The day has finally come. I have stepped down from the Editorial Board of the Japan Society for Educational Technology, a role I held for 10 years. Ten years… that was a long time. It is rare to stay on a single committee for a decade, isn’t it? (laughs) I actually thought about quitting last year. I asked at a committee meeting about the possibility of stepping down—or rather, “how one goes about stepping down”—and perhaps that was a mistake. After the meeting, Chair Yamauchi from the University of Tokyo told me, “Yamada-san, there is something I want you to do, so please don’t quit yet…” That “something” was the launch of “Information and Technology in Education and Learning (ITEL),” a joint English-language journal with the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education. I was involved as a founding member on the JSET side, though my contribution was truly modest (and in the end, it was very, very modest). With ITEL successfully launched and having reached the milestone of 10 years on the editorial board, I decided it was time to step down, and Chair Yamauchi kindly accepted my request.
Information and Technology in Education and Learning (ITEL)
https://www.j-itel.org/
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It was a great learning experience. It was also a wonderful place for professional development. It was the best environment to advance my career as a researcher. In addition to my assigned duties, I also performed peer reviews, which made the workload quite heavy. Having only ever been on the side of submitting papers, seeing the “backstage” work—where everyone uses their own time as volunteers—gave me a renewed sense of gratitude toward the editorial board members and peer reviewers. It also gave me a sense of anticipation, knowing that I would now be the one involved in such efforts. Since this is the core content that drives the development of our research field, it was truly a rewarding experience.
While I had the mission of producing excellent research, my own perspective as a researcher was also sharpened. I had been a member of the committee since the time of Professor Yasutaka Shimizu, who was the editorial board chair three terms before the current one. Professor Shimizu always said that every submitted paper has some good points. Throughout these 10 years, I have come to realize that he was absolutely right. I believe the role of a reviewer and an editor is to support the author in how to refine those good points into a piece of research.
That said, this does not mean that we should just set an endless number of review rounds, and authors must consider that they need to submit work of a certain quality before sending it in… Reviewers and editors are using their personal time, and they are not “manuscript correction machines.” It is based on the premise that the authors have a certain level of research ability and writing skills, or that they are supported by their supervisors or research teams to bring the manuscript to a level ready for peer review. I have also developed a sense—albeit an intuitive one—for determining the potential for a paper to be revised. This has also been useful in my own student supervision. In a sense, I am conducting peer reviews within my laboratory, so that experience translates directly. If a paper is accepted within the lab, I give the green light to send it out and receive feedback from external researchers; if it is rejected, I decide it is not ready to be made public.
It was also educational to see people from various fields join the editorial board, each bringing their own perspective on papers. I often thought, “I see, that is one way to look at it…” I served as a vice-chair or secretary for the special issue editorial board about four times. This is quite a heavy responsibility, but I think it was the most educational part. Because you have to judge the acceptance or rejection of papers and the validity of those results from an overall perspective, you can learn the entire process of building a journal, even if a special issue is only one volume. I also had the opportunity to write review and perspective papers. This was also a great learning experience, as I had to think about the role of such papers while utilizing my own expertise.
It is hard to put into words, but I am truly grateful for having had such a valuable experience during my 30s, which was the start of my career as a researcher. Now that I have spent a few years in my 40s, I feel that I need to start thinking about what comes next in my research. Perhaps it was the environment of the editorial board that made me realize this. Fortunately, I have been given the role of a board member and am in charge of the Spring National Conference. I consider this to be one of those next steps.
Now, as I step down from the editorial board, what I feel is that I would love for many different people to get involved with the board (though, of course, not just anyone can become a member…). Rather than having the same people rotate through it. Although the editorial board can be demanding, I believe it is an important place to enhance one’s research career. I think you can also get a sense of the excitement, challenges, and future developments of Educational Technology research. Thinking about future developments is fun, isn’t it? Special issues have exactly that meaning, and I am glad I was involved in them (though the secretarial work is truly heavy).
I hope that many people, especially young researchers with strong Research Achievements, will continue to get involved with the editorial board, enhance their research careers, and contribute to the development of Educational Technology research. I will continue to support the society from the position of a regular member.
