Criteria for Evaluating Journals in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and the Life Sciences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to identify existing criteria that may be considered in evaluating journals in the scholarship of teaching and learning in agriculture, natural resources, and the life sciences. This can assist faculty authors and evaluators of promotion and tenure cases to explain indicators of the quality of the publications. The commonly accepted criteria are: peer review; acceptance rate; longevity; open access availability; inclusion in indexing/abstracting services; citation analysis; and expert opinion. These data were collected for a representative set of journals which indicated that: acceptance rates for the journals varied widely; most of the journals existed for at least 10 years; most of the journals did not have an ISI impact factor or EigenfactorTM Score; the ERIC database was the predominant indexing resource; and there were no published lists of journals in these subjects compiled from expert opinion.

Keywords

• Scholarship assessment
• Evaluation of journals
• Agriculture
• Natural resources
• Life sciences
• Scholarship of teaching and learning