AERA Open Mission Statement

"AERA Open is a peer-reviewed, open access journal published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). With an emphasis on rapid review and dissemination, AERA Open aims to advance knowledge through theoretical and empirical study across arenas of inquiry related to education and learning. AERA Open emphasizes publishing scientific and scholarly work that adds to knowledge incrementally and cumulatively. AERA Open also serves as a venue for innovation, novel inquiry and ideas, interdisciplinary bridge building, and research that fosters the connection of research to practice and practice to research. AERA Open was established to make knowledge that it disseminates freely accessible to users and to be porous and flexible in publishing work that transcends the boundaries between education research and other adjacent fields of inquiry, formal and informal education, research and development, education and other social institutions in society, early and later stages of human development, and scientific and humanistic study. By design, AERA Open seeks to avert the silos and stereotypes that can lead to favoring one rigorous method over another or one conceptual framework or model as more robust than another. AERA Open will not only make knowledge available, it will also use its available space to promote access to data; research instruments, protocols and guides; and other supplemental sources of information that will enhance the value of articles as well as stimulate others to pursue research or its application. As an online journal, AERA Open will provide a publishing venue for works in new and innovative formats, such as video, interactive data tables, and audio recordings that a print format precludes. AERA Open emphasizes accelerating the pace of dissemination of knowledge through rapid peer review. AERA’s standards for reporting on research methods grounded in social science and in humanities-oriented study will guide the peer review process in determining work worthy of publication. The role of the editor and editorial team is to strive to make research of quality accessible to wide-ranging readers, with the readership determining the significance and value of work.