Five years of development in pursuing excellence in quality and global impact to become the first journal in STEM education covered in SSCI

Abstract

With the completion of its first five publication cycle years (August 2014 to July 2019), the International Journal of STEM Education has made great progress with its commitments to pursue excellence in quality and worldwide impact. In this editorial, I specifically share the journal's achievements since August 2018 in obtaining Scopus's CiteScore and for being included in Web of Science's Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), which reflect the journal's continued growth with ongoing strong support from researchers and readers internationally.

Research and trends in STEM education: a systematic review of journal publications

“…As the other four journals were all established in or before 2000, J17's short history further suggests its outstanding performance in attracting and publishing STEM education articles since 2014 (Li, 2018b;Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019). The increase was consistent with the journal's recognition as the first STEM education journal for inclusion in SSCI starting in 2019 (Li, 2019a).…”

“…Moreover, our systematic analysis shows a dramatic (Note: 1=qualitative,2=quantitative,3=mixed, increase in the number of publications in STEM education journals in recent years, which indicates that these journals have been collectively developing their own professional identity. In addition, the International Journal of STEM Education has become the first STEM education journal to be accepted in SSCI in 2019 (Li, 2019a). The achievement may mark an important milestone as STEM education journals develop their own identity for publishing and sharing STEM education research.…”

“…However, existing journals in STEM education do not have a long history. In fact, IJ-STEM is the first journal in STEM education that has just been accepted into the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (Li, 2019a). Publications in many STEM education journals are practically not available in several important and popular databases, such as the Web of Science and Scopus.…”

Six years of development in promoting identity formation of STEM education as a distinct field

“…In the previous two editorials (Li, 2018a(Li, , 2019, I summarized the journal's performance in publications over its first four and then first five publication cycle (PC) years since August 2014 respectively. The steady growth of quality publications has allowed the journal to not only serve as a gathering place for international researchers and readers to share scholarly work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, but also take a leading role in promoting the scholarship development in STEM education research (Li, Wang, Xiao, & Froyd, 2020a).…”

Research and trends in STEM education: a systematic analysis of publicly funded projects

“…Question 6: disciplinary foci of projects in developing and conducting STEM education research Figure 18 shows that the majority of the 127 projects under such specific programs included disciplinary foci on individual STEM disciplines: mathematics in 88 projects, science in 51 projects, technology in 43 projects, and engineering in 2 projects. The tremendous attention to mathematics in these projects is a bit surprising, as mathematics was noted as being out of balance in STEM education (English, 2016) and also in STEM education publications (Li, 2018b(Li, , 2019. As noted above, each project can be classified in multiple disciplinary foci.…”