About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The International Journal of Research in STEM Education (IJRSE) aims to facilitate multi-disciplinary research and development by publishing empirical contributions that combine subject content expertise with educational and technological endeavors. IJRSE provides a unique platform for researchers and educators to share their findings on various topics, including designing and implementing technology-rich learning environments, innovative pedagogies, and curricula in STEM education that foster successful learning in areas of teacher education and beyond.

We encourage contributions from scholars across different subject content fields (e.g., natural science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as well as the broader fields of mathematics and science education. These contributions may address specific challenges in improving students' achievement, approaches used to motivate and engage students, and lessons learned from curriculum and instructional changes in STEM education. Additionally, the journal welcomes translational STEM education research that bridges the gap between research, educational policy, and practice to enhance STEM education.

IJRSE also features conceptual papers, article reviews, and editorial articles, enriching the spectrum of research in STEM education. These contributions deepen our understanding of educational training curricula and pedagogical practices across diverse education systems worldwide. This approach fosters scholarly exchange and facilitates discussions on emerging issues and cutting-edge research in the field of STEM education.

Peer Review Process

The suitability of manuscripts for publication in the International Journal on Research in STEM Education (IJRSE) is judged by peer reviewers and the editorial board. All the review processes are conducted in a double-blind review where both authors' and reviewers' identities remain anonymous. The editor-in-chief handles all correspondence with the author and decides whether the paper is recommended for acceptance, rejection, or needs to be returned to the author for revision.

The journal manager will check the similarity score of the papers using Turnitin tools. IJRSE applies the minimum standard of similarity score of the manuscript under 20%. The article should be revised or rejected if the manuscript performs above 20%. The Editor in Chief and Editorial Board will evaluate the submitted papers on the pre-qualification step for the suitability of further review process. The manuscripts will be evaluated by qualified peer reviewers selected by the Editor in Chief. The peer reviewers should examine the manuscript and return it with their recommendation to the Editor in Chief as soon as possible, usually within three weeks. The Editor in Chief decides the acceptance or rejection of the paper.

Papers needing revision will be returned to the authors, and the author must return the revised manuscript to the Editor in Chief via OJS of the International Journal on Research in STEM Education (IJRSE). The editor-in-chief sends the revised manuscript to the Editorial Board to check whether the manuscript is revised as suggested by peer reviewers. The Editorial Board could give a recommendation to the Editor in Chief that the manuscript should return to the authors, accept or reject within 1-2 weeks. Editor in Chief would send an acceptance letter announcing the publication issue attached with manuscript reprint to authors.

Open Access Policy

International Journal of Research in STEM Education is a peer-reviewed journal with open access. The article processing or delivery of the manuscript is submitted to the manager or editor through an online system or by using the OJS Open Access publishing model, and this journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal is an open-access journal, which means that all content is freely available without charge to users or / institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to full-text articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is in accordance with Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Budapest Open Access Initiative

An old tradition and new technology have converged to make an unprecedented public good possible. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the worldwide electronic distribution of peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.

For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact. To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access to the rest of this literature and remove the barriers, especially the price barriers, that stand in the way. The more who join the effort to advance this cause, the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access.

The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

While peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers, it is not costless to produce. However, experiments show that the overall costs of providing open access to this literature are far lower than the costs of traditional forms of dissemination. With such an opportunity to save money and expand the scope of dissemination at the same time, there is today a strong incentive for professional associations, universities, libraries, foundations, and others to embrace open access to advance their missions. Achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian.

To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies.

• I. Self-Archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called self-archiving. When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, then search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents.
• II. Open-access Journals: Second, scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access. Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Instead, they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses. There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities, and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives.

Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving (I.) and a new generation of open-access journals (II.) are the ways to attain this goal. They are not only direct and effective means to this end, but they are also within the reach of scholars themselves immediately and need not wait on changes brought about by markets or legislation. While we endorse the two strategies just outlined, we also encourage experimentation with further ways to make the transition from the present methods of dissemination to open access. Flexibility, experimentation, and adaptation to local circumstances are the best ways to ensure that progress in diverse settings will be rapid, secure, and long-lived.

The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal. It will use its resources and influence to extend and promote institutional self-archiving, to launch new open-access journals, and to help an open-access journal system to become economically self-sustaining. While the Open Society Institute's commitment and resources are substantial, this initiative is very much in need of other organizations to lend their effort and resources.

We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish.

February 14, 2002
Budapest, Hungary

Leslie Chan: Bioline International
Darius Cuplinskas: Director, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Michael Eisen: Public Library of Science
Fred Friend: Director of Scholarly Communication, University College London
Yana Genova: Next Page Foundation
Jean-Claude Gu©don: University of Montreal
Melissa Hagemann: Program Officer, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Stevan Harnad: Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Rick Johnson: Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Rima Kupryte: Open Society Institute
Manfredi La Manna: Electronic Society for Social Scientists 
Istvn R©v: Open Society Institute, Open Society Archives
Monika Segbert: eIFL Project consultant 
Sidnei de Souza: Informatics Director at CRIA, Bioline International
Peter Suber: Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College & The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
Jan Velterop: Publisher, BioMed Central