2020 Annual Summary, Impact and Reach, and Author Resources: Community College Journal of Research and Practice

Overview of the CCJRP

During 2020, the Community College Journal of Research and Practice (CCJRP) continued a 44-year commitment to the publication of progressive, critical, and insightful scholarship authored by expert and emerging practitioners, researchers, and scholars. Since the first issue in 1976, the CCJRP has published a total of 528 issues, inclusive of special issues, focused on community college achievements, concerns, and challenges. The CCJRP publishes two types of manuscripts – full-length papers and Exchange articles – and both types must meet the test of external peer review. Scholarly and research full-length manuscripts should be concise, yet address implications for practice and, where appropriate, future research and policy. The Exchange articles are thought-provoking and scholarly short-length manuscripts communicating on research and practical applications. Additionally, invited book reviews and summaries of recently published dissertations are routinely published.

This annual summary chronicles the efforts and successes of the 2020 volume year, introduces the forthcoming issues for 2021, reflects on the journal’s impact and reach, acknowledges the volunteer reviewers and editorial board members for the contribution of their expert service to the CCJRP, and resources for authors.

Crowning points of 2020

The CCJRP is the only two-year college journal that is international in scope and purpose. Through the third quarter of 2020, the CCJRP received manuscript submissions from the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, China, and the Czech Republic. The 44th volume of the CCJRP published 54 full-length articles, 13 Exchange articles, four book reviews, and one editorial authored by 164 practitioners, researchers, and scholars.

This 2020 volume promoted an increased awareness of community college issues ranging from: academic advising in the post-COVID 19 era; challenges and realizations of first-generation students; constructing autism on community college websites; effectiveness of student coaching; establishing metrics for evaluating student success in 3 + 1 transfer programs; faculty perceptions about invisible labor; how financial aid policies and practices reflect the social field of color-blind racism; impact of professional development grounded in social learning on community college faculty efficacy; information technology career preparation for rural areas; labor market success of part-time community college students; military community colleges; motivation of hearing students learning American Sign Language; online community college student-researchers explore mental health stigmas; philosophical justification for campus climate action plans; racism in remediation; relationship between years living in the United States and freshman composition grades; revising online assignments and the impact on student performance; sexual violence among LGBQ community college students; understanding dual credit programs; and, veterans’ educational outcomes in the post-9/11 era.

Replicating Floyd et al. (2016) methods to identify key topics and themes from the articles published during 2020, the 67 published articles were grouped into the following 22 areas: academic advising, college athletics, community college campus, curriculum, developmental education, distance learning, dual enrollment, faculty, finance, health, leadership, policies, professional development, STEM, students, student learning outcomes, student success, teaching and learning, technology, transfer, veterans, and workforce development.

CCJRP’s impact and reach¹

We are pleased to share that starting in January 2021, Taylor & Francis has plans to expand the range of metrics displayed on the CCJRP’s website (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ucjc20/current) providing authors a current overview of the journal’s reach and impact, as well as assisting them in better understanding the peer review and publication process. Authors can access the journal’s research and impact data by clicking on the ‘Journal metrics’ link that will be displayed in the left-hand menu of CCJRP’s website.

The CCJRP continues to expand its impact and reach. The CiteScore of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the citation impact of peer-reviewed research. CiteScore is calculated by dividing the number of citations received by the journal in that year for the documents published in the journal in the past four years by the number of documents, indexed in Scopus, published in the same four years. The CCJRP has a CiteScore 2019 of 0.8. The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) discloses both the number of citations a journal receives and the prestige of the journals where the citations come from. SJR is a measure of citations; citations are weighted depending subject field, quality, and reputation of the journal of a citation. The CCJRP has a 2019 SCImago Journal Rank 0.40 and has remained in the second quartile of journals within the Education category for the past five years.

While Taylor & Francis does not report Google Scholar metrics, we believe it is important to note the journal’s rank among top publications in the Social Science subcategory ‘Higher Education.’ Google Scholar ranks journals by their h5-index and h5-median. The h5-index is the h-index for articles published in the last five complete years. The calculation of the h5-index is based on the largest number h such that h articles published in 2015–2019 have at least h citations each. The h5-median is the median number of citations for the articles that make up its h5-index (Google Scholar, n.d.). The h-median is a measure of the distribution of citations to the articles in the h-core (Google Scholar, n.d.). The h-core of a publication is a set of top cited h articles from the publication and are the articles that the h-index is based on. The CCJRP is ranked #16 among subcategory ‘Higher Education’ journals with the Review of Higher Education, the journal of Association for the Study Higher Education (ASHE), ranked #15. The CCJRP Google Scholars h5-index is 26 and h5-median is 35. The top four articles listed in Google Scholar’s h5-index are free-standing articles published in 2015.

The Altmetric Attention Score and donut-chart are designed to help authors and readers identify how much and what type of attention a research output has received. Each color of the Altmetric donut-chart represents a different source of attention. The Altmetric score is not a measure of the quality of the research or the researcher; instead it represents a weighted approximation of all the attention picked up for a research output. The Altmetric score calculates the volume and types of attention, and is based on three sources: volume of mentions, mentions from 17 source categories, and author mentions. The Altmetric Score is not a fixed number but will fluctuate over time. Changes in a score may occur when the original author of the mentions deletes their post, when Altmetric removes posts which have been flagged as spam, or when Altmetric adds new sources to re-weight their scoring algorithm. In 2019, the total number of mentions for research published in the CCJRP was 1,062. Most of the attention was received on Twitter with 1,050 Twitter mentions. Other mentions included 6 Wikipedia mentions, 2 blog mentions, 2 news mentions, and 2 Google+ mentions. A full-length article that was part of the Council for the Study of Community College (CSCC) Research special issue entitled, “The role of spirituality for Black male community college students” by Salinas et al. (2018) ranked #1 of top Altmetric score in 2019 with an attention score of 56. The article with the second highest attention score of 39 was “Publishing graduate students’ research about community colleges” by Floyd et al. (2019). “Promoting financial literacy and Latino males’ success at community colleges” by Salinas and Hidrowoh (2018) had an attention score of 31 and was ranked #3 in 2019. To access a report containing the latest Altmetric attention with data updated daily to keep track of trending articles click on the following link: https://www.altmetric.com/explorer/report/9236774b-8719-4da7-b7e3-777c2cdbcdb1.

In 2020, approximately 80% of CCJRP article downloaded were in North America, United States, and Canada, while the remaining 20% of CCJRP article downloads occurred in Europe, Asia, and Australasia. The top three most downloaded articles were “Stress and coping strategies among community college students” by Pierceall and Keim (2007) with 2,038 downloads, “Food insecurity among community college students: Prevalence and association with grade point average” by Maroto et al. (2015) with 1,277 downloads, and “Scaffolding mathematics remediation for academically at-risk students following developmental education reform in Florida” by Brower et al. (2018) with 895 downloads.

We strive to review and publish research and scholarship in a timely manner. While some decisions take longer for various reasons, time from submission to first decision is generally 60 days or less for greater than 50% of manuscripts received in 2019. Accepted manuscripts undergo a preliminary round of copy editing; the CCJRP editorial team works with authors on copy editing queries before manuscripts are batched to Taylor & Francis. Once the manuscript is entered in Central Article Tracking System (CATS) the average time to online publication is 16 days then it is slotted for a specific volume and issue later.

Publisher, reviewers, board, and editorial colleagues

The peer reviewing, editing, and production processes require enormous teamwork. We are grateful for our editorial and production colleagues at Taylor & Francis Group who have supported the journal during its 2020 production include Jess Vivian, Global Portfolio Director & Publishing Director HSS; Terri Ward, Global Head of Portfolio; Jennifer Paul, Portfolio Manager; Jason Jones, Production Supervisor; Carl Rejalde, Production Editor; Jenea Lomas, Online Submission Manager; and members of the Marketing staff.

Our success depends on expert reviewers who generously give their time and expertise without compensation. In 2020, the CCJRP benefitted from a 21% increase in volunteer reviewers. Forty-five volunteer reviewers contributed their professional feedback, often offering several reviews on manuscripts after the author’s revisions. Reviewers for 2020 were Dalel Bader, Ronald Baker, Bob Blankenberger, Kirsten Brown, Lisa Byard, Deborah Casey, Marlena Coco, José Del Real Viramontes, Kari Dockendorff, Jason Dodge, Kayla Elliott, Eric Felix, Rachel Friedensen, Regina Garza Mitchell, Ángel Gonzalez, Allatia Harris, Xiaodan Hu, Mohammad Ilyas, Russ Ivy, Dimitra Jackson-Smith, Stephen Johnson, Katherine Johnston, Rita Kranidis, Christine Mokher, Miguel Montañez, Brett Nachman, Kelly Perez-Vergara, Paul-Arthur Pierre-Louis, Henry Ponciano, Joshua Pretlow, Barbara Rodriguez, Emily Sacks, Laura Schaffer-Metcalfe, Patricia Somers, Robin Spaid, Verlindsey Stewart, Jeannette Sullivan, Ethan Swingle, Jason Taylor, Tenisha Tevis, David Tomanio, Ashley Tull, David Weerts, Kelly Wickersham, and Louise Yarnall.

The CCJRP Editorial Board is made up of 46 U.S. and international professionals who convene annually for a formal board meeting, offers invaluable recommendations to the CCJRP editorial team and publishers, and shares their professional contributions throughout the year. At the end of 2020, four board members, Ghazala Hashmi, Susan Holmes, David Horton, and Philo Hutcheson will complete their service to the CCJRP and I offer my profound gratitude for their contributions. I am pleased to announce Christine Harrington and Kelly Wickersham have agreed to serve as our newest board members. To our 39 Editorial Board members, thank you for your expert service and time in 2020 and who will continue through 2021: Elvira Abrica, Marilyn Amey, Derrick Barbee, Sim Barhoum, Susan Bickerstaff, George Boggs, E. Allen Bottorff, Kimberly Burns, John E. Cech, Brent Cejda, Matthew Connell, Katherine Conway, Gloria Crisp, Paulette Dalpes, Mark D’Amico, Andre Diez de Aux, Pamela Eddy, Janice N. Friedel, David Goomas, Cliff Harbor, Deryl Hatch-Tocaimaza, Christos Korgan, Amanda Latz, Joyce Lui, Pat Maslin-Ostrowski, Lyle McKinney, Delores McNair, John D. Morris, Christopher M. Mullin, Khang Duy Nguyen, Terry O’Banion, C. Casey Ozaki, Karen Pain, Dolores Perin, Rosalind Latiner Raby, Cristόbal Salinas Jr., Tod Treat, Kristin Wilson, and Yi “Leaf” Zhang.

In addition to our Editorial Board and volunteer reviewers, we are fortunate to have exceptional section editors. The League for Innovations’ Cynthia Wilson, our founding Exchange Section editor, has served commendably for almost nine years. This section that features succinct manuscripts continues to grow exponentially. I am pleased that Christine Harrington with New Jersey City University has agreed to join our team as co-editor of the Exchange Section. Additionally, Masha Krsmanovic with The University of Southern Mississippi has accepted our Book Review Editor position. She is actively recruiting reviewers and books for our 2021 volume year. Florida Atlantic University’s Cristobal Salinas Jr. has innovatively increased our Altmetric scores as the Social Media Editor by establishing a social media presence for the journal while assisting published authors with the promotion of their papers.

Author resources

We strive to support our authors in various ways. For more information on the Taylor & Francis author resources and development initiatives, please visit:

• http://taylorandfrancis.com/about/corporate-responsibility/development-initiatives

• https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/star

• https://librarianresources.taylorandfrancis.com/services-support/development-initiatives

• https://www.taylorfrancis.com/sdgo

Additionally, Taylor & Francis offers specialized support on translating your dissertation into publications which can be found at https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/extracting-a-journal-article-from-your-thesis/. For graduate students and emerging scholars who welcome advice about how to publish, we recommend they avail themselves of these resources along with “Publishing graduate students’ research about community colleges” by Floyd et al. (2019), the first article of the CCJRP Graduate Students’ Research about Community Colleges special issue.

A full range of pre-submission manuscript preparation services includes English language editing, translation with editing, manuscript formatting, plagiarism check, and technical review, can be found at https://www.tandfeditingservices.com/.

Looking to 2021

We are in the early planning stages for a special issue addressing challenges of 2020 and 2021, especially related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other important issues impacting community colleges. Researchers, practitioners, and policy leaders are encouraged to document this historical era by contributing to the literature, including publishing works in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice. We will create a space by publishing the most current and relevant research and scholarship in a timely manner.

To date, our 2021 publication plans include articles about the following: development of skills in South African FET colleges; dual enrollment on college matriculation among underserved student populations in Texas; exploring the influence of changes in local and state appropriations on online enrollment at community colleges; Latina/o transfer students and community cultural wealth; increasing diversity in teacher candidates; instructional behaviors affecting student attitudes toward science; Southeast Asian American male student engagement experiences with community college faculty members; strategies employed to improve labor market outcomes for older students; and the decision-making process of college-bound international students. In addition to these peer reviewed full-length papers, our 2021 readers can also anticipate practitioner-based papers from the United States and international scholars.

As I approach my tenth year of service as Editor-in-Chief and Gianna her fifth year of service to the CCJRP, we are grateful to Taylor & Francis publishing for this opportunity to serve. To the authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed, reviewed, and edited scholarly works – thank you. Most of all, we are grateful to Lazaro Camacho Jr., Editorial Assistant. Collectively, we are making a difference in the field of community college research and scholarly practice.

Notes

1. This section reports CCJRP’s impact and reach data from 2019 to September 2020.