Our Thanks
Dr M. Gail Jones, Co-Editor in Chief
All of us in the International Journal of Science Education extend our warmest thanks to Dr Jan van Driel who is stepping down as Co-Editor in Chief. Jan has served in this role since 2016 and has tirelessly given his time, energy, intellect, and leadership to make IJSE the outstanding journal that it has become. He has extended his expertise to help emerging scholars from around the world improve and publish their research. He has worked hard to uphold the highest ethical publishing standards and push scholars towards excellence in research. We will miss Jan at IJSE but also thank him for his many years of service to the journal and the field. We wish him the best as he takes on new endeavours in science education.
Also transitioning to new opportunities is our editorial assistant, Dr Victoria Millar. She has served the journal for six years and has been an invaluable asset. Her expertise and knowledge of the submission and review process will be missed. We wish her the best in her research and future work in science education.
Welcoming the New Co-Editor in Chief, Editor, and Editorial Assistant
The journal welcomes Dr Ron Blonder, Professor in the Department of Science Teaching at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, as the new Co-Editor in Chief. Ron is the head of the Chemistry Group and the head of the Rothschild-Weizmann Master’s Programme for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Her research focuses on chemistry teachers’ professional development with technological tools in innovative environments. Having served as Editor for the journal for the last two years, Ron brings expertise and energy to help us shape the journal in the coming years. We look forward to her leadership and welcome her to this new role.
Dr Vanessa Kind, Professor of Education and Head of the School of Education, University of Leads, is joining IJSE as an Editor. Vanessa is a chemistry educator with extensive experience in teacher education. IJSE is pleased to have her join the team of editors.
We also welcome Inbal Salomon Hai as a new editorial assistant with the International Journal of Science Education.
Farewell Note
Dr Jan van Driel, Co-Editor in Chief
It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve as co-Editor-in-Chief of this journal for the last seven years. I remember very well the first manuscript I submitted to the International Journal of Science Education (IJSE) in 1997. At the time, authors were required to send six hard copies to the Editor, Prof John Gilbert. The manuscript was based on my PhD thesis, and I was over the moon that it was accepted for publication. I met John Gilbert at a NARST conference around the time the article was published. We found out that we had a common research interest (i.e., in models and modelling in science education) and we developed a strong collegial relationship. I started reviewing for IJSE, and in 2003, John asked me to become the Reviews Editor for the journal. From 2003 to 2009, my role was to identify books that were potentially of interest to the readership of IJSE, and to invite people to write reviews about these books. In 2009, John became Editor-in-Chief, and he invited me to be one of the journal’s editors. In 2016, I joined him as co-Editor-in-Chief. John retired from this role at the end of 2017, to continue as one of the editors of IJSE Part B. During the next two years, I was on my own as Editor-in-Chief, until Gail Jones joined me in 2020 as co-Editor-in-Chief. After 20 years of serving the journal in these different roles, I have decided to step back.
Obviously, a lot has changed in this period. To keep up with the increasing numbers of submitted manuscripts, the number of issues per volume was expanded from 12 to 15 in 2004 and to 18 in 2009. Since then, the number of submissions has been fairly stable, fluctuating around 600 manuscripts per year, but peaking in the COVID-19 years 2020 (740) and 2021 (671; note that these numbers are combined submissions to IJSE Parts A and B). Thank goodness for online management systems (in our case ScholarOne) to facilitate the submission and review process! Since 2010, IJSE published about 140 articles per year, our overall acceptance rate averaging around 20%. Our Impact Factor (Clarivate) has grown from 1.2 (2011) to 2.5 (2021) and our CiteScore (Scopus) increased from 1.8 (2013) to 4.1 (2021). The number of downloaded articles per year has quadrupled since 2012 to almost 600,000 in 2021. Whatever one wants to make of these numbers, I think it is fair to say that IJSE is doing fine.
An analysis of trends in published research in IJSE is beyond the scope of this note; however, the reader is referred to the series of reviews that IJSE has published every five years since 1998 of a systematic content analysis of publications in science education journals, including IJSE. (The most recent review covered the period 2013–2017, see Lin et al., Citation2019). Referring to the name of the journal, I’d like to point out two things. First, IJSE is a truly international journal. The Top 8 countries in terms of numbers of submissions are spread over four continents: USA, Turkey, China, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. Unfortunately, submissions from developing countries tend to have a lower acceptance rate. One of the challenges for all authors is that things they tend to take for granted need to be explained to an audience that is unfamiliar with their curriculum, education systems and policies. Second, IJSE is about science education. As explained on our website, we publish ‘scholarly papers that focus on the teaching and learning of science in school settings ranging from early childhood to university education’. You may be surprised to know that we reject many submissions upfront because they do not focus on science education in any way. Sometimes ‘science’ is used as a convenient context (e.g., in a study about self-regulation that collected data among a cohort of science undergraduates), and sometimes science is invisible (e.g., in a paper about STEM education), or absent altogether. Typically, these manuscripts do not contain any references to research in science education.
I’d like to conclude this short note by thanking people. In the first place, my sincere gratitude to the authors and reviewers who literally produce the journal. I thank the authors for their patience and willingness to revise their manuscripts, sometimes up to three times, while explaining their revisions in a detailed letter. Most authors also review for the journal, which is only fair: peer review means that your colleagues make an effort to review your manuscript and thus you’re expected to return the favour at some point. Reviewing is usually a thankless job, apart from the auto-generated letter containing the reviews from the other reviewer(s). To recognise reviewer excellence, Gail Jones and I have identified people who consistently write good reviews for IJSE and sent out certificates. We intend to continue this approach in the future.
Finally, I’d like to express my thanks to some of the people who worked closely with me on the journal over the past 20 years. First, I am deeply grateful for the generous and valuable mentorship that the late John Gilbert provided to me over many years, from when I first began through to our co-editorship. Second, I am very grateful for the collaboration in the last three years with Gail Jones. It has been fantastic to bounce off ideas with her, discuss ‘difficult cases’, knowing that she always responds quickly and constructively. Our jobs are made easier by our fantastic group of editors. In order of how long they have served: David Treagust, Hans Fischer, Sibel Erduran, Justin Dillon, Chin-Chung Tsai, Sarah Carrier, Ron Blonder, Valarie Akerson, and Knut Neumann. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with all of you! I have also been very fortunate to work closely with Victoria Millar since 2017. As assistant editor, she has screened the incoming submissions, and together we discussed issues related to manuscript scope, similarity, or ethics. Finally, I want to offer thanks to the staff of Taylor & Francis who support the day-to-day operations, in particular, the staff who have managed the journal since I became involved in it: Ian White, David Boyt and currently, Jennifer Paul. I am confident that the future of the International Journal of Science Education looks bright in your capable hands.