British Journal of Educational Technology

Published on behalf of the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA)

Edited by:
Nick Rushby

Print ISSN: 0007-1013
Online ISSN: 1467-8535
Frequency: Bi-monthly
Current Volume: 41 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 31/112 Education & Educational Research
Impact Factor: 1.041

TopAuthor Guidelines

BJET is a primary source for academics and professionals in the expanding fields of educational and training technology throughout the English speaking world. Articles cover the whole range of education and training, concentrating on the theory, applications and development of educational technology and communications. This includes such subjects as:

* The design and production of learning materials;
* The psychology of communication;
* Curriculum development and course design;
* Evaluation and monitoring;
* Priorities in resources, planning and organisation;
* The storage, retrieval and dissemination of resources and information;
* The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of print, electronic and optical media;
* Delivery systems for open and distance learning;
* Support for self study and for learners at a distance;
* Assessment, notably assessment on demand and of learning from experience;
* Problems and potential of new technologies in education and training;
* Educational research and dissemination.

In addition to full length refereed articles and shorter colloquium pieces, we include book reviews and notes of other publications received.

We welcome jargon-free writing: write as simply 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. Spell out all acronyms first time around. 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.

Originality and copyright

When you submit a paper to us, it is a condition that your contribution is original and that it has neither been published in any languages previously nor is currently being considered for publication elsewhere. Otherwise it is not eligible for BJET.

Wiley-Blackwell, like most major publishers, has arrangements in place with the UK Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and similar bodies overseas and can relieve authors of the need to protect their copyright and deal with permissions. We ask authors to assign copyright to the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTa). You will be sent a copy of the form and accompanying notes and we ask you to complete and return it with the final version of your contribution. You will see (in paragraph 4 of the notes) that it specifically allows you to make copies for your own courses without having to seek permission from BECTa. If you have any queries, please contact the Editor; if not, please sign and return the form - by post, not email, keeping a copy for your own records.

Articles

Articles should not normally exceed 4000 words including references to any sources that readers might wish to trace. They are rigorously refereed. The speed of publication of articles depends greatly on the authors' readiness to respond to the referees' comments. Please follow APA style and use the format of other articles in BJET as a guide for laying out your contribution. All articles should have an abstract (100-200 words) at the beginning and should include a short note about current work or experience (not more than 60 words) and an address for correspondence.

Web-linked material

Some authors wish to link their contributions to a Web site containing interactive multimedia material, or to refer to large data sets which cannot be accommodated in the printed journal. We have models for publishing such contributions and the Editor will be pleased to discuss this with you.

Colloquium

This section aims at a style akin to a written conversation, with shorter contributions (up to 1000 words) that are not normally subject to refereeing and are therefore published much faster than articles. Colloquia are published online only and do not appear in the print edition of the Journal. Possible areas include a:

· summary of work in progress raising queries or problems
· short thought piece, perhaps questioning received wisdom
· early warning of the potential and problems of new media
· story of an unsuccessful research attempt and the lessons learned

Style notes

It helps us greatly if your manuscript confirms to the rules below, particularly in the layout of references. These give us the most problems in copy editing. Please follow APA style.

1. Use the format of other articles in BJET as a guide for laying out your contribution. All articles should have an abstract (100-200 words) at the beginning.

2. Include a short note about current work or experience (not more than 60 words) and an address for correspondence.

3. Please ensure that the manuscript you submit is free from typographical errors, spelling mistakes, etc. It is your responsibility to ensure that manuscripts are as error free as possible. Simply relying on spell checkers is insufficient. Errors are an unnecessary distraction and make it harder to review the paper objectively. It is also an issue of courtesy and professionalism towards the referees.

4. As word processing software gets more sophisticated it becomes easier to submit your manuscript in a very professional format. Please do not use these advanced features. The typesetting process works best with simple text from, for example Microsoft Word 97 or 2000. In the final stage of copy-editing we have to remove all of these advanced features and this sometimes changes the sense of what you are trying to say. It is very time-consuming and may delay your article so that it has to be held back to a later issue of the journal. If you are submitting an article that you have formatted for internal use, please help us by removing the advanced features before you submit.

5. Where possible, provide machine readable illustrations (as bmp or tif files). If this is not possible then submit camera ready illustrations on separately numbered sheets, each bearing an explanatory caption. Please avoid using very pale colours since these do not print well (if at all) in black and white. Use dashed and dotted lines to differentiate lines on graphs. It is not possible to redraw artwork.

6. Figures and tables should be given at the end of the manuscript and the ideal position for these should be shown in the manuscript.

7. Main article titles = italic, initial cap only

8. Contact details
Italics. Web site (N.B. two words) not underlined
Email addresses - heading should read 'Email:' if following a full stop (e.g. straight after the end of a postal address) and 'email:' if following a semi colon (e.g. if tel or fax detailed have preceded the email address). Never E-mail or e-mail.

9. Headings
° A: roman, bold, initial cap and essentials only - no space below
° B: italic, initial cap and essentials only - no space below
° C: roman, initial cap and essential only - no space below

10. Style
et al (no full point)
ibid.
eg,
ie,
N.B.
%, not per cent
Dr Mr etc. no full stop
p. and pp. (followed by a space)
etc
Quotation marks: Double quotes, single within
Ellipsis: e.g. He was singing Hickory Dickory Dock... quite merrily. (n.b. no space before, but space after ellipsis) Or at the end of a sentence: He was singing Hickory Dickory Dock... .

11. Figures
Figure 1: Electronic discussion groups (centred, italic, initial cap and essentials only, no full stop). In text, use cap initial

12. Tables
Table 2: Requirements for tutors (centred, italic, initial cap and essentials only, no full stop) Keys to tables should be roman. No full stop In text, use cap initial

13. Footnotes should not be used. If a point is worth making it should be included in the main text.

14. Acknowledgements (if needed) appear after main text and before the references.

15. The Journal follows the text referencing style and reference list style detailed in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition).

16. References are cited in the text as follows:

Jones and Dickinson (2004), or (Hurley, 2004), or (Jeager, 2003, 2004, b) or (Jones and Dickinson, 2004; Hurley, 2004).

For up to five authors, all surnames should be cited in the first instance, with subsequent occurrences cited as et al., e.g. Cobley et al. (2002) or Cobley et al., 2002). For six or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author followed by et al. However, all authors should be listed in the Reference List.

Join the names in a multiple author citation in running text by the word 'and'. In parenthetical material, in tables, and in the Reference List, join the names by an ampersand (&).

References to unpublished material should be avoided.

17. Full references should be given at the end of the article in alphabetical order, and not in footnotes. References to journals should include the authors' surnames and initials, the full title of the paper, the full name of the journal, the year of publication, the volume number, and inclusive page numbers. Titles of journals must not be abbreviated and should be italicised. References to books should include the autors' surnames and initials, the full title of the book, the place of publication, the publisher's name and the year of publication.

References to articles, chapters and symposia contributions should be cited as per the examples below:

Book: Mathias, H. et al. (1988). (Eds) Designing new systems and technologies for Learning (pp 57-59). London: Kogan Page.

Article: Megarry, J. (1988). Hypertext and compact disc: the challenge of multimedia learning. British Journal of Educational Technology 19, 172-183.

N.B. please cite published proceedings in book styles wherever possible.

18. Full reference details of articles referenced on-line must be given along with the URL, i.e. authorship, year, title of document/report and URL. If this information is not available, the reference should be removed and only the web address cited in the text.

Eg, Smith A. (1999) Select committee report into social care in the community [WWW document]. URL http://www.dhss.gov.uk/reports/report015285.html

Where the resource is not an 'article' then please use the form:
[] Retrieved online at:

eg: URL: XML Schema. Retrieved online 10/10/03 at: http://w3c.org/xml/xmlschema/

Cited: ........ [URL: XML Schema]

Submissions

Submissions to BJET are made on-line using ScholarOne Manuscripts. To make a submission, go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bjet. If this is the first time you have used the system you will be asked to register. Full instructions on making your submission are provided. Thereafter, you will be kept in touch with the progress of your submission through refereeing, any revisions that are required, and - hopefully - to final acceptance.

Author Services enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/ for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

BJET participates in Wiley-Blackwell Publishing's Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a scheduled issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Exclusive Licence Form

Authors will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the Exclusive Licence Form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various media/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an appropriate form will be supplied by the editorial office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form here.

Refereeing

BJET has a relatively unusual refereeing procedure. Instead of the editor allocating submitted articles to referees who are known to have specific interests in that topic, members of the refereeing panel are invited to 'bid' for articles recently received. Once or twice each month, the list of the titles of new articles is circulated to the panel who choose those that they think will be of interest to them and are in areas where they are familiar with the topic.

This has two interesting consequences. Firstly, it provides a rapid turn-round for those submissions that are perceived to be of interest. But secondly, there are some article that do not attract any immediate bidders. However, we have a number of experienced referees who then volunteer to deal with the 'orphans' so they are not left out. One consequence of this is that you should therefore give careful consideration to your title to ensure that it provides a good description of the topic of your article.

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 referees. Often, we suggest that such articles be shortened to focus on one or two aspects and submitted as a Colloquium piece.

Please let the Editor know if you are likely to be unavailable or at a different address for any significant time in the near future.

We strongly advise that you should ask one or more of your colleagues to review your article before sending it to BJET. The concept of internal peer review seems to have gone out of fashion, but our experience is that it can be very helpful in polishing submissions so that the probability of success is much greater! If English is not your first language, you wil find it helpful to enlist the help of a native English speaker to edit the piece, to correct grammar and ensure that the idiom is correct. This too makes it easier for the referees to give full justice to your work.

BJET is published six times each year in January, March, May, July, September and November and articles occasionally have to be carried over at the last minute because of space constraints, so it is normally not possible to say in advance in which issue a specific contribution will appear, even after it has been accepted for publication in a revised form.

Books for review should be sent to:

Eric Deeson
BJET Reviews Editor
4 Ethel Road
Harborne
Birmingham
B17 0EL
UK