Pablo Moreno-Ger’s blog

For those outside the Computer Science publications arena, Lecture Notes in Computer Science was initially a journal/book series, with a relatively high relevance in the field (JCR indexed, Computer Science Schools would systematically buy every issue, etc.). Around 2004-2005, the series transitioned to a higher rythm of publications. It is now publishing hundreds of volumes per year, with proceedings different conferences on the field.

In terms of evaluating research, this has meant a descent in its perceived prestige in the field. In 2006 it was removed from the JCR listings. In any case, even if it had remained, its indexing would be so low that it wouldn’t be worth it (so many articles cannot get enough references).

Maybe as a reaction to this, or maybe simply to diversify Springer’s product range, LNCS is now launching the so-called journal sub-lines. These are series of LNCS volumes that have a fixed editorial board.

One of these sublines is of special interest for my area: Transactions on Edutainment. I am very glad to say that we were invited to publish a paper on the first volume. After our success in the GDTW2007 conference, where we received the “Best Paper Award”, we were told to submit an extended version for that first volume. It has now been published and the final draft is available at the
<e-UCM> website. This is the complete reference:

Pablo Moreno-Ger, Carl Blesius, Paul Currier, José Luis Sierra, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón: Online Learning and Clinical Procedures: Rapid Development and Effective Deployment of Game-Like Interactive Simulations. Transactions on Edutainment I, LNCS 5080, pp. 288–304. 2008.

The question that now remains open is what will happen in the future to these series. Will they gather the prestige of a journal? Maybe even enter the JCR as an independent series? Time will tell, but I think game-based learning (or Edutainment) deserves its own dedicated JCR-level journal.