Editorial to No. 1/2011

At the beginning of the year 2011, PEDAGOGIKA.SK has entered its second year of existence. This is a good opportunity to look at the issues of 2010 and make a brief assessment. Before doing it, we find it appropriate to remind the readers the two reasons which contributed to the journal’s establishment.

Before launching PEDAGOGIKA.SK, the Slovak Educational Society within Slovak Academy of Sciences, which is the journal’s publisher, had no periodical of its own; it only used to release its newsletter. However, the Society aspired to own and publish its journal, to parallel with educational societies in many countries which have their own journals, and thus make it possible to its members (and not only to them) publish papers, information and reviews. This became a reality. In addition, the aim of the journal was to provide news about activities in the Slovak Educational Society not only to its members but also to the broader educational community.

Another motive was to help overcome the publication crisis after Pedagogicka revue, the leading educational journal in Slovakia, interrupted publishing in the past years. The aim was to offer to the educational community a new media to present their research findings.

In 2010 PEDAGOGIKA.SK produced four issues – all of them appeared at the scheduled dates of publication as stated on the front page of the journal. This proves not only the editorial board’s punctuality but also the advantages of electronic publishing. The journal has had no problems with printers or distributors.

As concerns the categories of papers, we published 12 scientific papers, out of them one was a synthetic literature review, eight were theoretical papers and three were empirical studies. In the future we would like to change the proportion of theoretical and empirical papers in favour of the latter ones. In 2011 we want to continue publishing general educational rather than school subject-based papers. We will persist in publishing only original, unpublished manuscripts.

In 2010 the journal brought 12 book reviews, out of them 9 were foreign (5 were Czech) books, 3 reviews focused on Slovak publications. Some of the review writers were renowned authors. It is the principle of the journal to publish reviews of books which are not older then 3 years, and it is our desire to publish analytical rather than descriptive book reviews.

When assessing the past year, we cannot avoid the rigour of manuscript reviewing because it is one of the criteria for indexing the journal in international databases. In 2010, the journal obtained 33 manuscripts. Out them 12 were accepted after alterations suggested by reviewers. Six papers were refused, 6 papers are in the reviewing process, 6 papers have been reviewed and the editorial board expects new versions of texts from authors. Three papers have been included in the first issue of 2011.

In connection with the reviewing process we have to thank the external reviewers who (in addition to editorial board members) reviewed the manuscripts in 2010. They are (in alphabetical order):

• Zlatica Bakošová
• Jana Hanzelová
• Zuzana Kolláriková
• Jiří Mareš
• Zdeněk Obdržálek
• Juraj Vantuch.

Starting with the first issue of 2011 we commenced the process of internationalizing the journal. The international editorial board has been established with members who will bridge the journal with educational communities abroad. In this issue readers will find the first article in the English language; publishing English papers will be a future trend. We will consider publishing entire English language issue from time to time.

Last but not least, we have to comment on the journal readership. We find it excellent that in 2010 the journal’s website had more than 9,000 visits. Of course, not all of visitors read the papers, many of them searched for some information. Nevertheless, the number of visits is encouraging and much exceeds subscribers of printed journals in this country. It also suggests that the electronic journal is very attractive among readers. The software used by the journal to track the visits makes it possible to identify many parameters of the visits, e.g., the specific paper that was downloaded, length of visits, town and country of visitors, etc. We had visit from almost all European countries, as well as from and North America. Also we had visits from distant locations such as Japan, the Philippines, or Australia.

Due to small grant from the Slovak Educational Society this journal provides free access to all texts. The journal was also supported by colleagues who provided some funds from their research grants, or by institutions.

Peter Gavora, Ladislav Macháček, Štefan Švec