As you know, Journal of Writing Assessment was founded in 2003 by Kathleen Blake Yancey and Brian Huot as an independent journal that publishes a wide range of writing assessment scholarship from a wide range of scholars and teachers. JWA was originally a print and subscription-based journal published by Hampton Press. In 2011, Peggy O’Neill and Diane Kelly-Riley became editors of JWA, and moved the journal to a free online, open-source publication. Hampton Press generously donated all of the print-based issues of JWA, and they are available for free on the site at http://journalofwritingassessment.org.
Since our move online, JWA has had a great deal of traffic. In the last year, more than 25,000 visits and more than 251,000 hits have been recorded to the JWA site. Additionally in the past year, scholarship published by JWA has received significant attention in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education. We are indexed in ERIC, MLA, and Comppile.org.
So we’d like to update you about exciting news at the Journal of Writing Assessment:
Beginning January 2015, Carl Whithaus of the University of California Davis will replace Peggy O’Neill as co-editor of JWA. Carl has an extensive and impressive record as a scholar and practitioner of writing assessment.
Carl’s appointment as co-editor will continue to position JWA as a journal that makes peer-reviewed scholarship about writing assessment accessible to a wide audience. His expertise in automated scoring of writing and connections with the National Writing Project will greatly benefit JWA as the move to mandated assessments continue—both in the K-12 setting and in higher education. We’re committed to publishing a wide range of scholarship that can inform the quickly changing landscape of writing assessment in educational settings.
Additionally, our associate editor, Jessica Nastal-Dema will continue in her role with JWA as she transitions to a faculty position at Georgia Southern University.
Likewise, we continue to engage graduate students who are up and coming scholars of writing assessment in our work. Tialitha Macklin, PhD candidate at Washington State University, continues in her Assistant Editor role, and David Bedsole and Bruce Bowles, PhD students at Florida State University, will co-edit the JWA Reading List.
We are pleased to announce the redesign of the Journal of Writing Assessment site. We refreshed the look, and added a search function so that the entire site (including pdfs) is searchable. This redesign makes the excellent scholarship published by JWA much more accessible to a wider audience. JWA is hosted and designed by Twenty Six Design.
Finally, we want to acknowledge the financial support of the University of Idaho’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Department of English. Their generous support enables JWA to remain an independent journal.
Diane Kelly-Riley, University of Idaho, and Peggy O’Neill, Loyola University Maryland, Editors
Source: jwa