About the Journal

Focus and Scope

ASRHE publishes research on learning and teaching related to all levels of study provided by education institutions offering degree-level courses, from preparation to doctoral studies. Teaching is understood to encompass aspects such as delivery, assessment, course and curriculum design. The focus of articles is on teaching and the impact on teaching, and those articles may address a wide range of topics such as specific pedagogies, theories, or technologies. Research focused predominantly on higher education policy or management, or facilitation of research/researcher development in higher education is not within ASRHE’s scope.

ASRHE publishes articles in the two categories of Research in Progress and Research Complete.

Research in Progress aims at facilitating shared and follow-up research, expressed in a series of linked articles published in ASRHE. For example, a first article might develop a research objective, provide theoretical and literature grounding, develop the research instruments and explain suitable teaching and learning contexts. Follow up articles would focus on data collection and analysis, draw preliminary conclusions and highlight further research directions.

  • Empirical articles that provide a theoretical framework, literature grounding, methodology, data collection, findings and conclusions. Those articles can be new submissions or be derived from a series of linked articles previously published as Research in Progress. In the latter case it is expected that the new article consolidates the previous contributions to a stand-alone article with a significant contribution to knowledge.
  • Conceptual and theoretical articles that contribute new knowledge or perspectives to teaching and curriculum development in higher education. Such articles must be grounded in a clear research design, and the choice of theories and their role in the analysis must be explicated and justified.
  • Literature reviews including systematic reviews, integrative reviews and other types of meta-analysis with a clearly articulated and rigorous methodology.

Publication Formats

Academic writing is a contested concept. Over time, with the impact of new ways of inquiring and innovations in technology, what is accepted as academic writing has changed. ASRHE welcomes innovative ways of writing. The traditions of academic writing are aligned with scientific method and have led to traditional article structures. ASRHE accepts that those structures will not always be appropriate for new forms of inquiries and encourages authors to present their work in emerging formats. The affordances of publishing a journal electronically includes reference to moving images or sound scapes, and other innovations in the presentation of an academic argument.

There are editorial expectations around inquiry rigour and grounding the inquiry in established discourses, along with realisation that both rigour and grounding can be recognised in new forms of writing.

Peer Review Process

Articles submitted to ASRHE are screened by at least one editor. Articles may be rejected at this stage instead of being put forward to the review process.

ASRHE operates a group-based review process. Review groups typically consist of four to six members and are led by an experienced review group leader. In discussion, the review groups arrive at consensus decisions and together compile feedback for the authors.

ASRHE uses an open review process. The reviewers know the identity of the authors and the authors are informed of the identity of the review group members together with the review outcome.

ASRHE is committed to contributing to researcher development by including emerging researchers into the review process (the editorial team ensures that review groups have the right balance of experience).

ASRHE asks reviewers to:

  • Commit to service for one calendar year.
  • Attend review meetings of approximately 1 hour length several times per year.
  • Prepare draft reviews for the articles to be discussed before the meetings and constructively engage in discussions during the meetings.
  • Contribute to the writing of constructive and encouraging feedback to authors.

Applications to join the ASRHE team of reviewers open as vacancies arise. Details will be available under Announcements.

ASRHE provides reviewers with a certificate outlining their contributions at the end of the year-long review period.

Review Criteria

Articles published in ASRHE are expected to fulfil the following criteria:

  • The article makes a significant, research-based contribution to advancing scholarship and/or research in higher education. In the case of Research in Progress articles, a clear pathway to a potentially significant contribution needs to be outlined.
  • The research reported is conceptually and methodologically sound. Non-traditional articles need to take specific care in explaining approaches used.
  • The context of the research is explained, and ethics considerations are outlined. This is of particular importance for Research in Progress articles. Authors of these articles should also outline their interest in collaborating in follow-up research.
  • The presentation is of high quality and conforms with the Author Guidelines.

Copyright Notice

Articles published in ASRHE are available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain copyright in their work and grant ASRHE right of first publication under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

ASRHE reserves the right to engage with indexing services.

Open Source Status, Indexing, and Preservation

ASRHE is a diamond open source journal. ASRHE does not charge publication fees and is available free of charge. ASRHE acknowledges the generous financial support of HERDSA and the many hours of volunteer work by members of the higher education research community that make publishing the journal possible.

The journal aims to be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Over time the journal aspires to be indexed. An initial step will be to aim for indexing in the Emerging Sources Citation Index.

The journal uses the PKP Preservation Network services.

Ethical Considerations

ASRHE adheres to ethical publication guidelines and reserves the right to use text matching software or otherwise investigate any ethical concerns related to work submitted to the journal. All contribution of others should be appropriately acknowledged. All work needs to meet copyright requirements. The following practices breach our publication guidelines:  plagiarism, self-plagiarism, authorship falsification, falsification or fabrication of research, redundant or duplicate publication, peer review manipulation, failure to disclose conflicts of interest, violation of data protection and rights to privacy. ASRHE follows the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) guidelines to deal with allegations.

Similarity Checking

The editors reserve the right to check submitted articles for plagiarism, using the iThenticate plagiarism detection software in accordance with the process recommended by CrossRef.

  • Articles will be checked for plagiarism by the Journal Manager/Editors (during screening or at the copy-edit phase).
  • Where plagiarism is suspected, the Editors will be responsible to investigate, communicate with the corresponding author and make a final decision.

Publication Frequency

ASRHE maintains an open issue into which articles are published as soon as they are finalized.

Online ISSN

2653-7559