Connecting History of Education. Scientific journals as international tools for a global world

Abstract

Specialized journals in History of Education are facing some challenges of great significance and importance, in some cases touching core and fundamental aspects of the publishing projects that do not differ much from Social Sciences and Humanities. Questions are many: how the models of editorial management influence the forms and styles of scientific production? Which role could social media play in the dissemination of progress, developments and results of the journals? Does the evaluation formulas of editorial quality take into account the peculiarities of the discipline? Is the impact factorcomparable to scientific quality? What is the most desirable kind of access to information? What weight should the editorial management have in the process of accreditation and evaluation of researchers? How many publications the scientific community is capable of absorbing? What is the real need for scientific journals? Who is their audience?

The book presented here, entitled Connecting History of Education. Scientific Journals as International Tools for a Global World, represents the first result of an honest effort of international cooperation and communication between various publishing projects, and its value is double.

On the one hand, we like to emphasize its pragmatic nature as a useful tool for historians of education because the detailed description of twenty specialized publishing projects in different regions of the world will be easily found – Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, Venezuela – together with information about sixteen other scientific journals in various countries – Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croacia, France, Italy, United Kingdom, United States. Such amount of information can help researchers to decide where to publish their scientific advances, depending on their interests and investigation, or owing to the specificity of the journal.

On the other hand, the book highlights the wealth, the many and varied publishing projects for the History of Education in force, each with its peculiarity and idiosyncrasies, largely depending on scientific traditions. However, some common traits can be detected, at least in management models. With few exceptions, scientific journals have assumed in their activities the international standards of good editorial practices, so their contents have become available online, which does not prevent some of them continuing to publish their numbers on paper. In some cases, for the publishing project this is not only a sign of undeniable identity that somehow gives some added value, but also shapes particular aspects of the strategy adopted by the editorial management. The frequency varies from case to case, ranging from one to six times a year, with predominance of the half-yearly. Ultimately, universities are the major organizations publishing – directly or indirectly – journals, followed by scientific societies, publishing house, and public institutions.