Dr. Tony Mays has been a part of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) team since February 2019 as an Education Specialist for Open Schooling.
In 2019, he joined the Editorial Board of COL’s Journal of Learning for Development and subsequently took over management of the journal.
His activities within the journal include providing initial feedback on submissions, managing the external review process, starting the editorial process, and creating new issues before publishing.
COL’s mission
COL was established in 1987 by Commonwealth Heads of Government “… to create and widen access to opportunities for learning, making use of the potential offered by distance education and by the application of communication technologies to education.” (Memorandum of Understanding on the Commonwealth of Learning).
As part of this mandate, COL decided to establish the Journal of Learning for Development, which provides a forum for the publication of research with a focus on innovation in learning, in particular, but not exclusively open and distance learning, and its contribution to development.
Content includes interventions that change social and economic relations, especially related to improving equity. The Journal of Learning for Development publishes research articles, book reviews, and reports from the field from researchers, scholars, and practitioners and seeks to engage a broad audience across that spectrum. It encourages submissions from contributors starting their careers and publishes the work of established and senior scholars from the Commonwealth and beyond.
THE MEANING OF OPEN ACCESS
COL has always shared knowledge that plays a part in development and was, therefore, one of the early adopters of and advocates for Open Educational Resources (OER). COL maintains an open access repository, where journal articles get archived after publication. All resources developed with COL’s support are shared under a CC-BY-SA license to provide easy and free access to resources and encourage subsequent revision and resharing.
WORKING WITH PKP PUBLISHING SERVICES
The Journal of Learning for Development’s first issue was published in December 2013, and the last one, Volume 10, Issue 2, in July 2023.
Given COL’s mandate to provide access to useful knowledge and resources at no cost to the user, it has always been important to work with service providers who share similar values. However, there is a need for a system that is affordable, reliable, and relatively easy to use. Hence, COL continues to work with OJS and PKP Publishing Services, where it finds the combination of shared values and cost-effective service provision.
POSITIVE CHANGES OVER THE YEARS
Open Journal Systems (OJS) is updated regularly and the two last updates were implemented seamlessly. The journal has not experienced any significant downtime over the past four years. The ability to tailor the platform to establish a recognizable brand is appreciated. To have back-end data available on editorial activity, views, and downloads provides very helpful indicators of the health of the journal.
Having previously seen the user- side of a journal only, the logical way the journal management side of things is organized and relatively intuitive is very appreciated by editors.
THE PKP|PS TEAM
Over the past few years, the journal has seen a dramatic increase in submissions, and the team is working with an increasingly diverse and distributed number of reviewers. We have also recently introduced permanent indicators and subscribed the journal to ORCID. These changes, together with the automated feed of published articles to a variety of databases, mean that we are now generating many more records of various kinds. This sometimes leads to glitches in the interface between the journal system and external partners. The team appreciates the speed and thoroughness with which these occasional glitches are addressed by the PKP support team.
THE FUTURE
Obviously, would like to see more journals become open access and allow submissions without page fees. Why should anybody pay to share their work with others? Of course, there is a cost involved in managing the submission, review, and publication process, but there are other ways to manage those costs – and reviewers contribute significantly by working for free as a community service. The trend is, and should remain, away from print and towards digital for long-term sustainability.
Dr Tony John Mays
Journal of Learning for Development, Associate Editor
