Announcements

 

NACTA Journal

 

Submissions and reviewers: Table 1 shows the number of NACTA Journal manuscripts submitted, reviewed, accepted and rejected through FastTrack for the past nine years.

 

Table 1. NACTA Journal Manuscripts Submitted and Accepted

Year	Submitted	Accepted	Percent	Rejected	Percent
2014	82	61	74%	21	26%
2013*	109	76	70%	33	30%
2012	82	54	66%	28	34%
2011	83	49	59%	34	41%
2010	73	54	74%	19	26%
2009	58	42	72%	16	28%
2008	48	30	63%	18	37%
2007	44	29	66%	15	34%
2006	41	30	73%	11	27%
Average	69	47	69%	22	31%

 

*This year we produced a special September issue, “Globalization: Implications for Teaching and Learning in Post-Secondary Agricultural Education." We received 36 manuscripts. After the reviews, 24 were accepted for the special issue.

 

Since 2006, manuscript submissions doubled. With about 50 accepted manuscripts per year, each issue of the Journal contains 12 to 14 published manuscripts, a reprint from a past Journal, Teaching Tips/Notes, occasional book reviews.

 

Besides the manuscripts submitted through the NACTA FastTrack (http://nacta.expressacademic.org/), 17 Teaching Tips/Notes and four unsolicited book reviews were submitted in 2014. These items are not peer reviewed. For 2015, 29 manuscripts, three Teaching Tips/Notes and one book review have been submitted as of June 1. The overall statistics for the NACTA FastTrack site: 791 total submissions in nine years, including manuscripts, Teaching Tips/Notes and book reviews. On average, manuscript reviews are completed in 38 days.

 

The NACTA Journal Editorial Board in 2014 consisted of 60 reviewers from 38 different institutions. Reviewers who do not maintain their NACTA membership are dropped. For the 2015 – 2016 Editorial Board, reviewers who did not respond to any review requests or did not do any reviews were dropped. Reviewers with three-year terms ending the last day of June 2015 have all been notified and most asked to serve another three-year term. With these changes, the 2015 – 2016 Editorial Board has 50 members. Possibly five more will be recruited at the 2015 NACTA Conference.

 

Author guidelines for the NACTA Journal are reviewed and updated each year.

 

Conference abstracts: Table 2 provides a comparison of the numbers of abstracts submitted to the annual conference for the past eight years.

 

Table 2. Abstract Submissions to the Annual NACTA Conference

Year	Number
2015	270
2014	250
2013	275
2012	176
2011	185
2010	225
2009	170
2008	140
Average	211

 

Abstracts were electronically submitted to the website http://nactaabs.expressacademic.org/. Each abstract was assigned two or three reviewers from the NACTA Editorial Board. Based on the reviews, abstracts were accepted as oral presentations, poster presentations, or rejected. The local planning committee at the University of Georgia scheduled the presentations. The abstracts are published as NACTA Journal, Volume 59, Supplement 1, in hard copy for conference participants at the University of Georgia in Athens. They are also published online on the NACTA Journal website (NACTAteachers.org). Miriah Pace and Karen Earwood developed, assembled and designed NACTA Journal Volume 59, Supplement 1.

 

All presenters are invited to share their presentations as PDFs or jpgs, which will be posted on the NACTAteachers.org website under the 2015 Conference. Some of these will also be shared on the NACTA Facebook page.

 

 

Website, Electronic Publishing and Social Media

 

Website and electronic publishing: All issues of the NACTA Journal are available on NACTAteachers.org. The most recent eight issues require a member login and password. Older issues of the NACTA Journal are available to anyone. An annual hard copy of the 2014 Journal was mailed to all members. It contained 48 manuscripts in 364 pages. Again, this year Sheridan Press in Hanover, PA printed and mailed the annual hard copy issue in January 2015 to all NACTA members with paid memberships for 2014. Electronic issues of the Journal are also provided to ProQuest and the Gale (Cengage) Group. NACTA receives annual royalty payments from these groups, depending on access.

 

The NACTAteachers.org website continues as a very valuable communication tool. The content is changed frequently. Based on "hits" Table 3 lists the most popular articles on the website:

 

Table 3. Most Popular on NACTAteachers.org

 

 

 

Just an interesting note: Many individuals are coming to the NACTA website to get information about the NACTA Judging Conference. This could help us reach more of the two-year colleges. Also, we need to be able to get the results and photos from the judging conference to our website.

 

Prior to our 2014 Conference and marking the 60th anniversary of NACTA, Miriah Pace completely redesigned and updated the NACTA History (http://www.nactateachers.org/nacta-history.html). We will continue to update this page. 

 

Through the NACTA awards website (http://nactaawards.expressacademic.org/) award nominations are submitted and reviewed. This simplifies the nomination and review process for everyone. This year we added and explained the new award names.

 

NACTA is on Facebook: On Facebook, 705 people "Like" us (up from 575 last year). All measures show an increase over last year. Content is added on a daily basis, except during the summer months. Our Facebook link is https://www.facebook.com/NACTA.teachers. 

 

NACTA E-newsletter: We continue to use the E-newsletter to reach a large audience of members and non-members of NACTA. This year we switched to MailChimp which gives us more options and more information. Hopefully more members are relying on the NACTA Facebook and the NACTAteachers.org website. Also, three of the websites -- the abstract submission site, the manuscript submission site and the NACTAteachers.org have the ability to easily and quickly email all of the members. More use is being made of this feature to provide members with information and reminders.

 

 

Other Items

 

Continuing this year: The Third Annual Poster Contest will be held this year at the University of Georgia. All posters will be entered into the contest and the contest will be conducted as suggest by members of the Executive Committee. New poster contest details can be found on the NACTA website: http://www.nactateachers.org/news/2278-update-2015-nacta-poster-contest-.html. 

 

QR codes for downloading: QR codes and URL links will be used at this year’s conference. One will allow anyone to download an electronic copy of the NACTA Journal, volume 59, supplement 1 which contains the abstracts for the 2015 NACTA Conference. Also, QR codes and URL links are available for the conference daily schedule and the presentation (oral/poster) schedules.

 

New this year: Based on a suggestion heard at last year’s conference, we placed the NACTA Teaching Tips/Notes on the NACTA website (http://www.nactateachers.org/teaching-tipsnotes.html). These are freely available. Tips/Notes from 2009 to the present are posted. 

 

Proposal from JSTOR: We were contacted by Hector Nazario. He is the Licensing Editor at JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization committed to preserving scholarly literature. Hector invited the NACTA Journal to join their new Sustainability collection. There is no cost to join JSTOR, and they digitize everything back to the first issues at their expense. In addition to increased exposure, archival preservation and supplemental income, they offer publishers non-exclusive license agreements, so they are free to undertake and/or maintain other digital initiatives. The email correspondence and supporting material can be downloaded as a PDF here: http://www.tagmydoc.com/JSTOR. 

 

Recommendations:

 

Submitted by:

Rick Parker

NACTA Journal Editor/Publications Committee Chair