International Journal of Educational Technology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Western Australia

Developing the statement of purpose

Statement of purpose

The key purpose underlying the proposed merger of IJET with AJET is to sustain the work of those who created and supported IJET. If a journal is discontinued, as seems to be the case with IJET (which has not published any articles since 2002), a duty to the authors, and the editors who worked with them, will be unfulfilled. Their work 'dies'. However, if their work is placed in a sustainable, open access archive associated with a closely related and actively growing journal, it has a much better opportunity to remain 'alive'.

If IJET is merged with AJET, it will then have a guaranteed way to preserve its history, archives and name. Also, a merger would very likely prevent any other parties from taking over or resurrecting the name without reference to IJET's founders. For AJET, the benefit is an enlarged archive of refereed academic research articles in educational technology, and perhaps some recognition for adopting a 'caring and conserving' attitude towards the authors who entrusted their work to IJET as their publisher. In the future there is the option of a name change, from AJET to IJET, though at present that seems unlikely.

If the proposed merger proceeds, its most visible sign will be a new, permanent link on AJET's home page, to "IJET Archive" hosted on AJET's website, plus other home page announcements for 1-2 years. Underneath such a link, readers will find an open access archive, faithfully reproducing all files in the original versions (some files may have improvements to their metatags and footers). The main addition will be an "About IJET" page recording IJET's history and the work of its editors.

We believe that AJET has a firm foundation for undertaking the proposed merger and that we have much relevant experience with similar models and archives, as indicated by the following:

• AJET's long standing commitment to open access (subject to a three month embargo) established in 1997 with Volume 13. Back issues of AJET were placed online during 1996.

• URL stability. Only one change of URL for Vols 1-17 (occurring in March 2002), no URL changes for Vols 18 to the present.

• AJET's editorials contain numerous statements about commitment to open access and URL stability. For example, http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/editorial20-3.html

• ASCILITE's long standing commitment to open access for its other major publication, the Annual Conference Proceedings. Years 1995-2006 are online. No URL changes.

• Experiences with a previous merger (http://www.iier.org.au/qjer/qjer-inf.html) and ASET archives (http://www.ascilite.org.au/aset-archives/). As IJET is only 6 MB in total for all articles and other pages, and no scanning and OCR is required, the remounting of IJET can be done very quickly. As to search engines, that will take only a few days, given that AJET is a well known site.

Roger Atkinson
For AJET. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/
Cameron Richards
For IJET. http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/ijet/

Consulting authors

During 22 March to 1 April 2007, we sought comment on the Statement of purpose from a small subset of IJET authors (Australian authors, 6 articles, 5 replies received) and were given 'strongly approve' responses from all we contacted. Some of their comments are quoted below.

As the author of an article published in the International Journal of Educational Technology ('IJET'), you may be interested in commenting upon a proposed merger of IJET with the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology ('AJET'), currently under discussion. A summary of the basis for discussions appears below.

We are seeking comments from a sample group of IJET authors. Your reaction to the proposal will help us advance the discussions between AJET and IJET. All that we seek at this stage is a sentence or two from authors, a quick reaction, a brief reply, be it 'strongly approve' or 'strongly disapprove', or anything in between. Plus, do please raise any questions that you feel should be addressed in further discussions.

Thank you very much,

Roger Atkinson
For AJET. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/
Cameron Richards
For IJET. http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/ijet/

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Copyright given back to authors

All of IJET's web pages contained the footer phrase "Copyright © (date: 1999, 2000, 2001 or 2002)", without stating an owner. To clarify the position, we assert, for the purposes of this archive, that copyright in individual articles is given back to the individual authors of IJET articles. Copyright in IJET as a compilation remains with its founders, including but not limited to Dr Brian Sova, Dr Roger Hacker and Dr James Levin. The moral right to be recognised as the originator of the title International Journal of Educational Technology rests with Dr Sova.

The position asserted above is consistent with the copyright stance adopted by AJET and ASCILITE many years ago. For illustrative statements, see:

We believe that we have made reasonable endeavours to explore for IJET's archives the alternatives to "Copyright given back to authors". Whilst our inquiries have not uncovered a better alternative, we are open to consideration of other views that may be held by authors or other interested parties. Please email advice to Roger Atkinson [rjatkinson@bigpond.com] or Cameron Richards [cameron.richards@uwa.edu.au or cameronkrichards@hotmail.com] if you feel that our copyright statement for this archive is in any way inappropriate.

Preparing files for the archive

The key principle is exact replication of the IJET files as originally published, save for a small number of changes made for one or more of the following reasons:

1. Commenting out or deleting non-functional hypertext links, wherever detected, whilst leaving the link text intact. These include "mailto" links (A HREF="mailto:address"), links to personal home pages, and links to specific pages within a faculty or departmental website. In general, links within individual articles have not been checked.
2. Changes to the home page to provide information on the origins of IJET and the merger with AJET, which are new files. The changes include a revised <title> tag and footer lines. Some other pages have the words "Archival only" added to the <title> tag.
3. All files which have been edited have the phrase "Archived 5 May 2007" added to the footer lines.
4. Correcting a small number of HTML errors which interfered with reading, mainly in files in the v3n1 directory. Other corrections include replacing the copyright symbol © with its decimal code, namely &#169;
5. Some files, mainly in higher level directories, have additions made to metatag lines (the undisplayed lines of the form <META NAME="" CONTENT="">)
6. In a few articles, citations of an AJET paper have been edited to add the cited article's URL.

calls made to this page since 7 May 2007. Last correction: 12 May 2007.