About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education (AIJRE) [Online ISSN 1839-7387, Print ISSN 1036-0026] is an international medium for educators with an interest in the provision of education in rural contexts. The Journal is interdisciplinary and publishes integrative reviews, scholarly accounts of educational research relevant to rural education, research reports, book reviews and feature articles likely to be of interest to the readership. The focus of the Journal is on addressing issues, challenges, developments and opportunities in rural education globally.

Contributions are welcome from both members and non members of SPERA, as are contributions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives at any level of education.

The Journal will publish submissions which, for example:

  • Promote the development of rural education scholarship;
  • Disseminate innovative ideas, actions, programs and policies in rural education;
  • Link people interested in providing quality learning experiences in rural contexts;
  • Provide a forum for new ideas and innovations in rural education;
  • Share information and findings related to rural education issues and the development of programs.

Peer Review Process

All journal article submissions are double blind peer reviewed by experts in the field. Reviewers generally include the Editorial Committee, Associate Editors, Consulting Editors, authors of work perviously published in the journal and other recognised experts at the invitation of the editorial committee and as relevant to the submission under review. Reviewers are asked to identify any potential conflict of interest prior to review, and where a conflict of interest exists a new reviewer is assigned. All reviews are anonymous and all reviewers agree to maintain strict confidentiality. The Editorial Committee will make publication decisions based on the objective judgement of reviews and the objectives of the journal. Where mixed reviews are received a third review may be sought.

Authors can expect to receive constructive feedback on their submission. Reviewers, and the editorial team, take a pedagogical approach to their reviews and actor feedback. As such they aim to provide feedback related to the papers aims, objectives, literature, methodology, data analysis, results and discussion as appropriate. Where revisions are sought, minor revisions will be subsequently considered by the editorial committee with major revisions sent for further peer review.

AIJRE
aims to provide a prompt and efficient review process. From the receipt of a manuscript we aim to provide reviewer reports within six (6) weeks from the submission date. Author(s) will be provided with reviewer comments and the outcome of the review process which may fall under the following categories:

Accepted;
Conditionally Accepted: minor revisions to be made by the author(s);
Revise and Resubmit: major revisions needed; or
Declined.

Evaluation Guidelines for Reviewers

These Evaluation Guidelines are based on those developed by Jon Yorke for evaluating conference submissions for the Australian Technology Network Assessment Conference 2011.

Publication Frequency

The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education publishes three Issues each year (March, July and November) and endeavours to offer authors an efficient process with a short turn-around time for accepted submissions.

Open Access Policy

The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education is published Open Access under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license.  This allows for immediate free access to the work and permits any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose. Authors retain full copyright (see Copyright information in section 5 of the Author Guidelines). There are no Article Processing Charges (APCs).

Repository Policy

Authors may upload a copy of their accepted or published article to an institutional repository or a repository of their choice.

Editorial Roles and Responsibilities

12 August 2021

General Principles

The Chief Editor is responsible for the journal's management, direction, and overall quality. This responsibility has been divided into three portfolios: policy, review, and production. The Journal aims to be the number one international journal for matters pertaining to rural education—all editors assume responsibility for helping the journal achieve this goal. Furthermore, the Chief Editor will provide the editorial for one edition per year.

All editors will adhere to the principles of procedural fairness and ethical conduct. Specifically, editors will treat authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency and ensure the confidentiality of the author's work is protected.

All editors are expected to manage at least 3 articles in a calendar year. They are expected to contribute to copyediting, production, sending out articles for review, and responding to authors where they are managing an article.

Specific responsibilities are outlined below:

Journal Manager

For the time being we are fortunate enough to have the services of a journal manager. This position does not assume responsibility, but works to the three portfolios.  This role supports the three portfolios, and while available, reduces the workload of those portfolios. The below descriptions assume no journal manager position.

Chief Editor/s Policy

The Chief Editor is responsible for matters pertaining to policy. It includes internal journal policy and procedures, compliance with external policy, quality assurance, managing the relationship with the publisher, and journal development.  Specific responsibilities include:

  • Internal policy and procedures. This includes the day-to-day management of the journal, internal communication, and ensuring other editorial responsibilities are met.
  • Compliance with external policy. This includes meeting the obligations of publication, such as the timely publication, copyright, misconduct, and indexing. This also includes ensuring all policies on the journal website are up to date including the guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts.
  • Quality Assurance. This includes ensuring all articles, and all authors, meet the requirements for initial review and publication set by the journal. Quality assurance also includes ensuring all articles meet the requirements of high quality scholarship and meet the (Australian) national code for ethics in research. Also included here is the management of ethical issues and allegations or findings of misconduct by authors, and anyone involved in the peer review process
  • Managing the relationship with the publisher. In addition to general liaising this area includes issues of financing, website hosting and IT support.
  • Journal Development. This includes promotion of the journal for both article submission and readership.
  • Liaising with the international advisory board in relation to the matters pertaining to journal direction, developments in the field, quality assurance and matters of policy.
  • Supporting the Chief Editors Review and Policy as needed.
  • Organising and attending editorial meetings.
  • All responsibilities not covered elsewhere.
  • The Chief Editor Policy will normally be an academic in the field of rural education. Where there are two Chief Editors Policy at least one should normally be an academic in the field of rural education.

Chief Editor/s Review

The Chief Editors Review are responsible for the management of the review process. Specific responsibilities include:

  • Ensuring the guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts are followed.
  • Establishing and managing a system for effective and rapid peer review.
  • Appointing reviewers for submitted manuscripts.
  • Making editorial decisions with reasonable speed and communicating them in a clear and constructive manner. This includes providing authors with specific instructions regarding considerations for resubmission, or reasons for rejection.
  • Ensuring instructions for resubmission are followed by authors.
  • Establishing a procedure for reconsidering editorial decisions
  • Informing authors of solicited manuscripts that the submission will be evaluated according to the journal's standard procedures or outlining the decision-making process if it differs from those procedures
  • Ensuring that all communication and review is conducted through the journal portal, and that communication with authors is conducted through the official journal email account.
  • Attending editorial meetings.
  • The Chief Editor/s Review will be an academic in the field of rural education.

Chief Editor/s Production

The Chief Editors Production are responsible for the output of the journal and the management of journal platform. Specific responsibilities include:

  • (Following decision by the Chief Editors Review) Checking manuscripts for general editing, formatting and referencing.
  • Ensuring the editorial is completed and included.
  • Uploading final manuscripts to the journal portal.
  • Publishing manuscripts on the journal portal.
  • Managing necessary revisions of published articles, ensuring version control.
  • Ensuring website meta-data is updated and accurate.
  • Compiling each edition for lodging with INFORMIT, and lodging each edition with INFORMIT.
  • Attending editorial meetings.
  • The Chief Editor/s Production need not be an academic in the field of rural education.

Associate Editors

Associate editors are members of the rural education research community. They have extra responsibility to contribute to overall development and direction of the journal by promoting it throughout the research community, and providing feedback on quality and direction. Associate Editors are invited to attend editorial meetings, though attendance is not necessary.

International Editorial Advisory Board

Editorial Advisory Board members are a respected part of the rural education research community (see home page for names). They may include academics in the field, practitioners (i.e. teachers, departmental officials, research students) and other interested parties with expertise in matters pertaining to rural education.  Board members contribute to the overall development of the journal by reviewing publications and providing ongoing feedback about the journal's direction. They do not need to attend editorial meetings. Each Board member brings a set of skills to the Journal to support the quality of the submissions, and to contribute to the content of the Journal. Their input is strategically important for the Journal for quality improvement and expanding its reach. The Editor convenes meetings of the Editorial Advisory Board twice per year.

Sponsors

The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education is supported by The Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA).