Some 11 years ago, Dr. Rita Deyoe-Chiullán, the TexTESOL V Publications Coordinator, proposed to the TexTESOL V Board that a useful service to members and the profession would be to have a small, peer-reviewed online journal with limited to no production costs. The journal, TexELT (Texas English language Teaching), would serve to disseminate current information to members and provide opportunities for new researchers to break into publishing with less difficulty than competing for spots in large journals that only publish a small selection of the hundreds of manuscripts they receive each year.
Each year since then, an issue of TexELT has been published on the TexTESOL V website (https://textesolv.org/). Topics have varied, as have formats, over the span of these first 10 years and have included articles of interest to those teaching ESL locally as well as articles of wider interest since Texas teachers often travel and teach elsewhere during their careers.
Unlike the staff of most well-known journals, the peer reviewers/editors of TexELT provide extensive guidance and editing to new researchers to help make their submissions publication-worthy, and no fees are charged to authors. This approach is in sharp contrast to predatory publishers that promise to publish but for a large fee. Our editing support is provided as a professional service, and no money changes hands.
The number of articles published in an annual issue in September of each year has varied from three to seven and is based on the number of submissions received that appear to merit the work involved in editing and preparing the online layout. Some incomplete articles and/or those that, according to the peer review panel, do not seem likely to be of interest to the organization’s membership are politely rejected and the researcher is encouraged to either continue development for re-submission or to submit to a different type of publication. For more information, contact Publications@textesolv.org.
Biodata
Jey Venkatesan is currently the President of TexTESOL V in Fort Worth, Texas. She has served TexTESOL Board for several years as liaison, publications copy coordinator for the TexELT Journal, among other roles. She has been with the Collin College ESL Department for seventeen years as a Professor of ESL and currently serves as the ESL Discipline Lead. |