Evaluating articles submitted for publication in Chemistry Education Research and Practice

Changes at CERP

Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP) has recently seen the retirement of Keith Taber as Editor of the journal. In his first editorial in 2012, Keith thanked his predecessors, Stephen Breuer and Georgios Tsaparlis, for establishing and developing the journal (Taber, 2012). In turn we now acknowledge Keith for building on Stephen and Georgios’ work, growing our journal's scope and impact substantially. This growth is evident in a number of tangible ways, such as consideration of the number of submissions, or the number and range of articles published; but perhaps the clearest evidence is in the expansion of the journal editing team, comprised now of one Editor and three Associate Editors (Table 1). We extend our combined gratitude to Keith for passing on the journal in such excellent health, for his mentorship and guidance on the editing processes, and also for his series of editorials on setting the expectations for publishing articles in the field of chemistry education research. As will be apparent below, these underpin much of the basis of this editorial, which aims to provide guidance on submitting manuscripts to CERP. To do this, we are collating into one place the key messages and guidance from a number of previous CERP editorials as well as drawing on our own experience from handling manuscripts. In doing so, we also take the opportunity to refocus the direction of CERP to ensure its continued growth and sustainability. We intend this editorial to be a useful guidance document for those wishing to either submit articles to CERP or review submissions for CERP. Our focus in this Editorial is on articles. CERP also welcomes reviews and perspectives, and while much of what is described below applies to these types of submissions too, we will return to consider reviews and perspectives in detail in a future Editorial.

Table 1 Editorial team at CERP

Name	Role	Interests
Michael Seery	Editor	Laboratory education, e-learning, impact of research on practice, research methods
Ajda Kahveci	Associate Editor	Inquiry-based science teaching, conceptions in chemistry, assessment of chemistry learning, chemistry teacher education, gender and diversity in science education
Gwen Lawrie	Associate Editor	Self-regulated learning in hybrid environments, technology-based assessment, external representations in chemistry, tertiary chemistry pedagogies and practices
Scott Lewis	Associate Editor	Pedagogical evaluation, measurement of student learning, equity in education, student study habits

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Scope and purpose of the journal

A learned society supported journal

CERP is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry a learned society and professional body which has a substantial profile in publishing in the chemical sciences. The Society supports the journal through its Education Division Council. This support means that publishing in CERP carries no author charges and is also free to access, placing CERP in a unique position in the field. The journal has excellent distribution by being part of the RSC journal package for university library subscriptions. As a free to access journal, it is also readily accessible for those without typical journal access protocols through institutions. CERP's audience therefore extends beyond an academic audience, and includes teachers, independent researchers and practitioners, as well as others interested in teaching and learning in chemistry.

A discipline-specific journal

CERP is a discipline-specific journal, where the focus of articles published is clearly on chemistry education; that is articles should inform readers about some aspect of teaching and learning chemistry. Our previous Editor has written about what constitutes an appropriate article for a discipline-specific journal (Taber, 2013), and has described three general categories: inherent; embedded; and collateral (Table 2). Articles categorised as inherent chemistry education research are those arising directly out of the nature of chemistry as a subject, such as studies describing an exploration of students’ conceptions of chemical representations. Articles categorised as embedded in chemistry education research are those where a general education research concept is studied within the context of chemistry, with a particular focus on the aspects of a chemistry learning and teaching situation affecting that general concept. An example might include how concept maps used in a chemistry setting helped students relate chemical concepts to each other. Finally, articles categorised as collateral to chemistry education research are those considering some general education research concept, but the choice of chemistry class is incidental to the study – there is no new knowledge about learning or teaching of chemistry coming from the study. CERP welcomes articles that can be categorised as inherent and embedded in chemistry education research. Those that are collateral to chemistry education are more appropriate in general education journals.

Table 2 Categories of articles and their relationship to chemistry education research (from Taber, 2013)

Category	Description
Inherent CER	Concerns explored arise from the specific nature of teaching and learning chemistry as a curriculum subject.
Embedded in CER	Concerns explored arise from general issues in teaching and learning, but have been conceptualised within the specific context of teaching and learning chemistry.
Collateral to CER	Concerns explored arise from, and are conceptualised as, general issues in teaching and learning, and chemistry teaching/learning simply provides a convenient context for data collection.

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A journal with diverse audiences

The support from the RSC is in recognition of the unusual profile of CERP within its extensive library of journals in the chemical sciences. As we publish articles about chemistry education, our audience is broader than might be expected of other specialist publications. The journal Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences, for example, publishes articles suitable for these disciplines with the expected and intended audience being researchers working within those disciplines. CERP differs because while its audience will certainly include other chemistry education researchers, it will also include practitioners in chemistry education looking to use outputs of chemistry education research findings in their teaching. The journal's name includes ‘practice’, and there is every expectation that articles published will inform the practice of teaching chemistry. It is imperative then that authors provide in clear terms suggestions and scope of how their article outcomes could be useful in practice. This is additional to the normal implications that authors might report for other researchers in the field. Consideration of both research and practice implications of research reported is of paramount importance for articles published in CERP.

Evaluating submissions

Articles published in an international research journal such as CERP are evaluated through a process that includes several stages, and the journey of a manuscript from submission to published article can be briefly summarised as follows:

• pre-screening carried out by the Editor and assignment to an Associate Editor;

• consideration by the Associate Editor and assignment to referees;

• consideration of referee comments and communication of decision to the author;

• revision cycles;

• issuance of acceptance notification;

• preparation of article for production;

• production and publication online.

Editor's pre-screening considerations

Scope of content

The first consideration is whether the manuscript falls within the scope of the journal. It is a given that articles must relate to chemistry and to education. Within that boundary, Taber's useful categorisations described above are used to make a broad judgement, and articles that are deemed to be inherent to, or embedded in, chemistry education research are considered within scope. One of the more difficult pre-screening decisions is to turn away articles categorised as collateral. These are often articles of excellent potential, but with little consideration to the domain of chemistry teaching and learning, and as such better fit with a more general education or science education journal. Articles that are embedded in chemistry education may be challenging for referees, and authors may subsequently be requested to emphasise the extent to what we learn about chemistry education from their work.

Novelty

The nature of publishing in the primary literature is that it should inform readers beyond what is currently in the literature. We distinguish between research studies, which set out to generate new knowledge, and evaluation studies, which aim to generate data as evidence with regards to existing ideas or to measure the efficacy of an intervention in a given context. To be considered a research study, authors should clearly and succinctly describe any theoretical frameworks that are relevant to their study, or justify the basis of their study in terms of existing published research to establish their rationale for their own research design.

Chemistry education research is a broad field with a variety of different research domains (Cooper and Stowe, 2018). Authors should identify what is additionally explored in their manuscript by presenting in their introductory sections the seminal papers underpinning the area, previous research giving context to their topic, and presenting the additions their work will make in this context. Replication studies to determine the reliability or generalizability of prior work are welcome, but the authors will need to frame these studies explicitly as such. The maturity of the field means that the additional knowledge from new studies may often be subtle. However, it should be clear to the reader what current gap in knowledge is going to be explored. This is most succinctly done by presenting clearly the research questions at the end of an introductory section, so that readers can clearly identify the context of the research and the questions that are being considered in that context. It is useful to the editors and reviewers if the novelty is also made clear in the submission letter accompanying the manuscript.

Framework for the research

All empirical studies should be situated in the context of prior published work or concepts to establish the need for the current study. In addition to a literature review, authors should aim to increase the importance of their own study by establishing connections to existing theoretical or conceptual research frameworks. This lays the foundation for the study, supports the proposed methods, and enables discussion of findings. This makes the advances in knowledge or understanding in the field explicit. A theoretical framework draws on one or more established theories to inform a study, whereas a conceptual framework arises from the identification of interconnected concepts that typically evolve from a grounded research study to describe phenomena or a phenomenon. In chemistry, we also refer to a ‘conceptual framework’ as describing an individual's existing cognitive resources or internal models, and therefore this distinction in usage of the term ‘conceptual framework’ is important to consider in manuscripts where the meanings may be conflated.

Ethical considerations

The Royal Society of Chemistry publishes the journal and issues the following requirements regarding experiments with human subjects on their website:†

When a study involves the use of… human subjects, authors must include in the 'methods/experimental' section of the manuscript a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the author's institute's policy on… ethics; where possible, details of compliance with national or international laws or guidelines should be included. The statement must name the institutional/local ethics committee which has approved the study; where possible, the approval or case number should be provided. A statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects is required. Reviewers may be asked to comment specifically on any cases in which concerns arise.

Our previous Editor has written useful advice regarding ethical considerations in education research (Taber, 2014), which centres on the central tenets of doing no harm and offering participants informed consent. The British Education Research Association guidelines have been recently updated and are available online (BERA, 2018). As well as the guidance mentioned, these offer additional guidance on using incentives and data storage in education research. Authors are required to state that their work has complied with institutional guidelines, but for the continuing development of work in the field of chemistry education research, they are additionally strongly encouraged to elaborate on the details of the ethical considerations underpinning their work. Details of whether ethical information is provided is noted at submission stage, with the understanding that manuscripts will not proceed to publication if ethical compliance cannot be demonstrated.

Judging the quality of the work

After pre-screening, suitable manuscripts are passed on to an Associate Editor (this term also includes the Editor in this process). Once the Associate Editor agrees with the initial assessment, referees are selected. As well as considerations listed above under pre-screening, reviewers will typically consider the following aspects.

Methodology and methods

Manuscripts should include a comprehensive description of the approaches, techniques, and/or instruments used in their study. As the research questions drive the methodology, research design, and specific methods, the authors should provide the rationale for their chosen methodology and associated methods with their stated research questions in mind. This rationale should allow readers to understand why a qualitative, quantitative, or a mixed methods approach is deemed appropriate. The aim and purpose of the research should be explained in that context.

In qualitative research, it is also possible to start with general identification of issues to be studied (sometimes referred to as “foreshadowed problems”) and develop hypotheses with the emerging study. Any qualitative approaches undertaken in the study should be explicitly stated and grounded in their appropriate literature. Although interviews are a common and frequently utilized data source in qualitative research, the authors are expected to be cognizant of primary methods of data collection associated with a particular qualitative approach. For example, in case studies, participant observation is the major data collection method, which can be supported with other methods such as conducting interviews. The rationale for identifying the particular research participants as well as the process of their selection should be provided.

The process of data analysis should be explained in as much detail as possible. Authors are encouraged to provide examples of their coding procedures on excerpts from the data. These examples should help readers understand how the authors constructed evidence from the data and arrived at their findings. If interrater reliability was sought in the process, this should be described. Additional quality criteria for ensuring the rigour of the research should be reported. A commonly used set of evaluative criteria in qualitative research is Guba and Lincoln's trustworthiness criteria, which are regarded as parallel to conventional criteria in quantitative research known as validity, reliability, and generalizability. They highlight four criteria that must be met: credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability (Guba and Lincoln, 1989).

Studies using quantitative research methods are expected to detail instruments that are used to generate the data analysed and evidence for the validity of the data generated. Including instruments used as an appendix to the study when possible is encouraged to aid readers in understanding the data collected and facilitate replication studies or research building upon the findings. Studies coding qualitative responses into quantitative values for analysis should detail the coding process.

As CERP receives a diverse range of contributions from all over the world, authors are required to present evidence of translation validity for research that is conducted in a language other than English. Our previous Editor has provided useful guidelines on demonstrating validity of translation (Taber, 2018).

Presentation of results

One way of presenting results in qualitative research is a structure organized around the categories or themes that emerged from data. The findings may be supported with quotes, which should be properly referenced to their sources, although authors should ensure that the analysis of quotes and the implications for the study are explicit in their manuscript, and not inferred in presentation of quotes alone. This presentation should logically tie back to the research questions and allow readers to engage in reasoning regarding their answers. Qualitative research results are presented as descriptions as they relate to context, issues, and interpretations (Stake, 2000). This is particularly important as it is reflective of the trustworthiness of the research, which requires providing as much detail as possible to let readers decide if the situation applies to their own contexts (an alternative approach to quantitative studies where generalizability is sought). The design of quantitative studies can vary greatly, but general expectations for common designs can be set. Many studies would benefit by including descriptive statistics of each variable measured to aid understanding of the data analysed and the extent ensuing statistics are appropriate. Inferential statistics should include values for the test statistic, statistical significance and effect size where possible. The use of parametric statistical tests to compare groups (e.g. t-tests, ANOVA) should report sample size, standard deviation and mean scores for each group compared.

Discussion

The discussion section is where the story found in the data is developed and connected back to the theoretical framework and what is already known. Authors are expected to revisit their research questions and elaborate on their own research results critically, while at the same time showing how their results fit in the readily available body of knowledge highlighted in the introduction. The claims that are made here must be based on evidence from the data, and the way data were interpreted as evidence should be made clear to readers. The certainty of claims should be reflected in the extent of evidence for those claims.

As well as the discussion and interpretation of results, authors should provide generous information regarding implications of their work. As stated, CERP has a diverse readership, and implications should be considered in terms of the implications for other researchers, as well as implications for practitioners. A statement of limitations of the work, in terms of current theory and professional practice, also provides useful information to readers about how they might situate the outcomes of the reported work in their own research and/or practice.

Overview of article format

CERP does not require particular headings, but the preceding discussion has demonstrated that alignment of particular components of a typical article to sections is useful both in preparing an article for submission as well as in ensuring the readability of an article by as broad an audience as possible. Table 3 outlines the typical sections that comprise of an article in CERP, and summarises the expectations of each of these.

Table 3 Typical structure for research article in CERP and guidance for what should be included in each section

Section	Guidance for content
Abstract	Summary of article, research approach taken, data obtained, findings observed, headline conclusions.
Introduction	Overview of context of research, reporting work from broad domain to specific context.
	Overview of theoretical framework(s) and relationship to study.
	Research questions to identify clearly purpose of current research.
Methodology/methods	Justification of methodology in the context of theoretical framework(s).
	Methods used, with as much pertinent detail as possible.
	Confirmation of ethical approval, and additional considerations in conducting research within ethical guidelines.
Results	Data obtained. Data should be presented succinctly without omitting detail. Highlighted data to align with arguments in main text, with supplementary data added to Appendix as necessary.
Discussion	Discussion of data obtained considering overview context and theoretical framework.
	Explicit answering of research questions posed in introduction.
	Limitations of work.
Implications	Implications for research – how does this work add to the field.
	Implications for practice – what can practitioners take from this work. If teaching materials or other outputs are available to share, include them in the Appendix.
Conclusions	Report of main findings from work and what is now known as a result of this work.
Appendix	Materials supplementary to the article that will be of use to readers.

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Overall manuscripts should be written in clear and accessible English, being aware of the breadth of readership mentioned above. The responsibility is with authors to ensure that their manuscript is error free, reads clearly, and flows logically. Those that don’t typically do poorly at review stage, and for this reason, poorly written or formatted manuscripts are usually returned to authors at pre-screening. As an additional aid to readability, authors are encouraged to embed figures and tables in the manuscript text where they can be viewed, rather than compiling them at the end of the manuscript.

CERP has its own style for presentation of Appendices. Material considered necessary to supplement the main text can be added to an appendix. These should be numbered in sequence as necessary, and each one called out at appropriate points in the manuscript. Detailed guidance on use of Appendices is available (Taber, 2016).

The review process

CERP is fortunate to have a large and supportive reviewer community and the quality and helpfulness of the reviews we receive is something that is often commented upon by authors. In general, manuscripts are assigned two reviewers by the Associate Editor. Reviewers are selected based on their relevant expertise. Where a manuscript requires it, reviewers will be selected based on their complementary expertise, so that the combination of reviews gives a comprehensive analysis of the quality of the manuscript. Authors are invited to suggest reviewers when submitting manuscripts, and where these suggestions are appropriate, Associate Editors may invite one of the suggestions to review the manuscript. In addition to the reviewer comments, the Associate Editor usually provides commentary on the manuscript.

Upon receiving reviews, the Associate Editor considers the recommendations of the reviewers alongside their own commentary and makes a decision. In some cases, if reviewers disagree, a third reviewer may be invited to seek additional commentary on particular aspects, or the Associate Editor may instead make a judgement based on the comments of the reviewers and their own expertise. The range of decisions include Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, Reject and Resubmit, and Reject, and in corresponding these decisions to the authors, the Associate Editor will explain the rationale for that choice.

For manuscripts requiring revision, authors are asked to include with their revised manuscript a cover letter listing the comments of the Associate Editor and reviewers, how those comments have been addressed (or providing a reason for not addressing them), and a manuscript highlighting where any changes have been made in light of each comment. Depending on the extent of changes required, the Associate Editor may send it out to reviewers again to confirm that their comments have been addressed. Recommendations to submit revisions, especially the decisions Major Revision or Reject and Resubmit, do not mean that the manuscript will be subsequently accepted. Once manuscripts are accepted, an as soon as possible (ASAP) version is put onto our website (if the author has agreed to this), with the final produced copy placed online after author proofs are submitted. These will initially be identified by their digital object identifier (DOI), until they are included in the next published issue. CERP publishes four issues a year.

Conclusions

CERP is an international journal of considerable impact, adding to our knowledge about teaching and learning chemistry. As a learned society journal, the quality of its articles must reflect the values of the Society, including high quality of research, and demonstrable implications for practice. Authors choosing to publish in CERP must demonstrate the quality of their research in their methods and subsequent analysis, so that practitioners using the outcomes of the research can do so with confidence. In this Editorial, we have described how authors can prepare their manuscripts to achieve these goals.

References

1. British Educational Research Association (BERA), (2018), Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, 4th edn, London: British Educational Research Association.
2. Cooper M. M. and Stowe R. L., (2018), Chemistry Education Research—From Personal Empiricism to Evidence, Theory, and Informed Practice, Chem. Rev., 118(12), 6053–6087.
3. Guba L. and Lincoln Y., (1989), Fourth generation evaluation, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
4. Stake R. E., (2000), Case studies, in Denzin N. K. and Lincoln Y. S. (ed.) Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc, pp. 435–454.
5. Taber K. S., (2012), Recognising quality in reports of chemistry education research and practice, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 13(1), 4–7.
6. Taber K. S., (2013), Three levels of chemistry educational research, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 14(2), 151–155.
7. Taber K. S., (2014), Ethical considerations of chemistry education research involving ‘human subjects’, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 15(2), 109–113.
8. Taber K. S., (2016), Supplementing the text: the role of appendices in academic papers, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 17(1), 6–9.
9. Taber K. S., (2018), Lost and found in translation: guidelines for reporting research data in an ‘other’ language, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 19(3), 646–652.

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Footnote

† http://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/journal-authors-reviewers/author-responsibilities/

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