I took over as Editor of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education (AEHE) on January 1st 2013. Having now been in post for 10 years, it seemed like a good point to reflect upon the experience and the development of the journal over that period.
The first point I would wish to stress is that editing a journal like AEHE is no small undertaking. As shows, over the ten-year period I have dealt with a total of 5476 newly submitted articles, an average of nearly 550 a year. What the table also shows, however, is that the number of submissions has been steadily increasing over the decade. Thus, in my first year, 2013, 346 new submissions were received, or about one a day. For the last three years this number has doubled to over 700, or about two a day.
Table 1. Numbers of submissions received and articles accepted 2013–2022.
A second point to stress is that, though it is a wholly English language journal, and is based for editorial purposes in the UK, the reach of AEHE is truly global. While the USA leads the way, with 658 submissions (from first authors based in the country), or 12.0% of the total, it was closely followed by Australia (537 submissions, 9.8%), the UK (525, 9.6%), China (425, 7.8%), Spain (309, 5.6%) and Turkey (272, 5.0%). A further nine countries or territories – Iran (198, 3.6%), India (190, 3.5%), Hong Kong (168, 3.1%), South Africa (128, 2.3%), Saudi Arabia (125, 2.3%), Canada (122, 2.2%), Malaysia (108, 2.0%), Taiwan (106, 1.9%) and The Netherlands (106, 1.9%) – were responsible for submitting over 100 articles each over the decade. Overall, submissions were received from 119 different countries or territories, from all continents.
It is striking that Australia was responsible for more submissions than the UK, even though the latter country and higher education system is about twice its size. Relatively speaking, higher education research is clearly more established and more highly regarded in Australia than in the UK. It is also interesting how many Asian countries are making a substantial contribution to higher education research published in the English language. The role played by Hong Kong – a former British territory now re-assimilated within China – in developing higher education research (on assessment and evaluation, as well as other topics) is particularly noteworthy.
also shows the number of articles accepted for publication in each of the last ten years. This column indicates that, as the number of articles received has risen, a more selective approach has had to be taken in deciding which are published. Whilst, at the beginning of the decade, around 20% of submitted articles were published, the proportion has fallen to around 12% in the latest figures.
The geographical distribution of articles accepted for publication is rather different from that for submissions, reflecting variations in quality (including English language quality). Amongst the major contributors, the countries achieving the highest proportion of articles accepted were The Netherlands, with 35.8%, and Hong Kong, with 35.1%. These were followed by the UK (30.7%), Australia (29.8%), Canada (22.1%), South Africa (18.0%), the USA (12.3%) and Spain (12.0%). No other country achieved a publication rate of over 10% of articles submitted China managed 8.9% and Turkey just 2.6%.
shows the number of submissions received from the ten most prolific countries for each of the last ten years, revealing that the patterns of submissions are changing in this respect. While the contribution made by most of the countries identified – the USA, Australia, the UK, Spain, Turkey, Iran and South Africa – appears to be fairly stable or only slowly growing, in both India and Hong Kong there has been a significant growth over the decade, while the contribution made by authors based in China has been expanding rapidly: so much so that it has now overtaken the USA as the most prolific contributor.
Table 2. Number of submissions received from ten most prolific countries, 2013–2022.
Editor
Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education