In celebration of Current Issues in Comparative Education’s (CICE) 25th anniversary, this is a timely opportunity to share not only its most recent published issue but also the journal's history and some reflections of students who have been engaged in it.
Popularly known as CICE, the journal was born out of our students’ interest in 1997. The spirit of the journal, which continues until these days, was to provide a discussion forum about new trends, pressing contemporary issues, and novel theoretical and methodological approaches, creating room for underrepresented voices in our field while following the highest scientific standard. For this reason, since the beginning, CICE has been an open-access journal aiming to avoid any paywalls or other access restrictions commonly found in academia. As such, the journal encourages master and doctoral students and early career researchers to submit their work, an objective largely accomplished during these years.
This last issue, published this week, is dedicated to the top “Comparative and International Education in Turbulent Times”. The spirit of the call for papers was to invite authors to engage and discuss what is the role of CIE in the face of the ongoing challenges that the world is facing: climate change, the rise of right-wing movements, the disruption of artificial intelligence, the post-pandemic consequences, the impact of forced migration and the refugee crisis, and so forth. As a result, the special issue includes a variety of articles looking at the impacts of COVID-19 on female educators and students, the important role of Socio-Emotional Learning in the Refugee context, the importance of including a racial perspective when teaching about climate change, and much more. Go ahead and check it out here!
A student-led journal
CICE is a student-led journal, which means that its significant contributions during these years should be credited to the dedication and hard work of Teachers College students. Every year, one of our program doctoral students acts as the Editor in Chief and invites interested International and Comparative Education students, but also from other departments, to join the journal editorial board. At present, the CICE team is formed by five senior editors –Ph.D. students–, seven editors –M.A. students–, eight copyeditors, and one digital engagement manager (2022-2023 board). However, This work would not be possible without the fundamental support from our faculty as well as the international editorial board. CICE is currently accepting applications for the 2023-2024 academic year, just click on this link!
We asked some of last year's board members to share with us their experiences working in CICE. Among them, Darren Rabinowitz, a third-year Ph.D. student who acted as senior editor, talked about a bit of what he learned as a reviewer: “I enjoyed being part of the review process. It was interesting seeing what scholars from across the topic areas in our field are researching. It was also an enriching experience to provide feedback to authors in a constructive way to help them advance their work”. Sumit Karn served as editor for two years during his MA, and he shared his views on how important it is to feel part of a larger community and collaborate with peers and colleagues: “collaborating with CICE board was really enriching. In particular, I had the chance to share ideas with the rest of the board members as well as choose the topic for the Special Issue. I undoubtedly recommend it to everyone who’s interested!”.
The Editorial Board and the publishing process
Every year, size has two Calls for Papers, one for the winter and another one for the spring of the academic year. The so-called Winter Issue is an open call accepting manuscripts on a wide variety of topics in Comparative and International Education. Later, the special issue focuses on specific topics that are of interest to the Editorial Board. Over these 25 years, CICE has dedicated issues to a wide range of topics, always avant-garde on current issues. From exploring the role of NGOs in 1998, the recurring issue of the impact of technology in education in 2003 and 2018, the role of social movements in 2015, exploring methodological issues in our field to the more recent issue of COVID-19 in 2022. This arbitrary selection of some of the many challenging topics covered by CICE since its inception shows nothing but the intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, and interests of each of CICE’s editorial teams.
Following the double-blinded peer review criteria, each article, essay, or book review submitted to our journal is assigned to reviewers with relevant expertise on the subject. In some cases, when appropriate, external reviews are also invited to participate in the process. Once the reviewers give comments and suggestions for each article, the editor-in-chief communicates with the office to advance or not in the publishing process. Frequently, a few additional lines of rounds of reviews and comments between the editor-in-chief on the author's happened, and those pieces selected for publication or later assigned to the copyeditors, in charge of working closely with the authors for revising citations, grammar, and other editorial items.
In addition to being an open-access journal, CICE accepts submissions in Spanish and English! So, if you are interested in publishing your work in CICE, please check the submission guidelines and feel free to contact them at cice@tc.columbia.edu
