Bulletin of Educational Research

About Bulletin of Educational Research

Bulletin of Educational Research — Journal Profile

Bulletin of Educational Research is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal in the field of education, published in Taiwan by the Department of Education of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Known in Chinese as 教育研究集刊, it is one of the education journals associated with Taiwan's oldest and best-known teacher-education university, and it carries research on how education systems work, how teachers develop, how curricula change, and how learning can be studied rigorously. The journal's English-language presence is maintained through the Department of Education at NTNU, and its bibliographic identity is anchored by a single print ISSN, 1028-8708, which is the identifier recorded in the ISSN-derived listings, in OpenAlex, and in the SCImago-derived journal listings consulted for this profile.

This profile has been prepared from sources that could actually be checked: the journal's own English-language issues pages hosted by the NTNU Department of Education, the OpenAlex source record resolved directly from the journal's ISSN, SCImago-derived listings that report the journal's Scopus-based indicators, a university library catalogue record, and an NTNU College of Education handbook that documents one of the journal's former editors-in-chief. Where a detail could not be verified from a checked source — for example, the journal's current article processing charges, if any — this profile says so plainly rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

At a Glance

• Full title: Bulletin of Educational Research
• Chinese title: 教育研究集刊
• Abbreviation: Bull. Educ. Res.
• ISSN: 1028-8708
• Publisher: Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University
• Country: Taiwan
• Field: Education
• OpenAlex source: S4210206450, resolved from ISSN 1028-8708
• OpenAlex works recorded at checking time: 42 works, with 1 recorded citation and a source h-index of 1 in that database
• SCImago-derived indicators: SJR 0.104, h-index 3, best quartile Q4 in Education, in the SCImago-derived listing consulted
• Documented former editor-in-chief: Chin-Ju Mao, who held the role from 2015 to 2021 according to an NTNU College of Education handbook
• Journal homepage recorded in the original listing: the Edubook journal portal page for the title, also given as the homepage in OpenAlex
• DOAJ listing: could not be verified from the DOAJ search API at checking time
• Article processing charges: not publicly disclosed in the sources checked; treat as could not be verified

Identity and History

The Bulletin of Educational Research belongs to the family of academic journals produced within National Taiwan Normal University, the Taipei institution that has anchored teacher education in Taiwan for generations. The journal's English title is a direct rendering of its Chinese title, 教育研究集刊, and its identity in international databases is deliberately narrow: one ISSN, one publisher of record, and one subject category, Education. That narrowness matters for identification, because several similarly named education bulletins exist around the world, and conflating them is the most common error made about this title. A disambiguation section near the end of this profile separates this journal from the Pakistani Bulletin of Education and Research and from another NTNU journal, Contemporary Educational Research Quarterly.

The journal's recent history is visible mainly through its indexing footprint. SCImago-derived listings, which are built from Scopus data, record coverage of the journal from 2017 onward in the editions consulted, with one listing giving 2017–2024 and an earlier edition giving 2017–2021. OpenAlex, resolving the source directly from ISSN 1028-8708, records a smaller and more recent body of works — 42 works in total at checking time, concentrated in the early 2020s, with 4 works recorded for 2021, 16 for 2022 and 17 for 2023 in its counts by year. Those two pictures are not contradictory: Scopus-based listings and OpenAlex harvest different parts of a journal's output, and a Chinese-language education journal with English summaries is exactly the kind of title whose international database footprint understates its domestic scholarly role. Readers should therefore treat the international metrics reported here as a floor, not as a complete account of the journal's readership or influence inside Taiwan's education research community.

What the checked sources do show clearly is continuity of editorship inside NTNU's College of Education. An NTNU College of Education handbook records that Chin-Ju Mao, Professor in the Department of Education and the Graduate Institute of Curriculum and Instruction at NTNU, served as editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Educational Research from 2015 to 2021, alongside roles as Associate Dean of the College of Education (2019–2023) and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (2015–2018). Her documented research expertise — sociology of curriculum, sociology of education, curriculum theory, and curriculum reform and policy studies — is a useful guide to the journal's centre of gravity during that period: curriculum reform, teacher professionalism and the social context of schooling were live concerns, and the journal's published content from those years reflects them.

The Publisher: Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University

The publisher of record in the SCImago-derived listings is the Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University, and OpenAlex likewise resolves the journal's host organisation to National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan. NTNU is a comprehensive university in Taipei whose College of Education is one of the most influential centres of education research in the Chinese-speaking world. A department-published journal of this kind is typically edited by faculty specialists, reviewed by scholars in the field, and read primarily by researchers, graduate students and policy-facing academics rather than by a commercial subscriber base. That model has practical consequences for authors and readers: the journal's standards are academic rather than commercial, its audience is concentrated in education research, and its publication decisions are made inside a university department rather than by a publishing house with a marketing programme.

Because the publisher is a university department, the most reliable route to current information about the journal — its present editor, its current call schedule and its submission requirements — is the department itself and the journal's own pages, rather than third-party journal directories. Several directories reproduce stale or merged data for this title; the checks performed for this profile found, for example, that generic journal-listing sites reproduce SCImago figures of different vintages side by side, which is why every figure in this profile is attributed to the specific listing and database from which it was taken.

Scope and Subject Coverage

The journal publishes research across the breadth of education studies. OpenAlex classifies the source under topics that map closely onto the journal's observable content: teacher education and leadership studies; education pedagogy and practices; educational theory and curriculum studies; historical education studies; and education, philosophy and society. Those five topic labels, taken from the OpenAlex source record resolved from the journal's own ISSN, are the most compact verified summary of what the journal is for.

The journal's own English-language issues pages show what that scope looks like in practice. One article presented there addresses teacher development in two Chinese societies, Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, examining how contextual factors shape the direction of teacher development and the kind of teacher education that aims to improve the quality of the teaching force. The article argues that where professional authority is weak, reform is imposed on teachers in a top-down manner, and that conservatism in the teaching profession can be explained by a work ethic marked by anxiety and frustration under rapid societal change. That single example displays the journal's characteristic concerns: teachers and their professional lives; curriculum reform as a social and political process; comparative perspectives across Chinese-speaking education systems; and the tension between policy mandates and professional autonomy. A manuscript that speaks to those concerns — teacher professionalism, curriculum change, education policy, comparative education, the philosophy and sociology of education — is speaking the journal's language.

Prospective authors should also note the journal's linguistic setting. The journal is a Taiwanese education journal whose articles are presented with summaries in both Chinese and English on its English-language site — the issues pages offer a summary, a Chinese summary and references for each article. That presentation suits a journal read mainly by scholars who work in Chinese and who also need their work to be discoverable, citable and discussable in English. Authors outside that setting should confirm the journal's current language requirements directly with the editorial office before preparing a submission, because language policy is one of the details that could not be verified from the sources checked for this profile.

Editorial Leadership and Peer Review

The verified editorial fact available for this journal is the 2015–2021 editorship of Chin-Ju Mao, documented in an NTNU College of Education handbook as noted above. The identity of the current editor-in-chief could not be verified from a checked official source at the time of writing, and this profile therefore does not name one. That restraint is deliberate: naming a current editor from an unverified directory would risk directing authors to the wrong person.

The journal is described in its JournalsWorld record and in the listings consulted as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, which is consistent with its status as a university department journal indexed in Scopus-derived listings. The mechanics of its review process — the number of reviewers, whether review is anonymised on both sides, and typical turnaround times — are not publicly disclosed in the sources checked, and authors who need those details for planning should request them from the editorial office. As with many university journals in Taiwan, the journal operates within the academic evaluation culture shaped by the Taiwan Social Sciences Citation Index (TSSCI) environment, but a specific TSSCI listing status for this title could not be verified from a checked source and is not claimed here.

Metrics: What the Numbers Actually Say

Two independent measurement systems were checked for this journal, and they tell different but compatible stories. Authors should understand both before citing either.

SCImago / Scopus-derived figures. The SCImago-derived listing consulted for this profile reports an SJR of 0.104, an h-index of 3, and a best quartile of Q4 in the Education category, with an overall rank of 29196 in that listing. A separate impact-score series derived from Scopus data reports two-year impact scores for the journal in the range of roughly 0.08 to 0.25 across 2017–2023 — small numbers, typical of a regional-language education journal whose citations are concentrated in a national research community. These figures describe how the journal performs inside the Scopus citation graph; they are the figures most likely to be quoted by evaluation committees that use SCImago.

OpenAlex figures. OpenAlex, resolving the source from ISSN 1028-8708 to source S4210206450, recorded 42 works and 1 citation for the journal at checking time, with a source h-index of 1 and a two-year mean citedness of 0.0. OpenAlex's harvest of this title is plainly partial — it captures only a slice of the journal's output, weighted to 2021–2023 — so its counts should be read as evidence about database coverage, not as a verdict on the journal. OpenAlex resolution is also unstable over time as records merge and split, so these figures are reported as at checking time.

The honest summary is that the Bulletin of Educational Research is a small, specialised, nationally anchored education journal: modest international citation metrics, a clear institutional home, and a readership centred on education researchers in Taiwan and the wider Chinese-speaking scholarly world. For an author whose goal is to reach that readership — for example, with a study of curriculum reform in Taiwan, teacher development in a Chinese-speaking system, or the philosophy and sociology of education in an East Asian context — those metrics describe fit rather than weakness. For an author who needs a high-quartile international education journal for a promotion case, the Q4 standing reported by the SCImago-derived listing is the relevant fact, and it should be weighed before submission, not after.

Indexing and Discoverability

The journal's presence in Scopus-derived listings (SCImago and the aggregators that reproduce it) establishes that the journal has been covered by Scopus for the years those listings report, beginning in 2017 in the editions consulted. Its OpenAlex source record gives it a persistent, ISSN-resolved identity in the open scholarly graph, which helps libraries and discovery systems match its articles correctly. A listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals could not be verified: the DOAJ search API returned no record for ISSN 1028-8708 at checking time, and because an interim zero result is weak evidence about any directory, this profile records the status as could not be verified rather than claiming the journal is absent from DOAJ. The same caution applies to any other index not named here: if an author's institution requires a specific index, the author should confirm the journal's status in that index directly, at the time of submission.

Open Access, Fees and Licensing

The journal's open-access status, article processing charges and licensing terms are not publicly disclosed in the sources checked for this profile, and no fee figure is quoted here because none could be verified. University department journals in Taiwan commonly make their content accessible through university platforms, but a general pattern is not evidence about this journal, so this profile leaves the point open: authors should confirm access and any charges with the editorial office before submitting. Enquiries of that kind are normal and expected; a journal office that publishes its guidelines will answer them directly.

How to Submit and How to Read the Journal

The journal's homepage, as recorded both in the original JournalsWorld listing and in OpenAlex, is the Edubook journal portal page for the title, and the journal's English-language issues are presented on the NTNU Department of Education site (bulletin-en.ed.ntnu.edu.tw), where readers can browse issues and read article summaries in English and Chinese. Those two official doorways are the correct starting points: the portal for the journal's publishing arrangements, and the department site for its content. Before submitting, an author should read several recent articles in full, match the manuscript's framing to the journal's concerns — teacher education, curriculum studies, education policy, pedagogy, and the philosophy, history and sociology of education — and confirm the current submission route, language requirements and formatting rules with the editorial office, since those operational details could not be verified from the sources checked here and may change between volumes.

Readers approaching the journal for research purposes will get the most from it by treating it as a window into Taiwanese and comparative Chinese-society education research: its articles document how curriculum guidelines are interpreted by teachers, how teacher professionalism is theorised under conditions of rapid reform, and how education policy travels between Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Literature reviews on those themes that omit this journal risk missing the regional scholarship entirely.

Similar Journals

Readers and authors comparing this journal with neighbouring titles may also consider the following, each of which occupies adjacent ground. The Journal of Research in Education Sciences is NTNU's flagship education research journal and publishes a broader, more quantitative range of education science. Contemporary Educational Research Quarterly is another NTNU education title — distinct from this Bulletin, despite the shared institution — with an explicitly quarterly schedule and a contributor programme spanning philosophy and history of education, educational administration and policy, curriculum and teaching, evaluation and methodology, and social and cultural studies in education. Internationally, journals such as Teaching and Teacher Education and the Cambridge Journal of Education serve overlapping interests in teacher development and curriculum reform at much larger citation scale, while regional titles indexed in the same SCImago Education lists serve the same comparative-education readership in other national settings. Choosing among them is a question of audience: this Bulletin reaches the Taiwanese and Chinese-speaking education research community from inside its leading teacher-education university.

Disambiguation: Three Titles That Are Not This Journal

First, the Bulletin of Education and Research is a different journal, published by the Institute of Education and Research at the University of the Punjab in Pakistan, published since 1961 with three issues a year; the near-identical English names cause frequent miscitation, and the two titles share neither publisher, country nor ISSN. Second, Contemporary Educational Research Quarterly is a separate NTNU journal with its own contributor programme; material published about that quarterly — including its March, June, September and December schedule — should not be attributed to the Bulletin of Educational Research. Third, the NAER (National Academy for Educational Research) bulletin family, including the discontinued Bulletin of Educational Resources and Research first published in 1976, belongs to a different Taiwanese institution altogether. The identifier that settles every such question is the ISSN: this journal is 1028-8708, published by the Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of the Bulletin of Educational Research?
1028-8708. It is the single ISSN recorded for the journal in OpenAlex and in the SCImago-derived listings.

Who publishes the Bulletin of Educational Research?
The Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University, in Taiwan, as recorded in the SCImago-derived listing; OpenAlex likewise gives National Taiwan Normal University as the host organisation.

What subjects does the journal cover?
Education broadly, with OpenAlex topics centred on teacher education and leadership, pedagogy and educational practice, educational theory and curriculum studies, historical education studies, and education, philosophy and society.

What are the journal's metrics?
In the SCImago-derived listing consulted: SJR 0.104, h-index 3, best quartile Q4 in Education. In OpenAlex at checking time: 42 works, 1 recorded citation, source h-index 1 — a partial harvest that understates the journal's full output.

Who has edited the journal?
Chin-Ju Mao of NTNU is documented as editor-in-chief from 2015 to 2021 in an NTNU College of Education handbook. The current editor could not be verified from a checked official source.

Is the journal open access, and does it charge authors?
Its open-access arrangements and any charges are not publicly disclosed in the sources checked; both points should be confirmed with the editorial office.

Is the journal listed in DOAJ?
A DOAJ listing could not be verified from the DOAJ search API at checking time.

How do I cite the journal's name correctly?
Bulletin of Educational Research, abbreviated Bull. Educ. Res. — not to be confused with the Pakistani Bulletin of Education and Research.

Sources and Verification Note

This profile is based on the journal's English-language issues pages on the NTNU Department of Education site; the OpenAlex source record S4210206450 resolved from ISSN 1028-8708 (42 works, topics and counts by year as at checking time); SCImago-derived listings reporting the Department of Education, NTNU as publisher, SJR 0.104, h-index 3, Q4 in Education and Scopus coverage from 2017; a Wageningen University library catalogue record confirming the title, ISSN and NTNU as publisher; and an NTNU College of Education handbook documenting Chin-Ju Mao's 2015–2021 editorship. Fields that none of those sources could settle — current editorship, review mechanics, frequency in the current volume, fees, licensing and DOAJ status — are recorded above as not publicly disclosed or could not be verified, in line with the no-fabrication standard applied to every JournalsWorld depth profile.