BJET Early Career Researchers Toolkit

Welcome to the BJET Publishing for Early Career Researchers Toolkit. This has been created by the BJET Editorial Team to support you in ensuring your work is the best it can be and is submission ready for BJET.

As a starting point we suggest you read the BJET Aims and Scope to assess the suitability of your submission.

Please also take time to review the BJET Author Guidelines on submission.

For a video overview of the publishing process please see our Introduction to Publishing for Early Career Researchers video.

Decide on one journal. DO NOT submit to multiple journals.

What to Publish?

What DEFINITELY to publish:

• Original and significant approach/findings

• Work that advances the knowledge and understanding in the field of educational technology

• Work that is theoretically and/or methodologically rigorous

What NOT to publish:

• Reports of little scientific interest

• Purely descriptive or technical accounts with insufficient theorising and interpretation

• Out of date work

• Duplications or part-duplications of previously published work

• Very small-scale work that lacks depth or a significant contribution

What to THINK CAREFULLY about publishing:

• Preliminary results and pilot studies: are they useful, or are they too inconclusive? (Consider submitting these to conferences)

What are the BJET Editors looking for?

BJET publishes theoretical perspectives, methodological developments and high quality empirical research that demonstrate whether and how applications of instructional/educational technology systems, networks, tools and resources lead to improvements in formal and non-formal education at all levels, from early years through to higher, technical and vocational education, professional development and corporate training.

Empirical papers are expected to report on significant research studies. These may report qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods studies and need to be of a high scholarly quality. Empirical papers need to include: a clear methodology (including information on sampling and analytical process); substantive evidence of research outputs, outcomes and impacts (e.g. of the interventions trialled, applied, or adopted). Theoretical, methodological and review articles should be critical, present a novel perspective and make an original contribution.

BJET does not publish purely descriptive papers or those that simply present learners’, teachers’ and other users’ opinions on methods, materials or technologies. Papers are selected for publication based on the rigour of the research and its potential to make a substantive and original contribution to the field, with explicit reference to international significance.

Since researchers, policymakers and practitioners need to know how the possibilities of educational technology can be maximised and problems of adoption and sustainability minimised, BJET particularly welcomes such submissions as:

- Multi-site, multi-perspective studies by teams of researchers testing promising approaches and fostering further developments;

- Longitudinal studies that evidence the benefits of educational technology innovations to systems and institutions;

- Reports on educational technology initiatives which met with problems and/or failed to achieve their aims, and the lessons to be learned from these;

- Research studies that confirm, build upon or contradict previous BJET contributions.

We welcome jargon-free writing: write as clearly as you can. Remember that our readers are busy people: conciseness is a virtue, whatever the overall length. Avoid parochial references and assumptions: for many BJET readers English is not their mother tongue. Age groups of students should be clarified rather than referring only to “Grade 5, Year 6, etc.” Spell out all acronyms first time around.

Importantly, reports of experimental work should be analytical, not merely descriptive: reviews of developing fields should be critical, not merely informative; theoretical overviews should contain some original contribution or novel perspective.

We are looking for articles that "take us beyond what we already know:" A description of an established methodology in a familiar environment needs to have some novel aspect or be spectacularly written, if it is to gain the approval of the reviewers.

Articles should not normally exceed 6000 words including references to any sources that readers might wish to trace. However, there is no merit in lengthy reference lists per se. Wherever possible, the reasons for citing a reference should be clear from the context. Please check very carefully both their accuracy and presentation (see style notes below).

Compose practitioner notes carefully; the language needs to be accessible to educators who are not necessarily familiar with any of the research literature, and messages need to clearly inform educational practice.

For the full guidelines on how to write for BJET please see the Author Guidelines.

Top Tips

• Get help with language, statistics and structure if you need to (before submission!)

• Seek out Editors at conferences, ‘Meet the Editor’ sessions etc

• Pay careful attention to aims & scope and author guidelines

• Compose your title to be as informative (not clever or amusing) as possible, yet succinct (not long-winded)

• Don’t forget your abstract – the most read part of any published article! Make sure it contains an overview of the focus, the sample (include country, age group, numbers in empirical reports), the methods and the outcomes

• Make each of the 6,000 words count!

• Provide a synopsis of past research and identify the gap in knowledge that your paper aims to address.

- Explain clearly and concisely the design of any technology and learning experience.

- Use images as appropriate - screenshots are helpful but do not overuse.

- Consider using external links to more details reports or providing further information in an appendix.

- Similarly report your research methods, ensuring that the rigour of data collection and analysis are presented. Don’t forget to outline your sampling strategy.

- Only include relevant tables and graphs and make sure that these are referred to in the text. Figures can also be very useful.

- The results of qualitative data analysis often require more words, so select quotes carefully and consider using diagrams to provide an overview of complex phenomena.

- Take the time and words to critically discuss your findings in relation to the existing research and your research aims and questions.

- Draw out the implications for practice and/or future research.

- Make sure that your conclusion does more than repeat your abstract or introduction.

- Explain to your reader why your findings are significant and what your contribution is.

• Understand that Editors and reviewers are not the enemy! In fact they take a lot of time to ensure that their feedback is as informative as possible. Accept feedback as a learning experience.

• Be patient – the process takes several months.

• Persistence pays – don’t be put off if you are not successful first time.

Preparing an article reporting your thesis work

• Focus your article carefully; be selective about which elements of the work to include and who will be most interested in them; a superficial summary of an entire thesis is not appropriate and will be rejected!

• If there is one main idea/set of findings then concentrate on honing that into article format. Do not try and cover too many areas/issues

• Considering preparing more than one article if there is enough material of significant value to the field

• Journal articles do not need so much justification of methods as a thesis; writing needs to be very succinct, less detailed, less discursive, more formal

• Take the time to read several recently published articles in BJET to learn what makes an article successful (this may include articles which are not in your area of research but use similar methods, for example)

Support for Preparing your Manuscript

The way you have written your article plays a crucial role in optimising search results for a reader – helping them to find, read and cite your work. To ensure your article is as discoverable as possible please read and apply our five tips for increasing search engine discoverability. You can access these here.

See our guide for what makes a good abstract.

For support on publishing ethics see our resources.

The Peer Review Process

Peer Review is the process of screening a submitted manuscript. The manuscript will be reviewed by professionals in the same field before it is published in a journal.

The process is designed to assess the validity, quality and originality of articles for publication. Its ultimate purpose is to maintain the integrity of science by filtering out invalid, irrelevant or poor quality articles.

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically via the online submission site. Go to the journal home page and click on 'Online Submission'.

For a video introduction to the peer review process watch our video. For full support and guidelines on the submission and peer review see our guidelines.

Manuscript Revision

• The comments of the referees should be used to refine your work and improve the manuscript

• If you disagree with the comment, still consider revising the article in some way to clarify your argument

• Explain clearly in your letter to reviewers where and how you have addressed each of the referees' comments

• Take time to respond to all comments, don’t ignore ones which are hard! The editors are likely to send it back to you or even reject it if you ignore some suggestions for revision.Be clear as to how you have addressed the issues raised by the reviewers

• Re-read your whole paper and, if you can, get colleagues to re-read before you re-submit

Manuscript Rejection

This is an opportunity to improve your paper and learn from feedback of expert scholars in the field

Make the changes recommended by the referees even if not re-submitting to same journal because an unchanged paper…

• may be sent to the same referees by the next journal

• is likely to get the same or similar comments even from different referees

Manuscript Acceptance

If your paper is accepted make sure to use our submission checklist and familiarize yourself with the production process. Being aware of when you will be contacted with proofs and how to check them will speed up the process and ultimately get your paper published online faster.

Consider how to promote readership and citations. Social media can really help here. Post @BJETEds when your article is available online. You may want to compose a blog offering an engaging short summary of the work. One key example is the ‘British Educational Research Association Blog: Research Matters’. This is a topical and vibrant blog aimed at education researchers, policymakers and teachers. See https://www.bera.ac.uk/submission-policy. Or you could start your own blog.

You will have the option of raising the profile of your paper with a Video Abstract. You can watch an example of these video abstracts here:

An invitation and instructions on how to submit a video abstract will be sent to you if your paper is accepted.

After your article is published you will have the opportunity to promote it using our Author Promotion Toolkit