Welcome

elcome to the first issue of Higher Education Perspectives, online. When I first took on this project, that is the transference of the journal to its current online format, as well as the role of editor, I never envisioned how absorbing it would become. While absorbing and time consuming, it wa most definitely rewarding.

What is different about HEP?

ertainly there are many peer-reviewed journals dedicated to the subject of higher education. What is different about HEP is that it is essentially a journal that involves graduate students in every aspect of the publishing process. Our reviewers, copyeditors and many of our authors are students of higher education at OISE/UT (http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/tps/program_he.html).

While we have held onto the conventions of a scholarly journal by organizing it by volume and issue, there are plans to re-organize the content according to topics and themes in order to take advantage of the connections that are possible within the online environment. This can only take place, however, once there is more content with which to work. Send your papers in!

Forging connections

t is now the standard convention to provide both HTML and PDF versions of papers. The difference between the two formats is that the former enables browsing online without downloading, and allows for the creation of links between documents, files, and web sites, The PDF version, in contrast, is largely for downloading to the computer, sharing between computers, and is on the aesthetic level a little more comforting as it resembles a printed journal.

Dr. John Willinsky pioneered the development of the system that houses HEP as a means of bridging the gaps between research. This principle forms the basis of his work entitled the Public Knowledge Project (http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/). Indeed, OJS features a special tool called the Research Support Tool (RST) that gathers the metadata from the various articles and links this information with metadata in other articles. I hope everyone will take a moment to look at this tool and the impact it could have on scholarly research.

Support for HEP

hile it might seem that the most rewarding aspect to being editor of HEP is access to the latest (and I would assert greatest), research about higher education, in truth the best part of this job is the people with whom I have worked. Graduate work is most definitely a long, lonely process, but this journal has brought me into contact and communication with some fabulous scholars. Indeed, I would like to extend special thanks to Prof. Daniel Lang and Prof. Berta Vigil-Laden. Both Dan and Berta provided me with much needed support and encouragement.

HEP online would not, of course, be anywhere without committed reviewers and authors. Thanks to the authors who have put up with some technical glitches inevitably associated with a first edition. A special thank you also goes to the HEP reviewers; indeed, reading the reviews is sometimes as informative as reading the papers.

A special thanks goes out to Nona Robinson who began as my co-editor and is now dean of students of students at University College, University of Toronto. Nona was instrumental in getting this journal up and running.

I hope you enjoy this first issue of HEP online. Suggestions and comments are always welcome.

 

Sincerely,

Mia Joy Quint

Editor
mia.quint@uotoronto.ca