Journal of Technology and Science Education

INTERNATIONALIZATION: CHANGES and challenges Chasing internationalization targeting

In 2014 JOTSE is facing several changes and challenges so as to improve the quality of our scientific Journal. In the first place, we have incorporated new members in our Editorial board and we hope to implement thanks to them new fields of knowledge, explore other areas and, hence, increase our internationalisation. In this sense, one of the main objectives when we set up JOTSE was to reach scholars worldwide. In fact, we have been working on attracting international authors for four years and taking teaching experiences wherever they are needed. In this issue, we have accomplished some of these aims, in other words, we can find authors belonging to 4 different countries:

Japo Oweikeye Morto Amasuomo” from Nigeria, “Vicenc Fernandez, Pep Simo, David Castillo, Jose M. Sallan” and “Joan Domingo Penya, Herminio Martínez García, Spartacus Gomariz Castro, Juan Gámiz Caro” from Spain, Pengfei Song from the USA, and last but not least, Anna-Lena Thies, Anne Weissenstein, Ivo Haulsen, Bernhard Marschall, Hendrik Friederichs from Germany. Thus, this is the beginning of a more internationalised JOTSE.

Secondly, another recent and outstanding success for our Journal has been the 21 indexations reached, from which we would like to highlight the following:

Latindex (Catálogo): 28/36 Latindex. A system of Information about the scientific research of technicians and professionals and for the scientific and cultural spread. Including works edited in Latin America, The Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. The idea of creating Latindex emerged in 1995 in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and it became a regional cooperative net since 1997.

Dulcinea. Dulcinea is a product that is part of the project: The Open Access to the scientific production in Spain: current situation analysis and presentation of policies and strategies to promote their development.

Open Science Directory. It has been developed by EBSCO and the Hasselt University Library. Their main goals are: To create a global search tool for all open access and special programs journal titles and to enhance the access of these collections by creating direct links to the journals and their articlesincluded in this A-to-Z-list. All information about the included journal collections is available at the websites of the included projects. These websites are directly accessible from the Open Science Directory.

Recolecta - The project RECOLECTA is a platform that includes all the national scientific repositories and provides services to repository managers and researchers.

MIAR - MIAR is a system to quantitatively measure the visibility of social science journals based on their presence in different types of databases. Those responsible for this project do not subscribe to any direct correlation between this value and other qualitative criteria such as quality of the magazine, which may influence other factors.

Electronic Journals Library - The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB (Electronic Journals Library) offers an effective use of both scientific and academic journals publishing full text articles in the internet.

Academic Journals Database. AJD is a universal index of periodical literature covering basic research from all fields of knowledge, and in particularly strong in medical research, humanities and social sciences.

Arastirmax - Full text database in Turkey

UIFactor - The Universal Impact Factor is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a given period of time.

Index Copernicus - IC Journals is a journal indexing, ranking and abstracting site. It is also a world-wide gateway to complex scientific information.

Redalyc – Scientific Journals’ net of LatinAmerica, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal.

And thirdly, we will carry on publishing special issues, most of them including works presented at reputed national and international conferences. So far we count on publishing two special issues per year. Back in 2013 we started with Innovations in Educations in Engineering Thermodynamics, focusing on innovation within Thermodynamics subjects (Vol 3, No 3 (2013). As a matter of fact, this volume contained papers presented at the CNIT annual conference and we are looking forward to publishing more special issues from further events. Therefore, in 2014 we are already working on two: “Chemistry for Engineering students: A key factor for social and technological development.”  and "Strategies towards collaborative learning”, the latter based on the IV International Conference UNIVEST'13, from which you can get more information in our web.

We really think that this is the path to follow and we hope to meet our readers’ expectations as well as consolidating JOTSE’s future internationally.

Last but not least, we would like to present the papers included in this volume:

A Handful of Bacteria: A Simple Activity That Engages Students to Think and Write Like A Scientist. Pengfei Song

Some limits in peer assessment. Joan Domingo Penya, Herminio Martínez García, Spartacus Gomariz Castro, Juan Gámiz Caro

Online discussion forums with embedded streamed videos on distance courses. Vicenc Fernandez, Pep Simo, David Castillo, Jose M. Sallan

Academic performance of students admitted with different entry certificate in Nigeria certificate in education programme in federal college of education (technical), Omoku. Japo Oweikeye Morto Amasuomo

Experiences with a simulated learning environment - the SimuScape©: Virtual environments in medical education. Anna-Lena Thies, Anne Weissenstein, Ivo Haulsen, Bernhard Marschall, Hendrik Friederichs