been published. Consequently, reviewing such books is an inherent part of the scholarly debate that takes place through the pages of an academic journal.

Marcella Milana,
Steven Hodge,
John Holford,
Richard Waller,
Sue Webb

Notes

1. Until recently, SiEA was published by the National Institute of Continuing Education. However, as a result of the latter’s recent travails (see our editorial in Vol. 34(3), 2016), publication moved to Taylor & Francis. SiEA was represented at the symposium by a member of its editorial board, rather than by one of its editors.

2. First appeared with Routledge in 2000, and again in 2008 (2nd edition).

3. Comprised of: Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Human Learning, Routledge, 2006; Globalization, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society, Routledge, 2007; Democracy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society, Routledge, 2008.