May 2013

The American Educational Research Association announced today that it will launch AERA Open, an online, peer-reviewed journal that will be freely available to all readers on the web. AERA Open is expected to start publishing articles in early 2014.

“The launch of this innovative effort continues AERA’s leadership in exploring open access publishing,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “Scientific societies are rethinking how to widen access to knowledge. AERA is one of the first societies in the social sciences to introduce an open access journal. We are eager to experiment with change that is valuable and sustainable.”

AERA will publish AERA Open in partnership with SAGE publications, which publishes AERA’s current suite of six journals on the association’s behalf.

“SAGE is committed to the broad dissemination of research and is delighted to be partnering with AERA to publish an openly available journal that will be of major significance to the education research community,” said Bob Howard, vice president of journals at SAGE. “With rapid online publication of rigorously peer-reviewed articles, this new journal will disseminate quality, innovative education research in new ways.”

As set forth in its mission statement, AERA Open aims to advance knowledge related to education and learning, cumulatively and incrementally. It also seeks to serve as a venue for innovation, novel inquiry and ideas, interdisciplinary bridge building, and research that fosters the connection of research to practice.

Approved by AERA Council at the end of April, the new publication will also use its unbounded space to promote access to data; research instruments, protocols and guides; and other supplemental sources of information that will enhance the value of articles as well as encourage others to pursue research or its application. As an online journal, AERA Open offers a publishing venue for works in innovative formats, such as video, interactive data tables, and audio recordings that a print format precludes.

“With content freely available and rapid peer review, AERA will reach new readers and audiences worldwide,” said William Cope, who served as chair of the AERA Journal Publications Committee during the development of AERA Open. “Article metrics will be carefully monitored to identify the most valuable research articles.”

AERA Open will follow the practice common for open access journals of using article payment charges (APCs), which apply only to accepted articles. As part of AERA's partnership with SAGE, AERA Open will charge significantly lower APCs than other open access journals, which can charge several thousand dollars per accepted article.

AERA Open will set APCs at $400 for AERA members and $700 for nonmembers, with significantly lower charges for graduate students in both categories. There will be no charge for scholars in countries with low-income economies, as defined by the World Bank.

In June 2013, AERA will issue a call for the inaugural editor and commence implementation steps for the new journal.