




































 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 

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 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. 

 

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