Note from NCPEA Publications Director, Theodore Creighton
Beginning with the Volume 8, Number 1 (March 2013) issue of the International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation (IJELP), we notified our authors, readers, reviewers, and the education community at large, that NCPEA will contribute this content to the Open Education Resources (OER) movement. This contribution to OER will be permanent and continue through the future.
In August, 2005, NCPEA partnered with Rice University and the Connexions Project, to publish our IJELP as open and free to all who had access to the Internet. Currently, there are over 400 peer-reviewed research manuscripts in the NCPEA/Connexions database. The purpose of the NCPEA/Knowledge Base Connexions Project is to “add to the knowledge base of the educational administration profession” and “aid in the improvement of administrative theory and practice, as well as administrative preparation programs.” Our partnership continues but a new door has opened for NCPEA Publications to join the OER movement in a more substantive and direct way. In March 2013, NCPEA Publications and the NCPEA Executive Board committed the IJELP to the OER movement.
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. Open Educational Resources are different from other resources an educator may use in that OER have been given limited licensing rights. That means they have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to provide access to all, at no charge. NCPEA Publications is committed to providing access to all, while assuring author/s of full attribution as others use the material.
The worldwide OER movement is rooted in the idea that equitable access to high-quality education is a global imperative (and to NCPEA, a moral/ethical responsibility and issue of social justice). Open Educational Resources, or OER, offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning through accessible content, and importantly, through embedding participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning. The OER Commons project aims to grow a sustainable culture of sharing among educators at all levels.
What is the OER Commons?
The Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Education (ISKME) created OER Commons, publicly launched in February 2007, to provide support for and build a knowledge base around the use and reuse of open educational resources (OER). As a network for teaching and learning materials, the web site offers engagement with resources in the form of social bookmarking, tagging, rating, and reviewing. OER Commons has forged alliances with over120 major content partners to provide a single point of access through which educators and learners can search across collections to access over thousands of items, find and provide descriptive information about each resource, and retrieve the ones they need. By being "open," these resources are publicly available for all to use.
What NCPEA OER is Not!
NCPEA open educational resources are not an open door at the NCPEA Publications submission and review stages. We have always insisted on and will continue to require very thorough peer reviews (double and often triple-blind). NCPEA Publications is fortunate to have a cadre of professional reviewers (university professors), numbering at approximately 400. Topic Editors first consider a submitted manuscript, and if appropriate content, selects/assigns two reviewers who also have the expertise/interest in the manuscript’s specific topic. This process assures that reviewers will read an author’s manuscript with expertise/experience in that area. The IJELP has an approximate acceptance rate of 20%. This current Volume 9, Number 1 has a 45% acceptance rate.
The “openness” of the IJELP OER comes at publication stage. Once the issues are published, they are formatted/published in an open access website, indexed by Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), catalogued as a “commendable journal” in the Cabell’s Directory, and provided to the Open Educational Resource database. The IJELP is currently viewed and read by educators from over 72 countries (many 3rd World) and all 50 U.S. States (data provided by Google Analytics). Read More at: http://www.oercommons.org "These peer-reviewed manuscripts are licensed under a Creative Commons, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives 3.0 license. They may be used for non-commercial educational purposes. When referring to an article, or portions thereof, please fully cite the work and give full attribution to the author(s)."
What is Manuscript FastTrack?
Our association with Express Academic Services provide us with the Manuscript FastTrack™ system, a fully automated web-based manuscript management and tracking service that speeds up the review process, improves the quality of reviews, and enhances the experience of authors, reviewers, and editors while eliminating the need for administrative and other support staff. Some features of the system include:
1. Reduces the average time manuscripts spend in review;
2. Increases the response of reviewers;
3. Minimizes communication via automated and paperless correspondence;
4. Eliminates the need for document storage and archiving;
5. Provides editorial access to the manuscripts and databases from any place at any time;
6. Gains continuity of a single "editorial office" irrespective of where editors are located and how often they change; and
7. Allows authors to track the status of their manuscript through the website at any time.
The real feature of FastTrack is that we can manage all of our publications from one site (i.e., Connexions, Education Leadership Review, NCPEA Yearbook), including the submission of conference submissions. See link here to more detail and short videos displaying theManuscript FastTrack™ system.
How do I register in FastTrack as a user?
Simple. Go to: http://ncpea.expressacademic.org/login.php and register as a user. Registering is free and only takes a couple of minutes. This allows you to submit manuscripts and facilitates the review and publication processes. Submission is not possible without registering as a user.
What happens to my manuscript after submission?
Why is NCPEA using the FastTrack System?
Wow, that's an easy one. All files, documents, tables, figures are uploaded to the FastTrack system by the individual author with a few clicks on the computer. Then, all of the reviewing, editing, and publishing steps are handled in the system, eliminating emailing files back and forth from author to editor and reviewer. Publication and other submission decisions are made in a much more realistic turn-around. In most cases, decisions are made within 30 days. The jobs of the editor and reviewer are no longer tedious or time-consuming. This is a win-win answer to getting your submissions reviewed and published much faster than the not so unusual 6 month or more in traditional research journals.