2 December 2020

IAU Commission C1 Launches Astronomy Education Journal

Urban Eriksson                                                           Paulo S. Bretones
Chair, IAU Working Group for                                       President, IAU Commission C1,
Astronomy Education Research & Methods                Astronomy Education and Development

International Astronomical Union (IAU) Commission C1, Astronomy Education and Development, is pleased to announce the new Astronomy Education Journal (AEJ) and the first call for papers.

AEJ Banner
Courtesy IAU Commission C1, Astronomy Education and Development

At the inaugural IAU Astronomy Education Conference (AstroEdu, held in Garching, Germany, 16-18 September 2019), we announced our intention to launch a new journal. Astronomy Education Journal (AEJ) is now officially open and is accepting submissions of manuscripts. This online journal aims to be a key global publication platform for both astronomy educators and astronomy-education researchers.

AEJ aims to meet the needs of the astronomy education community by providing a location for all manner of practical, newsworthy, and scholarly publications involving developments in the field. The journal tries to capture the spirit of the now-out-of-print Astronomy Education Review (AER). Like its predecessor, AEJ will focus on building community collaboration and disseminating important news and opinion while also publishing results from formal, technical astronomy education research. The latter content will complement the current scholarly discipline-based work published by the Latin American Journal of Astronomy Education (RELEA) and the Journal of Astronomy & Earth Sciences Education (JAESE) as well as the astronomy-related articles now published in Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER).

Inspired by our sibling, IAU Commission C2's Communicating Astronomy with the Public Journal (CAPjournal), and by Nature and Science, we will accept both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles. Articles on astronomy-education research will be peer reviewed and incorporated into AEJ’s scholarly indices. These articles will need to meet scholarly standards as recommended by, for example, Scopus. We'll also publish invited reviews written by specialists in astronomy-education research.

There will also be a less formal, non-peer-reviewed but edited and curated section that contains other relevant material, such as news, announcements, interviews, opinions, resources, correspondence, best practices, and classroom activities to help circulate information among the community.

We encourage all interested educators and education researchers to make your colleagues aware of this new journal, either by pointing them to this article and/or the AEJ website or by sharing our PDF of this announcement, and we welcome your submit manuscripts!

Astronomy Education Journal (AEJ)

AEJ Co-Editors

  • Urban Eriksson (Sweden)
  • Paulo S. Bretones (Brazil)

AEJ Managing Editor

  • Saeed Salimpour (Australia)

AEJ Editorial Board

  • Janelle Bailey (USA) 
  • Sanlyn Buxner (USA) 
  • Pierre Chastenay (Canada) 
  • Mieke de Cock (Belgium) 
  • Michael Fitzgerald (Australia) 
  • Richard Hechter (Canada) 
  • Jorge Ernesto Horvath (Brazil) 
  • Christine Lindstrøm (Australia) 
  • Nur Nafhatun Md Shariff (Malaysia) 
  • Amelia Ortiz Gil (Spain) 
  • Italo Testa (Italy) 
  • Akihiko Tomita (Japan)