Douglas i BC TEAL Journal Volume 2 Number 1 (2017): i-ii Editorial Free and Open Access: How English Language Teaching Associations Can Foster the Dissemination of Knowledge Through Scholarly Journals Scott Roy Douglas University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus) This editorial marks the completion of the second issue of the BC TEAL Journal. With its successful publication, another year of scholarly articles related to teaching and learning English as an additional language in British Columbia and beyond have been made freely available to the public. The hallmark of this publication is its commitment to Open Access. Suber (2012) has defined Open Access as scholarly work available on the internet without charge, with people able to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself” (p. 7). To this definition, Suber adds that authors retain copyright over their work, and when their work is reproduced or distributed, they receive proper attribution. According to Willinsky and Alperin (2011), there is a further ethical aspect to promoting Open Access to information. They maintain that people have the right to know what other people know, and it benefits humanity as a whole for information to be shared as broadly as possible in the most effective ways possible. The BC TEAL Journal is the very embodiment of Suber’s (2012) definition and Willinsky and Alperin’s (2011) ethics of Open Access. While maintaining high editorial and peer-review standards (Douglas, 2017), the journal never charges fees to either readers or authors. It is entirely put together by a team of dedicated volunteers who donate their time and expertise to producing a quality scholarly journal. Furthermore, authors keep the copyright for their work through a Creative Commons license that allows authors and readers to distribute and copy the work as long as the authors are credited, the articles are not used for commercial purposes or modified, and the BC TEAL Journal is recognised as the place of first publication. Thus, the BC TEAL Journal plays a major role in fostering the dissemination of knowledge related to English as an additional language teaching and learning in British Columbia. To date (January 2018), the articles published in the first two issues of the BC TEAL Journal have been viewed over 6,450 times. Authors benefit because they can reach a wide range of readers and have a positive impact on the field. Readers benefit because they can read the latest research and scholarship and apply that knowledge to their own teaching and learning contexts. As the journal of a provincial English language teaching association, it also plays an important role in supporting knowledge creation and dissemination throughout the region. For example, the BC TEAL association encourages members to seek knowledge through initiatives such as the Teacher Inquiry Groups and the Project Funding Award. This seed funding is an important first step to encouraging members to engage in inquiry and write up their findings for submission to the journal. As the first encounter with academic publishing for some BC TEAL members, the journal also plays an important mentorship role for novice writers as they navigate through an eight step process towards publication (Douglas, 2017). Invaluable for learning more http://ejournals.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/BCTJ/about/editorialTeam https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://www.bcteal.org/about/initiatives/teacher-inquiry-groups/ https://www.bcteal.org/tcf/awards-scholarships/project-funding-award/ Douglas ii BC TEAL Journal Volume 2 Number 1 (2017): i-ii about the genre of scholarly writing and contributing to the quality of the journal, BC TEAL members can also become involved as peer reviewers who provide feedback to writers on how to strengthen their work for publication. Local knowledge dissemination is further encouraged through the reading and sharing of the articles in the journal and the encouragement readers can provide to themselves as well as their colleagues to submit their work and benefit the wider field of English as an additional language teaching and learning. The second issue of the BC TEAL Journal contains four articles and two book reviews. The issue starts with a considered look at service-learning for English as an additional language students in British Columbia, with findings pointing to the effectiveness of service learning for English language learners. Next, portfolio-based language assessment is compared to the assumptions and principles of andragogy to assess its suitability for adult learners, particularly in the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. The article on portfolio- based language assessment is followed by an autoenthographic exploration into the conceptualization of a theoretical framework as part of a doctoral program of studies. The final article turns to students with refugee experiences studying in a Canadian high school and the potential of trauma-informed teaching practice as illustrated through the journal entries of a pre- service teacher candidate. Following this set of four articles, the journal issue concludes with two book reviews. The first book review examines García and Wei’s (2014) work on translanguaging, and the second book review looks at Medgyes’ (2017) work on non-native English speaking teachers. Already, the journal is accepting and reviewing submissions to the 2018 issue. All readers are encouraged to consider how they might contribute to the journal, either through volunteering as a peer reviewer or through submitting an article for publication. Details can be found on the journal website. References Douglas, S.R. (2017, Fall). The pathway to scholarly peer-reviewed publication. TEAL News, 10- 11. Retrieved from https://www.bcteal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TEAL-News- Fall-2017.pdf García, O. & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism, and education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Medgyes, P. (2017). The non-native teacher, 3rd Ed. Scotland, UK: Swan Communication. Suber, P. (2012). Open access. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Willinsky, J. & Alperin, J.P. (2011). The academic ethics of open access to research and scholarship. Ethics and Education, 6(3), 217-223. The BC TEAL Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Copyright rests with the authors. http://ejournals.ok.ubc.ca/index.php/BCTJ https://www.bcteal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TEAL-News-Fall-2017.pdf https://www.bcteal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TEAL-News-Fall-2017.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/