International Journal of Education and Development using ICT: Editorial Policies

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Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope
Section Policies
Peer Review Process
Publication Frequency
Open Access Policy
Archiving

Focus and Scope

Regional economies and communities are facing increasing economic, social and cultural hardship in many parts of the world as economies adjust to the demands of the new orders of commerce and governance. A part of this is the paradox that regional economies and communities can be either enhanced or disadvantaged by information and communication technologies (ICT) products and services. The potential enhancement comes from the increased social, economic and cultural capital that comes from harnessing ICT products and services in a community sense. The disadvantage comes from the power that ICT products and services have in centralizing commerce, service provision and governance away from the regional community.

Unless we get a greater level of access AND adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) for education and development at community level, we will miss the opportunity to turn the "digital divide into a digital opportunity for all, particularly for those who risk being left behind and being further marginalised" ("Declaration of Principles", WSIS-03/Geneva/Doc/4-E, Principle 10). Education has a major role to play in seizing the digital opportunity - both as an enabler and as a user. The International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT) is an e-journal, with free and open access, that seeks to address this issue.

IJEDICT aims to strengthen links between research and practice in ICT in education for development in hitherto less developed parts of the world, e.g., developing countries (especially small states), and rural and remote regions of developed countries. The emphasis is on providing a space for researchers, practitioners and theoreticians to jointly explore ideas using an eclectic mix of research methods and disciplines. It brings together research, action research and case studies in order to assist in the transfer of best practice, the development of policy and the creation of theory. Thus, IJEDICT is of interest to a wide-ranging audience of researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, government officers and other professionals involved in education for development in communities throughout the world.

IJEDICT comprises: a "research articles" section for academic, peer-reviewed articles; a "studies from the field" section for case study and descriptive articles (that are subjected to editorial review and peer comment, but not peer reviewed); a "research in progress" section for descriptions of research not yet completed; a "project sheets" section for brief dedscriptions of relevant project; a "notes from the field" section for working papers, and other commentaries on relevant topics; and, a "book/media review" section for book, software and other media reviews.

Reviewers for research articles are selected from the Editorial Board, the Review Board and the Peer Review Panel.

Coverage

IJEDICT has a major emphasis on the use of ICT in education for development in hitherto less developed parts of the world. The journal includes descriptive case studies about ICT education projects in developing countries and in rural and remote regions of developed countries, as well research articles evaluating such projects, developing policy or creating theory. Topics covered include, but are not limited to:
ICT enabled distance education;
mobile learning, e-learning and online learning in developing contexts;
flexible learning and delivery for development;
open learning, open access, open educational resources;
e-literacy, enabling the use of ICT for capacity building.

Section Policies

Refereed Articles
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	This section contains articles that have been peer reviewed. To be included in this section, articles must be based on research and scholarship, and contribute "new" and significant knowledge to the field of ICT for education and/or development. Articles should be between 3,500 and 8,000 words in length.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Book/Media Reviews
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool

	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

From the Field
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	This section includes editorially reviewed and peer commented (but not peer reviewed) case studies and descriptive articles (2000-5000 words) on the use of ICT in education and/or development.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Invited Articles
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	As the name suggests, "Invited Articles" are ones specially requested by the Editors. Please do not submit to this section unless requested by the Editors.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Project Sheets
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	This section includes brief descriptions (500-1500 words) of education and development projects that utilise ICT.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Notes from the Field
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	This section contains short comments or notes (500-2000 words) that are useful for practitioners working in the field of ICT in education and/or development.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Editorial
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	Only the Editors can submit to this section.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Front pages for this Issue
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	Only the Editors can submit to this section.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Complete Issue as a PDF file
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	Only the Editors can submit to this section.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Research in Progress
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	This section contains articles that have been editorially reviewed and extensively peer commented (but not peer reviewed). To be included in this section, articles must outline or describe research-in-progress that has the potential to contribute "new" and significant knowledge to the field of ICT for education and/or development.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Literature Reviews
	Open Submissions Peer-Reviewed	Indexed Research Support Tool
	This section contains articles that have been editorially reviewed and extensively peer commented (but not peer reviewed). To be included in this section, an article must provide a scholarly description and analysis of the literature in a specific area of the field of ICT for education and/or development.
	Editors:
	Schuyler Esprit, The University of the West Indies, Open Campus, Jamaica
	Denise Gaspard-Richards, Open Campus, The University of The West Indies

Peer Review Process

All peer-reviewed articles, i.e., those for the Refereed Articles section, are reviewed by at least two (usually three or four) academic peers in a process that ensures that authors and reviewers remain unknown to one another.

Reviewers are selected from the Editorial Board, the Review Board and the Peer Review Panel.

The peer review process used by IJEDICT ensures that articles should be accepted internationally as "refereed articles" (e.g., the journal is listed in the "Register of Refereed Journals" by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Science and Training). This rigorous review process has resulted in the journal accepting only about one third of the articles submitted for the refereed section (see Journal Statistics).

Publication Frequency

There will be three issues of IJEDICT per year, usually published towards the end of April, August, and December. In addition, special issues (covering conferences, particular regions, etc) will occasionally be published.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Such access is associated with increased readership and increased citation of an author's work. For more information on this approach, see the Public Knowledge Project, which has designed this system to improve the scholarly and public quality of research, and which freely distributes the journal system as well as other software to support the open access publishing of scholarly resources.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Technical Support

Technical support for IJEDICT is provided by:

Reeve Ramharry
Email: reeve.ramharry@open.uwi.edu

Publication Classification Details

Key title:
International journal of education and development using information and communication technology

Abbreviated key title:
Int. j. educ. dev. using inf. commun. technol.

ISSN: 1814-0556

Peer Review Panel

The Peer Review Panel comprises the following list of reviewers. We do not add reviewers to this list until they have successfully completed three reviews and only retain them on the list whilst they are actively reviewing (i.e., completing two to three reviews per year).;

Stephen Adu Gyamfi, Catholic University College of Ghana;
Ebenezer Afarikumah, Accra Institute of Technology, Ghana/Open University Malaysia;
Muhammad Tanveer Afzal, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan;
Majid Al-Khataybeh, Mutah University, Jordan;
Margarida Almeida, University of Aveiro, Portugal;
C Annamalai, SEAMEO RECSAM, Penang, Malaysia;
Aslam Ansari, G B Pant University of Ag. & Tech. Uttaranchal, India;
Vasudeva Aravind, Pennsylvania, USA;
Raman Arumugam, University Utara Malaysia;
Thomas Assan, North West University, South Africa;
Crispen Bhukuvhani, Bindura University of Science Education, Zimbabwe;
Sutapa Bose, IGNOU, India;
Russell Butson, Higher Education Development Centre, Otago University, New Zealand;
Las Johansen Caluza, Leyte Normal University, Philippines;
Hong Chen, Old Dominion University, USA;
Ngoni Chipere, The University of the West Indies, Barbados;
Robert Corderoy, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia;
John Paul Dela Rosa, Philippine Normal University, Philippines;
J. Tim Denny, UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand;
Crispen Dirwai, University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe;
Thato Foko, CSIR Meraka Institute, South Africa;
Bob Fox, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China;
Gerald Goh, Faculty of Business, Multimedia University, Malaysia;
Malliga Govindasamy, Teacher Education Institute, Johor Bahru, Malaysia;
John Griffin, Consultant, Oklahoma, USA;
Emerson Jackson, University of Birmingham, UK;
Rozinah Jamaludin, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia;
Haijun Kang, Kansas State University, USA;
Ah Choo Koo, Multimedia University, Malaysia;
Manish Kumar, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA;
Okanlade Lawal-Adebowale, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria;
Kelvin Man-fung Lo, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong;
David Mathew, University of Bedfordshire, UK;
Ton Mooij, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands;
Salomé Morais, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal;
Sourav Mukhopadhyay, University of Botswana;
Johnnie Muwanga-Zake, Cavendish University, Uganda;
Martin O'Brien, University of Wollongong, Australia;
Nwachukwu Ololube, University of Helsinki, Finland;
Maria Cristina Lima Paniago, Universidade Católica Dom Bosco, Brasil;
Stamatis Papadakis, University of Crete, Greece;
John Pima, Coventry University, UK;
Sarah Pouezevara, RTI International, USA;
Puthira Prathap, Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India;
Juliana Raffaghelli, Institute of Educational Technologies, National Research Council, Italy;
T Ramayah, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia;
Jayson Richardson, University of Kentucky, USA;
Kiymet Selvi, Anadolu University, Turkey;
Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan;
Ramesh Sharma, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India;
Parul Sood, Chitkara College of Education for Women, Rajpura, India;
Arulchelvan Sriram, Anna University, Chennai, India;
Vance Stevens, Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi, UAE;
Dara Tafazoli, University of Cordoba, Spain;
Troy Thomas, University of Guyana, Guyana;
Wei Keong Too, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Malaysia;
Sudhir Warier, Reliance Communications Limited, Mumbai, India;
Ang Weay, University of Sciences Malaysia (USM), Malaysia;
Adam Wong, SPEED, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong;
Mingli Xiao, The University of Toledo, USA;
Yume Yamaguchi, Japan;
Omariba Zachary, Egerton University, Kenya;
Pär-Ola Zander, Aalborg University, Denmark;
Inga Žilinskienė, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania;
Leonardo Parisi, IFRN, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil;
Ekta Sinha, G. Saraf College, University of Mumbai, India;
Milan Kubiatko, PhD., University of Zilina, Faculty of Humanities, Univerzitna 1, 010 26 Zilina, Slovakia;
Kerwin A. Livingstone, PhD., Guyana;
Hassan El-Meligy, IEEE, Cairo, Egypt;
Rakhi Chitnis, SSRVM, INDORE, India;
Nicole Welsh, The UWI Open Campus. Grenada;
Avanelle Joseph-Edwards, PhD., The UWI Open Campus, Trinidad;
Bahadur Kumar Goonesh, University of Mauritius, Mauritius, Indian Ocean;
Jeremiah Adigun, PhD., Phillips Theological Seminary, USA

Submission throughput time

According to the journal statistics, "submission throughput time" is about 6 months. This is the time from original submission to final publication. This is an average, of course. Some articles take longer, some take less time.

Here's how it works.

After submission, each article is checked for originality/plagiarism using "Turnitin". Then it goes out for review. If it is has been submitted to the "Research Article" section, then this review is the full academic refereeing process. If it is a "From-the-Field" (non-refereed) article, then this review is simply to determine appropriateness for the journal and any improvements that could be made. The process of checking the article and assigning reviewers can take 1 to 2 weeks.

To get a full set of reviews from the reviewers often takes about 3 months.

Once the Editors have a full set of reviews, they make an editorial decision based on these reviews and the recommendations of the reviewers. That takes another 1 week.

The Editors' decision and reviewers' comments are then communicated to the author. If the article is accepted, it will usually be "subject to changes". It is up to the author as to how long they take to make the required changes - but let's say this takes 3 weeks.

The final decision is then made within 1 week of receiving the revised article.

The article then has to be converted to the publishing format by the copyeditor, ready for publication. This takes about 2 weeks.

Publication of IJEDICT is continuous, i.e., once we have 5 articles we will publish that issue and add further articles as they become ready. This continues until the issue reaches about 10 articles, and then we start collecting for the next issue. So you do not have to wait long for it to be published once a final decision has been made on the revised article - on average about 4 weeks.

So adding all that lot up, from you first submitting the article to it being published should be about 6 months - more or less.

Please note that the Editors are very busy and do not appreciate authors constantly enquiring about when they will get a decision. You can follow the progress of your article through the process by logging in to your Author Page on the journal website.

Guidelines for Reviewers

On receipt of the manuscript, you should check to determine whether there is any conflict of interest for you (with the authors, their institution, or their funding sources) and whether you can judge a given article impartially. If you have a conflict of interest, contact the editor for instructions.

Organize your review so that an introductory paragraph gives your overall impression of the manuscript and highlights the major shortcomings. This paragraph should be followed by specific, numbered comments, which, if appropriate, may be subdivided into major and minor points. (The numbering facilitates both the editor's letter to the author and evaluation of the author's rebuttal.) Criticism should be presented dispassionately; offensive remarks are not acceptable.

Please make sure that you provide feedback on the following:
1. Relevance, clarity, significance, and originality of the article
2. Appropriateness of research methods if applicable
3. Adherence to Harvard Editorial Style and appropriateness of the references.

Most reviewers write 300-400 words, plus they might make tracked changes in the text itself, as described below.

You are also encouraged to provide detailed feedback as tracked changes in the manuscript itself, which can be uploaded as a separate document. But please make sure that your identity has been removed. To do this in Word:
# Display the "User Information" tab of the "Options" dialog box by selecting "Tools" | "Options"
# Replace the user's name and initials with a space or some nondescript wording, such as "Referee 1."
# Any changes from that point on will then bear that name, and anonymity will be preserved.

If you have created all your changes but forgotten to remove your identity first, you can do it afterwards:
# From the Tools menu, choose Options and then click on the Security tab
# Tick Remove personal information from file properties on save and click OK
# From the File menu, choose Save As
# In your new file you should notice that all comments have now had your identity removed.

In your comments intended for the author, do not make statements about the acceptability of a manuscript - suggested revisions should be stated as such and not expressed as conditions of acceptance.

Advise the editor of your recommendation for acceptance, modification, or rejection by checking the review form at the appropriate place. The final decision regarding modification, acceptance, or rejection of a manuscript rests solely with the editor, so do not state your recommendation in the portion of the review that will be sent to the author.

After completing your review, transmit your comments via the IJEDICT website (NOT by email).

It is recommended that you make a copy of the review for your files. The manuscript may be returned to you for a second review, particularly if the requested modification was extensive. In this case, you will need to evaluate the author's responses to your original criticisms.

Do not discuss the manuscript with its authors either during or after the review process.

The manuscript sent to you for review is a privileged document. Please protect it from any form of exploitation. Do not cite a manuscript or refer to the work it describes before it has been published and do not use the information that it contains for the advancement of your own research or in discussions with colleagues.

Publication of names of Reviewers

The review process is "double blind", i.e., reviewers do not know the names of the authors, and authors do not know the names of the reviewers. But we do acknowledge the work done by reviewers by publishing their names in a list on the IJEDICT website and in the PDF of each complete issue.

We do not add reviewers to the IJEDICT list published on the website until they have successfully completed three reviews and only retain them on that list whilst they are actively reviewing. However, their names are added to and remain in the list that appears in the PDF of the journal issue for which they reviewed.

For Librarians wishing to create their own archive

The International Journal of Education and Development using ICT (http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu//), is seeking to establish a LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) compliant archive with libraries.

The LOCKSS Program (http://lockss.stanford.edu/), an international library/publisher initiative, is a working example of a distributed preservation and archiving repository, additional details are below. The software, which runs on an ordinary personal computer is free; the system is easily brought on-line; very little ongoing maintenance is required.

To assist in the archiving of our journal, we invite you to become a member of the LOCKSS community, to help collect and preserve titles produced by your faculty and by other scholars worldwide. To do so, please have someone on your staff visit the LOCKSS site for information on how this system operates.

Once you are participating in the LOCKSS Program, you will be able to automatically harvest the journal metadata and archive each issue as it is published.

The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for our journal is:
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu//pubmanifest.php

I look forward to you providing this archiving support for IJEDICT.

International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology. ISSN: 1814-0556