From September 28th to 30th, the 34th Annual Conference of the Japan Society for Educational Technology (JSET) was held at Tohoku University. Between flight delays in the morning, rushing to the board meeting, coordinating and presenting at Tutorial Session 2, participating in the SIG04 “Informatization of Education” session, serving as a symposium coordinator and moderator, and participating in the management of SIG-03… it has been a while since I participated in a full conference like this, and while it was hectic, it was enjoyable.

Now, for the first time at JSET, we held a tutorial session (primarily) for reviewers. There are two types of tutorial sessions: one for those attending the JSET annual conference for the first time, and one organized by the Editorial Committee. I served as the coordinator for the latter. Until last year, we held a tutorial session on how to write a paper, but this time, we focused on review policies and points to keep in mind during the review process, targeting those currently serving as reviewers and potential future reviewers (though it could also be considered a session on how to write a paper). I brainstormed various ideas with Prof. Kato and Prof. Yamauchi, and we decided to do something a bit different from the usual paper-writing session.

Prof. Kato (Open University of Japan), the Editor-in-Chief, spoke about the status and trends of paper acceptance/rejection, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Prof. Yamauchi (The University of Tokyo) spoke about points to keep in mind during reviews (such as expressions used in review conditions, aiming to create opportunities when there is a possibility of revision, and the need to deal strictly with ethical issues). Finally, I took the liberty of speaking about how to respond to conditions to ensure the paper is read by reviewers (for the 2nd round). There were many questions, and as an editorial committee member, there were many things I had to think about. It was more successful than I expected; by my count, there were 113 participants, and some were even standing (Prof. Morishita from Shinshu University counted 131). Thank you all for participating.

And now, onto the main topic…
I have served as a member of the organizing committee for special issues a total of four times. The third was for Learning Analytics last year, and the fourth is for Active Learning, which is currently ongoing as of 2018. How many papers have I reviewed? I don’t remember. I believe it is precisely because I have done so much that I have been asked to serve as an editorial committee member and as a member of the organizing committee for special issues. I am very grateful for this (perhaps it is time for me to graduate from special issues). Among those experiences, as someone who is both in a position to request reviews and in a position to conduct them, I have been thinking a lot about “reviewing” recently.

Educational Technology is an interdisciplinary field. Each researcher has different strengths. I request reviews (and conduct them myself) while taking those strengths into account as much as possible, but I believe it is important to share the basic mindset of “let’s improve the submitted paper and make it widely available to readers.” After all, the accumulation of research findings in Educational Technology leads to the development of the research field, human resource development, and the subsequent development of society, so I believe that mindset is very important. That said, given the quality of submitted papers and the limit on the number of reviews in the case of JSET, it is often the case that things do not go as planned even when trying to improve research through reviews, which is a difficult situation for reviewers and editors (I feel that many reviewers are troubled by this). Even so, from an educational perspective, I want to provide feedback on how to improve the paper (including changing the submission category) and, even if the decision is unfortunately to return the paper after reaching the limit, if the author aims to resubmit and get published, I want to provide feedback on things like the research design.

Another thing I feel is that while reviewing is a form of Paper-Mediated Communication between the reviewer and the author, there is also miscommunication. I see points where mutual misunderstandings arise. I think it is also important to reduce this miscommunication. As a reviewer, it is important to give clear revision instructions to the author (e.g., “please do X”) to avoid being misunderstood, and the author should also receive that message, avoid expressions that could be misunderstood, and do their utmost to ensure the reviewer clearly understands their intentions (I was taught by my mentor, Prof. Akahori, that “it is important to show sincerity. Sincerity is conveyed,” and I believe that is true).

Doing good research and writing a good paper are not necessarily synonymous. Paper writing requires technical skills that are separate from research design and execution capabilities. Research design/execution capability, paper writing, and peer review are closely related. As long as I am an editorial committee member, I hope to continue contributing to the development of researchers. During the Q&A from the floor at Tutorial Session 2, I was asked, “Does the academic society not provide training for reviewers?” and after the session, Prof. Kato, Prof. Yamauchi, and I talked about how “we should definitely continue this project in the future (30 minutes is too short, we need about an hour).”

I hope we can continue this in the future.