Which Journal Reigns Supreme in Physics Education Research?

[feynman1]

Which journal is the best in the field?
Which is better between American Journal of Physics and Physical Review Physics Education Research?

 

[robphy]

Which journal is the best in the field?
Which is better between American Journal of Physics and Physical Review Physics Education Research?

It depends... better for what?

Physics?
Physics Education?
Physics Education Research?

 

[feynman1]

It depends... better for what?

Physics?
Physics Education?
Physics Education Research?

Physics Education or Physics Education Research

 

[robphy]

Physics Education or Physics Education Research

• to read ?
  as a student? as an instructor? as a education-researcher?
• to publish?
  as a student? as an instructor? as a education-researcher?
• It might help to be specific about what you really want to know.

(all bolding mine)

From the pages of the outgoing editor of American Journal of Physics
http://web.mit.edu/rhprice/www/edpolicy.html

The American Journal of Physics publishes papers that meet the needs and intellectual interests of college and university physics teachers and students...

Contributions should treat subjects of value and interest to physics teachers and students. They should significantly aid the learning of physics and not be primarily a display of cleverness and erudition. Highly specialized contributions are not encouraged...

The Journal is particularly interested in manuscripts that can be used to bring contemporary research in physics and related fields into the classroom. Such manuscripts should not be review articles, but rather self-contained articles that describe a particular piece of research in such a way that it is accessible to as many physicists as possible...

Manuscripts announcing new theoretical or experimental results, or manuscripts questioning well-established and successful theories, are not acceptable and should be submitted to an archival research journal for evaluation by specialists...

...
The PER Section of AJP stopped accepting manuscripts on February 1, 2018.

The American Journal of Physics is discontinuing its Physical Education Research Section after processing all manuscripts now in the system, manuscripts submitted before February 2018.
This was announced in the editorial by PER Section editor Michael Wittmann and Editor Richard Price in the January 2018 issue of AJP. In that editorial it was pointed out that AJP will continute to accept papers on physics teaching.
...
(details at http://web.mit.edu/rhprice/www/PER.html )

* If the paper is more about methodology and statistics than about the question being asked, then it is probably inappropriate as a regular article. In many, perhaps most papers on teaching there must be a description of the methodology so this, of course is acceptable. If a major part of the paper is methodology, however, it is probably inappropriate as a regular article. For a regular paper, the details of methodolgy can be included as supplementary material, so that interested readers have access to all details.

* Does the paper use terms that may not (yet?) be familiar to the typical AJP reader though the terms are common in PER circles (e.g., scaffolding, metacognitive)? If so, the terms can be defined in the article. If the article becomes heavy with such special terms, it may be a sign that the article is not suited as an AJP regular paper.

* PER includes studies of theoretical issues that are not strongly linked to near-term applicability to teaching. Judgment must be used here. If the issue is sufficiently interesting, it might be interesting to the general AJP readership. If it is primarily interesting only to those in the PER community, then it is probably not appropriate as an AJP paper.

For Physical Review Physics Education Research
https://journals.aps.org/prper/about

By Researchers, For Researchers
Like all of the journals in the Physical Review family, PRPER is shaped by researchers to serve the research community...

PRPER Scope
PRPER covers all educational levels, from elementary through graduate education. All topics in experimental and theoretical physics education research are accepted, including, but not limited to:

Educational policy
Instructional strategies, and materials development
Research methodology
Epistemology, attitudes, and beliefs
Learning environment
Scientific reasoning and problem solving
Diversity and inclusion
Learning theory
Student participation
Faculty and teacher professional development

PRPER Acceptance Criteria
...
Present results of importance to the field.
Generate interest for PRPER’s readers.
Represent an authoritative and substantive addition to the body of literature.
Explore the subject matter comprehensively and thoroughly.

 

[feynman1]

Thank you very much for the info. Then AJP is more on physics problems themselves while PRPER is more on teaching methodologies and stats, right?
Which is better for a faculty member as a publication, considering publication quality, reputation etc?

 

[robphy]

Thank you very much for the info. Then AJP is more on physics problems themselves while PRPER is more on teaching methodologies and stats, right?
Which is better for a faculty member as a publication, considering publication quality, reputation etc?

Ok... can you be more specific?
As a faculty member, publish what
"physics problems themselves" or "teaching methodologies and stats"?
(I added more details about AJP's policy for PER-related publications soon after my initial post.
Re-read for those additions... if it's PER-related, maybe this will exclude AJP.)As to publication quality, reputation, etc...
that also probably depends

• on whether you value various metrics
  [read the details for yourself...
  I don't know this website below (I just picked one that had data on both journals).
  I have no opinion on these metrics or their values.]
  https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=7916 (American Journal of Physics 1933-present)
  https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=6792 (Physical Review Physics Education Research 2005-present)
• on what is valued by your department and your institution [ask your department chair].
  Some departments don't value PER, some don't value AJP, some may not value either.
• on what you want to get out of it
  [for example, I want to publish in a journal that I regularly read
  and hope that it is read by others who publish there, as well as a wider audience.
  With my research interest, AJP is more appropriate for me.]

I'm no expert on journals...
but I have identified for myself (given my goals and my research interests)
what seems to be appropriate for me.

It may help those who are reading this thread
to describe more specific details of what you are thinking of publishing.
A few weeks ago, you gave a little bit of information here in the STEM Educators and Teaching subforum: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/academic-journals-aimed-at-education-teaching.988437/

Otherwise, "it depends" is probably the appropriate answer.

my $0.02.

 

[DrClaude]

Thank you very much for the info. Then AJP is more on physics problems themselves while PRPER is more on teaching methodologies and stats, right?
Which is better for a faculty member as a publication, considering publication quality, reputation etc?

If you are wondering where to send your work, then the question is which journals do you read? Where are to works you cite published?

 

[feynman1]

If you are wondering where to send your work, then the question is which journals do you read? Where are to works you cite published?

I've already narrowed down to these journals. But to submit, there should be a sequence, which first, which next.

 

[DrClaude]

Then, considering

Physics Education or Physics Education Research

I would say PRPER. In AJP you will find essentially papers you would give as reading to physics students or descriptions of experiments. (See also @robphy's post #4 above.)

 

[feynman1]

Then, considering

I would say PRPER. In AJP you will find essentially papers you would give as reading to physics students or descriptions of experiments. (See also @robphy's post #4 above.)

Thanks. But what if I focus more on new insights of problem solving or classical theories rather than teaching methodologies? I've found PRPER is mostly on the latter.

 

[DrClaude]

But what if I focus more on new insights of problem solving or classical theories

This doesn't seem to be in the current purview of AJP.

 

[feynman1]

This doesn't seem to be in the current purview of AJP.

What makes you say that? It's full of discussions of classical theories, introductory physics etc.

 

[DrClaude]

What makes you say that? It's full of discussions of classical theories, introductory physics etc.

Have you looked at recent issues? As I said above, it is essentially articles that you would think of giving as reading material to students.

In any case, as I haven't read your manuscript, there is not much more I can say.

 

[feynman1]

Have you looked at recent issues? As I said above, it is essentially articles that you would think of giving as reading material to students.

In any case, as I haven't read your manuscript, there is not much more I can say.

Yes, the latest issues are as I expected. They look quite different from PRPER.
PRPER has a higher impact factor than APJ, but the former is only in SCIE, not in SCI.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I've either published in or been a peer reviewer for just about all the physics education journals.

With today's search engines and arXiv, I don't think the choice of journal matters much in terms of getting a paper read. It matters more in terms of getting citations, but the effect is small between peer-reviewed physics education journals of decent reputation.

When colleagues and I pick a physics education journal to submit to, our main goal is getting it accepted without having to submit it to too many different journals, since each review cycle means delays in publication and (sometimes) reformatting for a specific journal's requirements. We're busy professionals, and we prefer not to take the time for more submissions and resubmissions.

If one of the co-authors has a career milestone (applying for admission, job, promotion or tenure) where one more accepted education paper might be important before their deadline, I tend to suggest we submit to a journal where our subjective assessment is an 80+% chance of publication. We base this on how good we think the paper is relative to the usual material in a given journal. (I do this for all peer-reviewed papers, not just education stuff.)

In a more typical situation, I tend to suggest we submit to a journal first with an estimated 50% chance of publication. If we get rejected there, we lower our standards a bit and resubmit.

Occasionally, when no one is in a hurry due to a career milestone, we might aim a bit higher, which in my mind is TPT, which I regard highly and has about a 33% success rate even for papers I regard as excellent. They have high standards. I regard being an author on a TPT paper as a feather in any physics teacher's cap.

 

[feynman1]

I've either published in or been a peer reviewer for just about all the physics education journals.

With today's search engines and arXiv, I don't think the choice of journal matters much in terms of getting a paper read. It matters more in terms of getting citations, but the effect is small between peer-reviewed physics education journals of decent reputation.

When colleagues and I pick a physics education journal to submit to, our main goal is getting it accepted without having to submit it to too many different journals, since each review cycle means delays in publication and (sometimes) reformatting for a specific journal's requirements. We're busy professionals, and we prefer not to take the time for more submissions and resubmissions.

If one of the co-authors has a career milestone (applying for admission, job, promotion or tenure) where one more accepted education paper might be important before their deadline, I tend to suggest we submit to a journal where our subjective assessment is an 80+% chance of publication. We base this on how good we think the paper is relative to the usual material in a given journal. (I do this for all peer-reviewed papers, not just education stuff.)

In a more typical situation, I tend to suggest we submit to a journal first with an estimated 50% chance of publication. If we get rejected there, we lower our standards a bit and resubmit.

Occasionally, when no one is in a hurry due to a career milestone, we might aim a bit higher, which in my mind is TPT, which I regard highly and has about a 33% success rate even for papers I regard as excellent. They have high standards. I regard being an author on a TPT paper as a feather in any physics teacher's cap.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. The Physics Teacher has a lower impact factor than AJP even? Why would you think it's hard to publish in TPT than in AJP?

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. The Physics Teacher has a lower impact factor than AJP even? Why would you think it's hard to publish in TPT than in AJP?

I tend to ignore impact factors. I wasn't even aware of the relative numbers until you mentioned it.

Though there may be a small overlap, the scope of TPT and AJP are fairly distinct. TPT is focused on intro physics courses. While AJP does not specifically exclude intro courses, their focus is on physics education much more generally, through undergrad and grad. So AJP articles on intro material are a small minority.

If you've read many issues of TPT, it should be clear why its impact factor is smaller - many articles are more reflections, perspectives, and opinion pieces that are unlikely to be cited in the same way that pedagogical pieces and PE research articles usually are.

The AJP acceptance rate may be comparable or lower than that of TPT, but I tend to regard acceptance of an article in AJP as more predictable since as a reviewer for them, it seems the criteria are more objective. As both an author and reviewer and long time reader of TPT, acceptance has more of a "beauty contest" aspect to it and "beauty" seems more subject to the winds of political correctness. I once had a paper submitted to TPT initially receive a favorable review ("minor revisions") and then later get rejected simply because the subject was on firearms. See: https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0601/0601102.pdf

I eventually got the same idea published in TPT by repeating the experiment with a potato cannon:
https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.2798362

TPT also publishes a lot of stuff that seems more "trendy" than of lasting value in physics education.

 

[feynman1]

Many thanks for your advice! Very helpful.