Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. and Kekale, T. (2009), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 21 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2009.08621aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 21, Issue 1

Happy New Year !

This issue is the opener of the 21st volume of Journal of Workplace Learning. We feel that the journal is improving, with lots of new, able reviewers, some of whom will soon be invited to the Editorial Advisory Board. We have many new articles – so many that we have spent much of our summer dealing with our backlog of papers. The amount of incoming papers is increasing, and – unfortunately – as we have the same number of publication slots our rejection rate will unavoidably go up. As ever, the best papers will be published. We close this issue with the promised paper on how a good article should be composed and what mistakes or shortcomings the less-good papers typically include. We hope this helps all of you to get your papers among the best ones and do keep the papers coming!

Talking of best papers, our Review Board has already short-listed one article from this opening issue, the paper by Petri Nokelainen and Pekka Ruohotie, as a possible Emerald Best Paper Award winner for 2009. This article is a very good example of how a research article should be composed. The authors also cover an interesting topic and have some interesting findings. They examine how managerial and temporary workers are more motivated for professional growth and learning than the other workers in a sample of nearly 450.

The other articles in this issue again are a mixture of different aspects of workplace learning and learning organizations research. The issue is opened by a piece of research from the UK and New Zealand on learning organizations, employee development and learning representative schemes by Bill Lee and Catherine Cassell. The next paper, by Kaija Collin, comes from the “Athens of Finland”, Jyväskylä, and in her article she reports on how engineers’ work-related identity is related to various forms of workplace learning. The last research article of the issue is another Nordic contribution by Klaus Nielsen from Aarhus, Denmark. His large-scale study of bakers’ apprentices highlights the importance of paying attention to collaborative activities among learners in order to ensure learning transfer.

Furthermore, as noted, the issue is completed with our view on how submissions to JWL should be written. We hope these remarks are helpful especially for younger authors. Science develops when new ideas conflict with old ones, and we feel there are lots of good things to come from beginner authors. Our wish is that you enjoy reading the published articles, find that writing good articles is really quite simple (“avoid writing bad ones” is our hint) and that this again motivates you to go out yourself and study how workplace learning works and send your findings to us for publication.

Sara Cervai, Tauno Kekäle