UNC Chapel Hill-Based Open Access Journal Launches on Partnership for Open Publishing (POP)  

UNC Press is pleased to announce the launch of Teaching Educational Research Methods (TERM), a new open-access interdisciplinary journal based at UNC-Chapel Hill and hosted in partnership with the UNC-Chapel Hill University Library. TERM’s inaugural special issue, titled Why Teaching (and Learning) Educational Research Matters, was published on April 2, 2026, as part of the Partnership for Open Publishing (POP), a publishing model, set of tools, and service offering developed by UNC Press to advance open-access scholarship across the statewide UNC System. POP grows out of the Press’s wide-ranging strategy to further open-access publishing. TERM will be POP’s first newly launched journal. POP also supports previously established open-access journals published through departments and libraries of North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina Asheville, University of North Carolina Greensboro, and University of North Carolina Wilmington. You can view all the journals hosted by POP here. 

To celebrate the launch of TERM, POP interviewed the journal’s four founding editors: Stephanie Anne Shelton, Kelly W. Guyotte, Stefanie A. Wind, and Wenchao Ma.  

What is TERM about?   

Teaching Educational Research Methods (TERM) is an open-access interdisciplinary journal that is focused on the importance of quality teaching, teaching preparation, and teaching practices in equipping ethical and effective educational researchers across mixed-methods, qualitative, quantitative, measurement, and evaluation classrooms.   

Why did you launch TERM?   

We are all research methodologists who teach educational research methods courses. We have individually and collectively noted that despite extensive engagements with course offerings on educational research methodologies, there has been very little scholarly emphasis on the actual teaching of research methods. Instead, courses and workshops emphasize applications of research, while the instructors—who have been trained in doing educational research—must learn in-the-moment and on-the-fly how to teach others. Ignoring pedagogies practiced within these commonly required and pervasive courses has wide-ranging interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary implications for not only how research methods are taught, but also for how they are learned and practiced by students and other novice scholars. Ignoring pedagogy also impacts the ways in which research approaches are linked to everyday needs and problems. This journal seeks to address this enormous and significant gap.  

What is your long-term vision for TERM?   

This journal is the realization of a need and resource that we and so many others have identified and wished for, and we are hopeful that TERM will:

1) Provoke new conversations—from both instructors’ and students’ perspectives—on innovative and effective teaching practices in/of research methods

2) Create communities of pedagogical collaboration and creativity in research methods

3) Generate new scholarship centering the importance of pedagogical praxes within research methods    

How can folks submit to TERM?    

Potential authors can review the journal’s aims and scopes and access our submission portal on TERM’s website.

Who are the folks behind TERM? 

Stephanie Anne Shelton, Kelly W. Guyotte, Stefanie A. Wind, and Wenchao Ma will serve as the editors of TERM. You can view the entire editorial board here.  

Stephanie Anne Shelton is the Donald Tarbet Faculty Scholar in Education and Associate Professor of Qualitative Research Methodology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an Editor of both the journal Teaching Educational Research Methods and Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education. In addition to 7 books, Dr. Shelton has peer-reviewed publications in outlets such as the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, International Review of Qualitative Research, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research Journal, and Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methods. She is the 2020 recipient of the AERA Division D Early Career Award in Measurement and Research Methodology, 2021 NCTE LGBTQ+ Advocacy and Leadership Award, 2022 American Library Association’s Choice Book Award, 2023 NCTE Janet Emig Award for Exemplary Scholarship, 2026 University of Georgia Early Career Researcher Award, and a University of Michigan National Center for Institutional Diversity Network Scholar. Her scholarship has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, American Educational Research Association, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, and the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance.   

Kelly W. Guyotte is Associate Professor of Qualitative Research at the University of Alabama where she also serves as Director of Faculty Development for the College of Education. Her research interests include issues of gender and equity in higher education, and recent studies have explored the experiences of academic mothers in the pregnancy to postpartum periods, as well as the collisions of home and work during COVID-19. Her methodological interests conceptualize and elevate artful and narrative inquiry practices, qualitative pedagogies, and mentoring. Dr. Guyotte has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, Educational Researcher, Gender and Education, and Critical Studies in Education. In addition to articles and book chapters, she is co-editor of three books including Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis Creative Engagements with Qualitative Data (Routledge) and Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research: Collaborating and Inquiring Together (Routledge).  

Stefanie A. Wind is Professor of Educational Measurement at the University of Alabama, where she teaches graduate courses in research methodology, measurement and psychometrics, and statistics. Her research explores methodological issues in educational measurement, focusing on rater-mediated assessments, rating scales, latent trait models (i.e., Rasch models and item response theory models), and nonparametric item response theory, as well as applications of these methods to substantive areas. Her collaborative research activities include developing and evaluating scales to measure constructs related to affective variables (e.g., empathy, perceptions of instructional quality, perceptions of power dynamics), student achievement in a variety of domains (e.g., science, mathematics, writing), among others. Dr. Wind has published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed methodological and applied journals. She has authored or co-authored four books related to measurement theory. She has received awards for her research, including the Alicia Cascallar Early Career Scholar Award from the National Council on Measurement in Education, the Exemplary Paper Award from the Classroom Observation SIG of AERA (2017), and the Georg William Rasch Early Career Scholar award from the Rasch SIG of AERA (2015). She served as Chair of the Rasch SIG from 2023–2025.  

Wenchao Ma is Associate Professor and the American Guidance Service Inc. and John P. Yackel Professor in Educational Assessment and Measurement at The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research centers on the development of innovative psychometric methods to enhance measurement practices in education and psychology, with a particular focus on item response theory and cognitive diagnosis modeling. Dr. Ma’s work has been recognized by several national awards, including the 2021 Jason Millman Promising Measurement Scholar Award and the 2017 Bradley Hanson Award for Contributions to Educational Measurement, both presented by the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), as well as the 2018 Outstanding Dissertation Award from AERA Division D (Measurement & Research Methodologies). His scholarship has been funded by the American Educational Research Association, National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance.    

Who supports TERM? 

TERM is thankful for the support it has received, monetary and otherwise, from the University of Alabama College of Education, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Education & Human Development, both the School of Education and the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Press. TERM is part of the Partnership for Open Publishing (POP) and is hosted by UNC Press in partnership with the UNC-Chapel Hill Library. 

The UNC-Chapel Hill Library is proud to support TERM as part of its commitment to sustainable scholarship and publishing innovation. Alongside UNC Press and the Partnership for Open Publishing, the Library supports journals like TERM with publishing infrastructure, guidance on scholarly publishing practices, and an emphasis on scholar-led, sustainable open-access publishing. 

If you are a UNC System librarian interested in learning more about POP, please contact Stacy Lavin, Journals Manager, stacy.lavin@uncpress.org or Caroline Mort, OA Journals Managing Editor, cmort@unc.edu for more information.