Donald Joyce, UNITEC, New Zealand
djoyce@unitec.ac.nz
 

Joyce, D. (2006, July), Publishing through NACCQ. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology Vol. 4, Issue 1. ISSN 1176-4120. Retrieved from

When NACCQ (The New Zealand National Advisory Committee on Computing Qualifications) member institutions were surveyed 18 months ago about NACCQ services (see the Bridgeman and Young report in this issue), they rated the annual NACCQ conference as most important, followed by JACIT (the journal), the Web site, and BACIT (the online Bulletin). The conference has been an annual event since 1988 and JACIT began publication in 1997, so BACIT, which first appeared in 2002, has rapidly come to be seen as valuable by NACCQ members. It also has a wider audience, as evidenced by BACIT articles being cited in publications by overseas authors with no affiliation to NACCQ.

This issue also contains our first book review and seven other articles covering a wide rage of topics: computing education, eLearning, email use, IT management, knowledge management, programming and user participation. The authors include staff and students of the Auckland University of Technology, the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, UNITEC New Zealand, Uppsala University and the Wellington Institute of Technology. It is a sign of the academic maturity of the NACCQ member institutions that a staff member has written a textbook for an international publisher and many students have contributed articles to BACIT and JACIT over the past ten years

The NACCQ executive has delegated the responsibility for PACIT (the NACCQ Conference proceedings), BACIT and JACIT to the NACCQ Research and Support Working Group. The working group has established guidelines to ensure that quality is maintained, while encouraging staff and students of NACCQ member institutions to publish the results of their research. Some of that research is conducted as part of degree studies and publishing it in BACIT, JACIT or PACIT makes it possible for the research results to receive a wider circulation rather than been seen by just the authors and their examiners.

At a time when many NACCQ member institutions are choosing to be part of the PBRF (Performance Based Research Funding) exercise, having three quality assured publication vehicles in the field of Applied Computing and Information Technology gives staff opportunities to add to the PBRF ‘income’ of their institutions, which would otherwise shrink quite dramatically. In many cases computing staff contribute more than their share of research outputs, so it is to be hoped that institutions will recognize the excellent return that they get from their financial support of NACCQ!

 Copyright © 2006 NACCQ. Krassie Petrova, Michael Verhaart & Donald Joyce (Eds.). An Open Access Journal, DOAJ # 11764120