About the Journal

Aims and Scope

The Buckingham Journal of Education is thematic and published twice yearly. Whilst it is based at the University of Buckingham is draws from an eclectic mix of academic authors beyond its borders who have an established track record in their field.

The first edition, published in June 2020, has a focus on the curriculum and seeks to capture a range of views that are contributing to both the national and international debate around this area. The articles span the spectrum of theoretical and conceptual thinking, through to practitioner perspectives and also showcase contemporary research.

In many ways, The University of Buckingham is a relatively ‘new kid on the block’, becoming a university college in 1973 and gaining its university status by royal charter in 1983. It is a private university, so it lacks the government funding which is the bedrock of most other UK universities. It does, however, comply with full academic requirements of higher education in this country. It is not the local Spar shop set against Tesco, like comparing it with larger players such as University College London. It is known for having a radical edge, many will have heard of it as the home of the two-year degree, using four-term years to prune time but not quality from its degree programmes. There is a resonance with innovation and fresh thinking at its core. This journal is a further manifestation of this, as we seek to showcase ideas and concepts and not simply become an organ of academic activity. Forthcoming editions include: Ten years on - the legacy of Michael Gove; Assessment, Revisiting Pedagogy; Coaching and Professional Development.

Peer Review Process

Each article is single blind peer reviewed. Initially the articles are reviewed by the editor and the assistant editor. The Buckingham Journal of Education has an editorial board, and its members cover a wide range of disciplines within the educational field. All the members of the board have an established track record in academic publication.

Once articles are accepted to peer-review they are then sent to selected peer reviewers. Each article is peer reviewed by at least two reviewers and each reviewer will submit their review including comments and a recommendation when to accept for publication, reject or to request revisions to the articles.

The key criteria for review are:

Knowledge of the field (preferably including publication and research)
Evidence of fresh and contemporary thinking around the declared focus
Internal coherence of presented arguments
Evidence of conceptual thinking
Academic competence in writing and presentation
Evidence of wide and appropriate reading around the presented area
An absence of plagiarism (neither the work of somebody else or a recycling of their own!)
An engaging but not flippant writing style
An absence of polemic
Appropriate criticality

Once the final articles are accepted, the authors are informed and they then move into the production process for the particular Issue, which includes proofreading and typesetting of articles. Authors will receive two rounds of proofs to ensure the final published text is of as high a standard as possible.

Open Access Policy

BLOE is fully committed to open access for academic work, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and to use them for any other lawful purpose. All the articles published in this journal are free to access immediately from the date of publication. We do not charge any fees for any reader to download articles for their own scholarly use and do not charge authors for publishing their work in the Journal.

This journal provides immediate open access under a CC BY-NC licence to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Author Publication Charges

There are no charges for authors to publish their work in the journal.

Self-Archiving and Institutional Repositories

UBP offers a publishing model that enables wide access to academic research, global readership for our authors and ensures the long-term preservation of published content. As a result, we permit authors to archive their contributions to this Journal. This can be either via authors' own websites, or via their institution’s or funding body’s online repository or archive

In addition, all published articles are archived by UBP at The British Library.

Licensing

Content is available on Open Access basis under the following license: CC BY-NC (for more information visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)