The TESOL International Association is home to high quality publications, reaching across the world in their scope to foster the creation and sharing of knowledge to benefit English as an additional language (EAL) teaching and learning on a global level. TESOL affiliates can also contribute to the creation and sharing of new knowledge at a regional level with scholarly peer-reviewed journals that complement the big international publications. An example is the BC TEAL Journal, which is a publication of the association of British Columbia teachers of English as an additional language (BC TEAL).

The BC TEAL Journal was started to support BC TEAL’s mission to raise awareness, provide professional development, and share expertise in the field of EAL teaching and learning (BC TEAL, 2023). It was felt that there was a need for a new journal in the province to showcase local research and meaningful scholarship that related to the various settings and contexts of BC TEAL’s membership. It was also important to create something that would be freely available, with the idea that the whole world benefits when knowledge is shared and people know what other people know (Willinsky & Alperin, 2011). This commitment to free and open access means that neither readers nor authors are ever charged any fees. Anyone with access to the internet can use the contents of the journal for any lawful purpose (Suber, 2012), as long as those contents aren’t used for commercial purposes, changed and then distributed, or used without attribution (Creative Commons, n.d.). To these ends, the journal is published with open journal system software and hosted on free server space provided by the editor’s university library.

In addition to being readers and authors, BC TEAL’s members also benefit from opportunities to volunteer as peer reviewers for the journal as part of their ongoing professional development. The journal’s peer reviewers thus take part in the wider intellectual life of the field, access the latest ideas, engage with locally relevant theory and research, and develop practical skills that they can bring with them into their own scholarship and practice. Thus, a community of scholar-practitioners is cultivated through the journal, with readers, authors, and volunteers coming together and expanding the knowledge base of EAL teaching and learning in ways that strengthen the connections between research, theory, and practice.

Increasing the visibility and discoverability of the journal’s articles has also been important. The journal is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). People across British Columbia, as well as around the world, can find the articles and read them. Further contributing to ​​this aspect is the assignment of a digital object identifier (DOI) to each article and issue to provide stable links and enhance the professional look of the journal. To achieve this increase in visibility and discoverability, ​​the help of the scholarly communications and copyright services librarian at the journal editor’s university has been invaluable for this purpose.

It has also become evident that the journal is an important venue for local research and inquiry that might not otherwise find its way into publication on a scholarly peer-reviewed platform. With low acceptance rates and limited resources to support emerging authors, it can be challenging to submit a manuscript to an international journal and then see that submission through to publication. However, the BC TEAL Journal takes a strong stance towards being a venue for articles written by authors across the whole spectrum of the career pathway, from novice scholars to established researchers. Thus, the journal offers a developmental hand to work in partnership with authors to strengthen their work towards a publication that meets a high standard of excellence.

By creating a space for local scholarship that both nurtures emerging authors and welcomes established researchers, the journal is strengthening the field of EAL teaching and learning by inducting more people into scholar-practitioner ways and underscoring the knowledge creation, theory building, and educational innovation found in this field. Since first being published in 2016, the journal has become a thriving community of readers, authors, editor, reviewers, and other volunteers who join together in a digital space to grow and sustain the body of literature that informs how additional languages can be taught and learned. It also underscores EAL teaching and learning as an academic discipline in and of itself, with the BC TEAL Journal becoming part of the research informed knowledge base represented in periodicals, books, conferences, workshops, and other activities that Ding and Bruce (2017) have identified as part and parcel of being an academic field of study.

TESOL’s many affiliates can ​​engage in the building and sharing of new knowledge related to EAL teaching and learning, with their own scholarly peer-reviewed journals complementing the role of other regional, national, and international journals in the field. By supporting an affiliate’s mission, promoting open access to knowledge, creating professional development opportunities, fostering a scholar-practitioner community, increasing the discoverability and visibility of new research, and supporting the publication of articles that might not otherwise see the light of day, TESOL affiliate journals serve to strengthen the field of EAL teaching and learning as a discipline with a research-informed knowledge base that pursues inquiry and engages practice.

References

BC TEAL. (2023). Our mission and vision. https://www.bcteal.org/mission-vision-grid.php

Creative Commons. (n.d.). Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Ding, A., & Bruce, I. (2017). The English for academic purposes practitioner: Operating on the edge of academia. Palgrave Macmillan.

Suber, P. (2012). Open access. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9286.001.0001

Willinsky, J., & Alperin, J. P. (2011). The academic ethics of open access to research and scholarship. Ethics and Education, 6(3), 217–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2011.632716

Scott Roy Douglas is an associate professor in the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan School of Education. His focus is on English as an additional language teaching and learning in post-secondary and adult contexts. He is also the editor of the BC TEAL Journal.