Journals with Borders, Journals without Borders: Under-Representation of Asian Countries in Educational Research Journals

As "Australasian Journal of Educational Technology" (AJET) Production Editor, the author evaluates whether AJET is providing a fair and adequate representation for researchers in Asian countries, with particular reference to AJET's aspiration to be "a front ranked international journal with an Australasian character" (Atkinson & McLoughlin, 2007, p. v). His initial exploratory study suggests that AJET's progress is actually better than "mixed." According to his findings, "Higher Education Research & Development" (HERD) and a good number of its peer journals seem to attain a much smaller representation of researchers in Asian countries (the Asia-Pacific region) compared with the highly ranked educational technology journals that the author has monitored as peers for AJET. The author suggests categorising journals as if some are "with borders" and some "without borders" with respect to submissions from Asian countries could help to direct a spotlight upon matters that are more readily subject to influence by editors, editorial boards, and review panels for journals such as AJET and HERD, in contrast to matters that are much more difficult to influence, such as government and institutional policies that promote (or fail to promote) educational research and its scholarly reporting and author perceptions about a journal's receptiveness towards Asian or ESL authored articles. He concludes that editors and editorial boards need to be very sure that all is in good order with respect to their influences upon the under-representation of Asian countries, before delving deeply into researching author, government and institutional influences. Furthermore, every international journal needs to monitor its representation of Asian authors, ESL authors, and so on, and to ensure that it never falls behind the global trend. (Contains 1 figure.)