The Australian Journal of Teacher Education serves as a wonderful example of a thriving open access journal. In addition to hitting over 350,000 downloads since transitioning to bepress Digital Commons in 2011, the journal, published by Research Online at Edith Cowan University, has seen submissions increase significantly. Much of this growth can be attributed to the journal being open access and widely discoverable, especially by international authors. The larger submission pool has allowed AJTE to be more prolific without compromising its high standard. It has gone from only having enough content to publish one or two issues a year, to publishing twelve issues a year while still rejecting sixty percent of submissions. Authors who have chosen to publish with AJTE have been rewarded both in high readership and high citation counts. The citation rate for the journal has doubled since August of 2012.
How did AJTE achieve this success? Editor Tony Fetherston and ECU librarians Julia Gross and Janice Chan explain in last Monday’s bepress Digital Commons Community Webinar “Open-Access Publishing Advantages: A Case Study at the Australian Journal of Teacher Education.” AJTE editor Fetherston also noted the benefit of DC’s built-in peer review and submission tools, EdiKit, on improving efficiency and streamlining editor workflows. While credit for the journal’s success clearly belongs to Tony, Janice, Julia, and all those who contributes to AJTE, we’re very grateful for the shout-out.
Interested in learning more about implementing a library-based publishing model on your campus? Our upcoming webinar, “New Directions: Library Publishing” will provide a broad overview of library publishing, share a few key things you’ll need to know before getting started, and explore some examples of different models that libraries are using. Join us on Tuesday, October 22nd at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern to hear more!
Australian Journal of Teacher Education – Faculty of Education and Arts – Edith Cowan University
