The impact of COVID-19 on publishing and reviewing in the Journal of Geoscience Education community

Abstract

COVID-19 has created challenges and opportunities across higher education, with flow-on effects for teaching, research, and publishing. Using an archival case study approach, we analyzed 543 Journal of Geoscience Education submissions from 2018 to 2020 to determine potential impacts of the pandemic on our authors and reviewers. Trends in submission numbers and types, gender, and institutional affiliation were characterized pre- and post-COVID onset. Results indicate that though there was an initial drop in submissions post-COVID onset, submission numbers rose to typical levels a few months later. However, the proportion of Curriculum and Instruction submissions dropped by 10% post-COVID onset, whereas research submissions increased by 12.6%, representing a tenfold increase in the gap between the two. In contrast to other studies that found a decrease in submissions by women authors post-COVID onset, JGE had a 3.8% increase in initial submissions by women corresponding authors. However, there was a 12.2% decrease in revisions by women corresponding authors post-COVID onset. Women reviewers had a 2.2% lower acceptance rate post-COVID onset, though still make up over half of JGE’s reviewers. Although there were more contributions from corresponding authors at research intensive institutions, reviewers from these institutions had lower acceptance rates post-COVID onset. Review and revision durations both increased post-COVID onset, and reviewer decline reasons became more specific. In response to these findings, we recommend that the geoscience education community continue to be openly understanding of work-life balance, encourage more Curriculum & Instruction scholarship, and support more contributions from authors and reviewers at non-research intensive institutions.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• publishing
• gender

Acknowledgements

Dr. Kim Hannula, Editor-in-Chief of JGE, aided in data retrieval and early analysis, but did not see final interpretations or any versions of this manuscript before submission. We are appreciative of her support and guidance. Thank you also to Dr. Megan Frederickson for running gender analysis data in R, and to Ian Taylor (NAGT/SERCkit) for providing Geoscience Education Research division demographic data. Finally, we are grateful for the constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers and two JGE editors.

This study received an exemption from the University of South Carolina’s Institutional Review Board (study # Pro00106509).

Disclosure statement

The authors are current (Jolley, Ryker, Kortz) and former (Riggs) editors of JGE. This conflict of interest was managed by the current Editor-in-Chief of JGE (Dr. Kim Hannula) maintaining appropriate distance from the project. We also requested that someone outside the current editorial team handle the manuscript.