For the past 42 years, the Community College Journal of Research and Practice (CCJRP) has remained a steadfast supporter, sustaining its commitment to serve as a forum for researchers and practitioners to publish scholarship of the highest caliber about ideas, research and innovations in the field of community college education. Since the journal’s inception in 1976 to 2018, the CCJRP has published 504 issues, including dozens of special issues about contemporary issues and challenges facing community colleges. The CCJRP’s full-length manuscripts are double-blind peer reviewed and our success is dependent upon dozens of expert scholars and practitioners who serve as volunteer reviewers. This essay highlights our 2018 volume year, previews our issues for 2019, describes our editorial and publication processes, and thanks dozens of volunteers who have contributed to the success of the CCJRP.
Looking back- 2018
In 2018, the CCJRP’s 42nd volume was comprised of 62 full-length articles, 18 Exchange articles, four recently published dissertation forums, and eight editorials which were authored by 179 researchers, scholars, and practitioners. The 42nd volume included a myriad of community college subject areas ranging from drug-free campuses, competencies learned in sub-baccalaureate degree programs, study abroad participation, academically at-risk students, adjunct faculty, the Tennessee Promise, Texas’s performance funding model, community college presidential departure, communicating grades, LGBTQ students, students with disabilities, financial literacy and Latino males, homelessness and housing insecurity, high-achieving African-American students, increase student completion, massive open online courses, post-transfer involvement, supporting veteran transitions, and measuring and meeting the community’s needs. The 80 full-length and Exchange articles were clustered into the following themes: community college campus, community college degree offerings: associate and baccalaureate degrees, curriculum, developmental education, faculty, finance, leadership, policies, students, student learning outcomes, student success, technology, transfer, veterans, and workforce development.
In 2018, the CCJRP published three special issues. The Council for the Study of Community College (CSCC) Research issue highlighted research from the CSCC 2017 research conference. Manuscripts were submitted by CSCC members who, in 2017, presented at the 59th Annual CSCC Conference held in Fort Worth, Texas. Gratitude is extended to the CSCC Special Issue Guest Editors—Gianna Ramdin, Cristobal Salinas Jr., and Delores E. McNair. This special issue included seven full-length manuscripts and four shorter Exchange articles that highlighted a variety of topics in community college research. The topics included academic dismissal, economic impact of certificates, associate’s and bachelor’s degrees, gateways to higher education for refugee students, implementing an iPad campus initiative, metrics used to measure student success, multicultural curriculum in developmental education, policies pertaining to the communication of grades, and spirituality and the role of spirituality for Black male community college students.
The second special issue was the Essential Principles toward Success: Best Practice of Bellwether Programs. The Bellwether Awards, established in 1995, are an essential component of the Community College Futures Assembly. This program is supported by the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Florida. By documenting and publishing innovative community college Bellwether programs, the CCJRP demonstrated our continued support of practitioners and their important work in the field. Six full-length case studies were organized into three central themes: mission-driven institutions, adaptability in alignment with mission, and strategic partnerships. The special issue’s collection of topics included developmental mathematics approach, student completion, open campus, Associate of Science degree programs, strategic partnerships, and managing resources. I am grateful to Bellwether Special Issue Guest Editors, Xiaodan Hu and Dale Campbell, for their dedicated work to prepare papers for publication about these innovative programs and practices.
The third special issue was the Current Initiatives and Trends in Higher Education: The Role of Student Affairs in Advancing Community College Student Success. Guest editors C. Casey Ozaki and Paulette Dalpes are to be commended for their commitment to advancing community college student affairs scholarly research from the practitioner’s purview and for curating and editing this distinguished collection of articles. An important element of supporting and sustaining our work in community colleges, especially our student success efforts, depends on documenting what works and does not work, while also providing a voice for practitioners about innovations. Reporting the efforts of practitioners is critical to sustaining scholarship and legacy building. This special issue does just that by focusing on student success initiatives and trends shaping student experiences. This special issue consisted of seven full-length manuscripts with topics focused on building student affairs assessment capacity, Salt Lake Community College Promise Program, student services for immigrant populations, LGBTQ student services resource availability, The Completion Agenda impact on student affairs practice, student affairs practice in community college redesign, and preserving the legacy of Dr. Jill Biden in a post-Obama era.
Looking forward—2019
Looking forward, I am thrilled to share that the CCJRP will be publishing, in 2019, its first ever Graduate Students’ Research special issue. The aim of the special issue is to create a space for an exchange of ideas, research, and empirically tested educational innovations, through the lens of graduate students. In a committed effort to support emerging scholars, the special issue will be the first of its kind to grant graduate students the opportunity to publish their community college research in a scholarly peer reviewed journal. Faculty and mentors may be co-authors and assist, but all first authors in this issue will be graduate students. The Special Issue Guest Editors are Cristobal Salinas Jr., Sim Barhoum, Ethan Swingle, María-Jose Zeledón, and Gianna Ramdin. We anticipate that providing access to graduate students to publish their research—even if receiving mentorship and assistance from faculty—we will afford graduate students opportunities to be engaged through the entire processes from submission, through the review and revision stages, to the production stages, and finally to publication. Our aim is to support graduate students and their research, encourage mentoring of graduate students, and encourage sustainability of publishing works throughout careers of faculty and practitioners alike.
In 2019, our readers can anticipate finding full-length, shorter Exchange articles, and book reviews focusing on a diversity of community college focus areas. A few topics the CCJRP readers can look forward to include manuscripts about academic advising, articulation agreements, campus carry law, campus involvement, degree completion, distant education, early childhood education programs, faculty search committees, financial aid consortium, first-generation engineering transfer students, guided pathways, international education, mental health services for at-risk students, and sexual health. Our readers can also anticipate pioneering, practitioner-based articles from the United States and across the globe in the upcoming 43rd volume of the CCJRP.
Timely decisions, increased impact, and publishing processes
The CCJRP is actively engaged in supporting our authors throughout the editorial and publication process. We are honored when an author submits a paper for our consideration and we try to respect our authors by doing our best to provide timely decisions and feedback throughout the processes. While some manuscripts take longer to review and formulate a decision, our average time for submission to final decision was 69 days in 2018. Often manuscripts are sent back to authors for revision prior to a final decision which adds time to the review process. Then, additional time is budgeted for accepted manuscripts to go through robust copy-editing reviews by our editorial team prior to another copy-editing round by the Taylor & Francis Publishing team. Our teams work tirelessly to give authors’ manuscripts the careful attention they deserve prior to formal publication and these processes. These processes often add about two to three months to the production processes. Our aim is to publish quality research and scholarship in a timely fashion and in a manner that affords the readers and authors access as soon as possible.
Taylor & Francis implements an iFirst online manuscript system that affords the CCJRP an opportunity to post articles online shortly after final production approval. Each article is assigned a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and then posted online. Through DOIs, iFirst articles may be cited immediately which extends the citation window and affords opportunities to increase the manuscript’s Impact Factor. CCJRP authors do not have to wait for the “backlog” to be cleared prior to publication since their works will be posted shortly after assignment of the DOI number. In due time, each article will then be assigned to a future issue for print.
Taylor & Francis also offers a variety of tools and tips to maximize the impact of authors’ research (https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/ensuring-your-research-makes-an-impact/). Through Taylor & Francis Online, each published author receives 50 eprints to share with colleagues and friends, giving them free access to your article. To further support the promotion of CCJRP articles, Taylor & Francis Online offers authors the capability to track article-level metrics, which includes the number of downloads, citations (on Web of Science, CrossRef, and Scopus), and the Altmetric Attention Score.
Taylor & Francis Publishing and our teams consistently monitor data about impact such as article downloads, citations, and various rankings. It is clear from these data that the quality of our authors’ works are increasingly valued and read. In late 2018, I was pleased to learn that Google Scholar named the CCJRP among the top 20 Higher Education publications using h-5 index and h-5 median metrics. Additionally, the CCJRP was included once again on the US News and World Report’s list of prestigious education journals. I am grateful to our editorial board, reviewers, authors, editorial teams, and our publisher for their collective excellent work.
Publisher, reviewers, board, and editorial colleagues
Taylor & Francis Group editorial and production colleagues who have provided special support this year include Shrikrishna “Krish” Singh, former Senior Publisher; Ian White, Associate Editorial Director; Jennifer Paul, Managing Editor; Kristen Brida, Editorial Assistant; Production Staff Members: Jason Jones, Production Manager; Carl Rejalde, Production Editor; and Zachary Ayres, Peer Review Coordinator; and members of the Marketing staff for assisting at various stages of the Journal’s 2018 production.
Our volunteer reviewers deserve enormous praise for selflessly offering their time and expertise. Without these expert reviewers, the CCJRP would not be able to provide timely feedback to authors and publish quality papers. During 2018, 29 reviewers provided expert feedback to authors and sometimes reviewed papers twice after revisions. I am truly appreciative to Ronald Baker, Patricia Boyer, Lisa Byard, Lazaro Camacho, Dale Campbell, Deborah Casey, Erin Castro, Yu Chen, Marlena Coco, Rivka Felsher, Xiaodan Hu, Mohammad Ilyas, Stephen Johnson, Miguel Montañez, Ginger Pedersen, Kelly Perez-Vergara, Joshua Pretlow, Barbara Rodriguez, Emily Sacks, Jonna Schengel, Douglas Smith, Soko Starobin, Jeannette Sullivan, Ethan Swingle, Ashley Tull, Marissa Vasquez Urias, Xueli Wang, David Weerts, and Louise Yarnall, for their expert service and time this past volume year. As a token of our appreciation, our reviewers enjoy 30-day free access to journals on Taylor & Francis Online and a 30% Taylor & Francis book discount voucher.
Our CCJRP Editorial Board is comprised of 43 professionals who meet formally once a year, but provides sustained commitment and expert contributions throughout the year. At the close of 2018, four board members, Nathan Daun-Barnett, Regina Garza Mitchell, Dimitra Jackson-Smith, and Li Jinyi will complete their service and I offer my heartfelt thanks for their contributions. I am delighted to announce Gloria Crisp and Rosalind Latiner Raby as our two new board members. Many thanks to our 41 Editorial Board members who gave generously of their expert service and time in 2018 and who will continue through 2019: Marilyn Amey, Derrick Barbee, Sim Barhoum, Josh M. Beach, Susan Bickerstaff, George Boggs, E. Allen Bottorff II, Kimberly Burns, John E. Cech, Brent Cejda, Matthew Connell, Katherine Conway, Mark D’Amico, Paulette Dalpes, Pamela Eddy, Janice N. Friedel, David Goomas, Linda Hagedorn, Cliff Harbour, Ghazala Hashmi, Deryl Hatch-Tocaimaza, Susan Holmes, David Horton, Philo Hutcheson, Christos Korgan, Amanda Latz, Joyce Lui, Pat Maslin-Ostrowski, Lyle McKinney, Delores McNair, Dan Morris, Christopher M. Mullin, Khang Duy Nguyen, Terry O’Banion, C. Casie Ozaki, Karen Pain, Dolores Perin, Cristobal Salinas Jr., Tod Treat, Kristin Wilson, and Yi “Leaf” Zhang.
In addition to our board and reviewers, three colleagues serve as specialized editors. Beverly Bower has provided excellent contributions as Book Review Editor. Cynthia Wilson reviews and edits short manuscripts for the Exchange section which is enormously successful. Cristobal Salinas, Jr. is our newest editor of Social Media and is in the early stages of establishing a social media presence for the CCJRP and assisting authors with promotion of their published manuscripts.
As I reflect on 2018 and look forward to 2019, I am exceedingly grateful to our contributing authors, reviewers, board members and readers for their continued support in making the CCJRP a leading journal about community college research and scholarship. Most of all, I am grateful to Gianna Ramdin for serving admirably as an editorial assistant and now as associate editor. She has patiently worked with me many hours every week for several years on countless meticulous details and I am exceptionally honored to work with her.
Supporting and sustaining community college scholarship and research is an implied aim of the CCJRP. Successfully achieving this aim requires collaboration, teamwork, and dedication among many diverse individuals and groups. Working together, I am confident that the value of the CCJRP will continue to increase in 2019 and beyond. As I approach my eighth year of service, I remain grateful for the opportunity to serve as Editor-in-Chief and I am thankful for the trust authors have placed in us throughout the publication processes.