Australian Journal of Education

The Australian Journal of Education (AJE), established in 1957, is an international peer-reviewed journal publishing research conducted in Australia and internationally to inform educational researchers, as well as educators, administrators and policy-makers, about issues of contemporary concern in education.

The Australian Journal of Education operates a strictly anonymous peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is withheld from the author and the author’s name from the reviewer. Contributing authors and reviewers are expected to respect this process and to conduct themselves with courtesy and a spirit of professionalism when engaging in the review process and communications with the editorial team.
General ethical guidelines for reviewing are available from COPE Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers.

Essential guidelines

To be considered by the editorial team, manuscripts must comply with the following guidelines.

1. Evidence. While the AJE publishes studies that use data from outside Australia, submissions are expected to make some link of the topic to the Australian context and to illustrate the relevance to the AJE readership. The link is likely to be made in the literature review and the discussion of results.

2. Language. Manuscripts should reflect the standard expected of a scholarly article in an English-language journal. English language editing services are available through SAGE author services.

3. Length and references. Manuscripts should normally not exceed 6,000 words in length, including the references section. All referencing should follow the 7^th edition of the American Psychological Association Style guidelines (APA 7 style) https://apastyle.apa.org/.

4. Abstracts are to be about 100-150 words and should be supplied along with six keywords chosen from the Australian Thesaurus of Education Descriptors (4th ed.), compiled and edited by Anna Gifford and Barbara Spiller (Melbourne: ACER) and available at http://cunningham.acer.edu.au/multites2007/index.html. Remember that the abstract is not only the sales pitch that tempts the researcher into reading your article, it’s also the information that gives a search engine all the data it needs to be able to find your article and rank it in the search results page. Therefore, try to repeat the key descriptive phrases. Try to imagine the phrases a researcher might search for if your paper would be of interest to them. Google can detect abuse of this so don’t overplay it, focus on just 3 or 4 key phrases in your abstract. See also: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/help-readers-find-your-article.

5. Manuscripts are expected to be structured by the following headings:

· Introduction/ background literature, ending with the research questions or hypotheses.

· Methodology. The information included in the methodology section should be of sufficient detail that a reader could replicate the study, for example, the procedures undertaken, data collection tools and methods of analysis should all be described clearly with appropriate references supplied for analytic approaches, techniques and software. Description of the study sample belongs here, not in the results section. Examples of data collection tools, such as survey questions or interview schedules, should be included in appendices. When inclusion of examples is not possible, such as in cases of copyrighted materials, appropriate references for the data collection tools are expected.

· Results, discussion. The results section should start with the answer to the first research question and subsequently answer all research questions in the order in which they were raised at the end of the background literature section. It is left to the authors to decide whether to have separate results and discussion sections. If they decide to have both, particular attention needs to be given to avoiding repetition and adhering to the word limit.

· Conclusion. The concluding section should state the main take-away of the article. Care should be taken for the conclusion to still be related to the evidence, analyses and results reported in the article.

6. Check before submission. Authors should use the following checklists and standards before submission:

· For quantitative research studies e.g. the STROBE checklist (Vandenbroucke et al., 2007).

· For qualitative research studies e.g. COREQ (Tong et al., 2007) and SRQR (O’Brien et al., 2014).

· For systematic reviews or scoping reviews e.g. PRISMA and PRISMAS-ScR.

7. Other resources

The AJE editorial team recommend making use of the above checklists and other resources available to prospective authors in structuring their manuscripts and checking for completeness of information reported in manuscripts prior to submission. Support for prospective authors is available through SAGE author services.

Types of manuscripts considered by the AJE

Original Research

The large majority of articles in the AJE report original research carried out by the researcher, either individually or as part of a research team. The research may use primary data, may involve secondary analyses of available data sets or synthesise evidence by way of meta-analyses or systematic reviews. In giving their advice to the editor, reviewers judge the merit of the research on the significance of its findings and the rigour with which the research is conducted and reported.

Preference will be given to studies using well-designed and implemented quantitative methodologies (e.g. secondary analyses, analyses using longitudinal data, structural equation modelling, hierarchical linear modelling, systematic reviews with meta-analyses etc). Articles that are based on the author's personal experiences, reflections or small case studies that have limited generalisability are unlikely to be considered for publication.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education research

We welcome submissions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, particularly works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors. We recommend submissions are guided by resources developed by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) including:

AIATSIS code of ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research

A guide to applying the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research

Guidelines for the ethical publishing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and research from those communities (These guidelines include a section “What people prefer to be called”, p. 11.)

Research Reviews

To be suitable for publication in the AJE, a review of research such as a systematic review or a literature review needs to do more than summarise what is known. It should address clearly articulated questions and lead to conclusions that have the potential to change the way readers think about the field under review. To be considered for publication, authors of research and literature review manuscripts need to have completed a PRISMA or PRISMAS-ScR checklist and documented where manuscripts are unable to cover the requested information.

Policy Analyses

The AJE considers articles for publication that reflect on the consequences of past education policy decisions, and articles that analyse issues raised by current educational policies. The matters addressed need to have relevance to an Australian readership, either because they relate to Australian state, territory or national education policies, or because they draw conclusions from other countries that have clear implications for education policymakers in Australia. To be considered for publication in the AJE, such articles need to address matters of enduring importance, offer some new evidence, review existing evidence in a detailed way, or probe theoretical perspectives of the issues. Issues that are likely to be resolved in a matter of weeks or even months are more suited to newspapers and magazines than to a journal of record such as the AJE. Articles of this type should be no longer than 2000 words in length, including references.

Comments and Rejoinders

Where appropriate, the AJE may include a section called 'Comments and Rejoinders'. This section is intended to provide an avenue by which readers may respond to or comment on issues raised by articles published in the AJE. Contributions in this section are limited to a maximum of 1,000 words and the acceptance or rejection of such contributions is at the sole discretion of the editor (please direct emails to ajed@acer.org). Authors of articles that are the subject of comments and rejoinders may be consulted by the editor, and may, at the discretion of the editor, be invited to respond.

Book Reviews

From time to time, the AJE publishes book reviews. Usually these are at the invitation of the editor, but expressions of interest and proposals for reviews are always welcome (please direct emails to ajed@acer.org). Book reviews should be about 800 words in length.

Special Issues

The AJE also publishes special issues, each containing a set of invited articles focused on a particular topic. The decision to publish a special issue is taken by the editor, who works with a guest editor to determine the content, all of which is subject to review in similar manner to regular AJE content, as specified above. Proposals for special issues should be sent to the editor, allowing at least one year's lead time for negotiation of content, writing and review (please direct emails to ajed@acer.org).