About the Journal

Focus, Scope and sections

The Nordic Journal of STEM Education is a scholarly peer-reviewed, open-access journal publishing in the broad field of educational development in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Higher Education. We invite contributions that address pedagogical, educational, and academic developments or studies. Nordic perspectives are of particular interest, but papers with wider scopes will be considered on their merits.

The Journal publishes contributions to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the STEM field, as peer-reviewed full papers. In addition, the journal publishes conference papers from conferences aiming at developing a culture of a scientific approach to teaching and learning within the STEM field. 

There is general agreement about certain key features of the process that is SoTL, they are:

1. Grounding your work in discipline-specific and pedagogic knowledge and research, normally through engagement with the literature
2. Analysing your practice through critical reflection on your teaching and the learning of your students
3. Disseminating the outcomes of your SoTL work for peer review and public scrutiny in order to further develop it.

The STEM conference (MNT-konferansen) is a bi-annual scientific conference on teaching and learning, mid-March in odd-numbered year. The aim of the STEM conference is to contribute to the development of a culture for a scientific approach to teaching and learning within the STEM field - a scholarly approach to planning, carrying out, evaluating, assessing, and reviewing teaching and learning. In other words, fostering a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) culture. To reach innovative pedagogical approaches it is seen as important to stimulate collaboration and knowledge sharing across disciplines, particularly across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but also interdisciplinary. Publications from the conference are not part of the peer-reviewed section of the journal.

We intend to provide a forum where experience, reflection and scholarly studies can be shared in support of the development of higher education. While the focus is primarily Nordic Higher Education in the STEM-fields, contributions addressing issues common to all STEM education will be considered.

The Nordic Journal of STEM Education will consider papers of 6000 words or less, not including abstract (max 300 words) and references. Longer papers may be accepted if warranted by interest and quality of the contribution. We intend to publish continuously as papers become accepted for publication, with one Volume per calendar year.

The journal accepts contributions written in English, or the Scandinavian Languages (Norwegian, Swedish or Danish).

Peer Review Process

Contributions to the journal should be clear on methodology, reflection, results and references. The contribution should be of interest to people active in technical and natural science studies in higher education. It should primarily be reflective and not descriptive: the text should not merely describe what has been done, but also why and how and what the results are. The outcome needs to be put into relevant context. The contribution should be founded in pedagogical reasoning and use and refer to current academic pedagogical literature. The peer review needs to be explicit about the extent of scientific originality and quality.

The journal uses a standard review process. After deciding whether the submitted contribution is of interest to the scope of the journal the editor sends the submitted contribution to at least two appropriate external reviewers. Based on the reviewers' recommendations, feedback is given to the authors on desirable changes. Final decision on accepting the submission is made based on how the authors have responded to the provided feedback, and is made by the editor in chief, if necessary in dialogue with other members of the editorial board. After a more or less extensive editing work, the article may be published. There are no page charges for manuscripts accepted for publication.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Authors contributing to the journal retain the copyright of their article but agree to publish their articles under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).