One of the most important jobs of the Publications Advisory Committee is to support the editorial team for our journal – Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST). A huge thank you to former co-editors Angle Calabrese-Barton and Joe Krajcik, editorial manager Bob Geier and their editorial team. Under their leadership, JRST has grown in reputation and is one of the premier journal is the entire education field. Last year JRST’s impact factor reached 3.020, marking the highest ever impact factor for JRST. JRST is currently ranked 6th of 219 in the Education & Educational Research subject category and closing in on the fifth-ranked journal! So please, if you see Angie, Joe, or Bob in the hallways in Chicago let them know how much you appreciate their hard work.

We are also excited to welcome and support the new JRST editorial team lead by Fouad Abd-El-Khalick and Dana Zeidler. They will be presenting a symposium at the upcoming annual NARST Conference – New Horizons for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching on Tuesday, 04/14/2015 10:15am to 11:45am.

The purpose of this symposium is to provide an interactive forum for NARST members to help contribute to the future directions and policies of JRST. Our vision for JRST is guided by three broad themes: 1) fostering science education as a global endeavor; 2) building broad scientific literacy and engagement, as well as bolstering the health of national and global scientific pipelines; and 3) issues of social justice, equity, and diversity in science education including access to science and the scientific enterprise.  Three closely associated and equally central domains to this vision are: (a) Increasing JRST’s impact on policy, (b) publishing scholarly works focused on conceptual and theoretical analyses, along with empirical works, and (c) building into JRST’s mission a significant educational component focused on developing capacity among graduate students and JRST reviewers toward preparing the next generation of researchers, as well as JRST reviewers and associate editors. After a presentation of these themes, participants will have the opportunity to engage in smaller group discourse lead by members of our new team of Associate Editors. The generation of novel ideas will be synthesized and reported back to the larger group for future consideration

The Publications Advisory Committee is also sponsoring a pre-conference workshop – Submitting and Reviewing Proposals to NARST Strands. Submitting Proposals to NARST Strands. The purpose of this two-part of the workshop is to aid NARST members, especially those whose native language is not English, in preparing and evaluating NARST proposals. Thanks to President-Elect, Mary Atwater, for putting together this workshop and the team of presenters, Huann-shyand Lin, Huihui Kanahele-Mossman, Alberto Rodriguez, and Gallard Martinez.