Advice for Editorial Board Members
Selected active members of the CSCL research community are periodically invited to join the ijCSCL Editorial Board. Typically, they have published in ijCSCL, JLS, the CSCL Conference or the ICLS Conference. They have ususally already provided several reviews to ijCSCL.
The primary duty of Board members is to review submissions. Board members are expected to complete about four (4) reviews per year. That is an average of one per quarterly issue. Reviews are due within six (6) weeks. You can always decline an invitation to review if you are unusually busy at the time or if you do not feel qualified to review a particular paper assigned. The term of service on the ijCSCL Board of Editors is four years, renewable.
The main purpose of a review is to advise the author how to improve the manuscript. This includes technical review (e.g., proper use of analytic, descriptive and/or statistical methods and reporting of findings), structuring of the paper’s argument, clarity in presentation, inclusion of the most important references, focus on CSCL issues, etc. Sometimes, a reviewer is not a domain expert on the theme of the paper; in such a case, the reviewer should adopt the perspective of a typical ijCSCL reader and judge whether the presentation is clear and of interest. A single review does not have to cover everything. Generally, three good reviews together will catch the major issues and provide clear guidance about what action needs to be taken — e.g., reject or require specific improvements.
A review need not be longer than about a page or two at the most. If the paper is clearly unacceptable, then a brief review stating why it is unacceptable is enough. Reviewers should not be concerned with details of formatting, syntax, referencing, etc. — these matters will be handled during the language editing and typesetting process, once the paper has been revised in accordance with the reviews.
Periodically check your Editorial Manager profile to select the specialties within CSCL that are of particular interest to you. Select in your profile a couple of the most important categories for matching you with submissions. Do not select too many categories or too few.
Members of the Board of Editors are listed on the inside cover of the journal. They receive a complementary subscription to the journal, mailed to the address in their Editorial Manager profile. Please keep your preferred email address and surface mailing address up-to-date in the profile.