DIGITAL EDUCATION

DIGITAL EDUCATION (DE) is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, fully open-access academic journal. The journal is dedicated to publishing high-quality original research on how digital technologies are reshaping every dimension of education—from the nature of teaching and learning to educational governance and policy—covering all fields within the discipline of education.

The core conviction of DE is that “education is the end, technology the means.” In an era when digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and virtual reality are profoundly transforming how human knowledge is produced and disseminated, we believe that inquiry into digital education must return to education’s fundamental questions: How is technology changing the nature of learning? What does educational equity mean in digital environments? What do human-machine relationships imply for the identity and practice of educators? We reject both technological determinism and technophobia, and are committed to advancing rational, critical, and imaginative scholarly inquiry into digital education. At the same time, the journal is firmly committed to the principle of open access, enabling any reader, anywhere, with any level of institutional resources, to access all published content freely, permanently, and unconditionally.

Aims, Scope, and Core Areas

DE is rooted in the rich traditions of educational studies while actively responding to the profound transformations that digital technologies are bringing to the entire field of education. The journal’s fundamental position is that digital education research should not be reduced to superficial descriptions of tools or uncritical celebrations of new technologies, but should instead constitute a sustained, deep, and multidimensional critical examination of the relationships among technology, education, and society. We cover all fields within the discipline of education and especially welcome high-quality submissions in the following areas:

Philosophy of Education and Thinking in the Digital Age

• The nature, aims, and values of education in the digital age

• Posthumanism, philosophy of technology, and the future of education

• Epistemological challenges of AI: knowledge, understanding, and wisdom

• Humanity, agency, and self-directed learning in digital environments

• Algorithmic ethics, data ethics, and digital justice in education

• Screen culture and the ecology of attention

Learning Sciences and Educational Technology

• Cognitive processes and learning mechanisms in digital environments

• Multimedia learning and new developments in cognitive load theory

• AI-assisted personalised learning and adaptive systems

• Learning analytics, educational data mining, and learning dashboards

• Game-based learning, simulation, and immersive learning environments

• Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) in education

• Collaborative learning, knowledge building, and online learning communities

Digital Transformation of Curriculum and Instruction

• Digital literacy, computational thinking, and 21st-century competency frameworks

• Curriculum design and instructional design theory in digital environments

• Flipped classrooms, blended learning, and flexible learning models

• Online pedagogy: strategies and effects of synchronous and asynchronous teaching

• Digital content creation, open educational resources (OER), and open textbooks

• STEAM education and digital tools

• Digital assessment: formative assessment, automated feedback, and e-portfolios

Digital Dimensions of Teacher Education and Professional Development

• Teacher knowledge and teacher competence models in the digital age (e.g., TPACK and its developments)

• Technology integration in teacher education: pathways, barriers, and enablers

• Online teacher professional development communities and networked learning

• AI’s reshaping of the teacher’s role: from instructor to learning designer

• Teachers’ digital identity and professional identity

• Teacher beliefs, emotions, and resistance to change in technology integration

Sociology of Education and Digital Equity

• The three levels of the digital divide: access, use, and outcomes

• Technology, social stratification, and the reproduction or reduction of educational inequality

• Intersectional analyses of gender, race, class, and digital education

• Digital education accessibility in rural and remote areas

• Students with disabilities and inclusive digital education

• Digital citizenship and participation in networked society

Educational Leadership, Policy, and Governance

• Comparative analysis of national and regional digital education strategies

• Educational technology policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation

• Digital school leadership and organisational change

• Datafication of education: data-driven educational governance and its critique

• Platformisation of education: the edtech industry, market logic, and public education

• Quality assurance and accreditation in digital education

• Cross-national comparisons: pathways of digital transformation in different education systems

Educational Psychology and Digital Well-being

• Screen time, digital media, and child and adolescent development

• Online social interaction, peer relationships, and digital identity construction

• Cyberbullying, digital stress, and mental health

• Motivation, self-regulation, and academic procrastination in digital environments

• Gaming addiction, smartphone dependency, and digital disconnection

• Digital mindfulness and digital health education

Early Childhood Education and Digital Media

• Risks and opportunities of screen use by young children

• Digital play and early learning

• The home digital environment and parent-child interaction

• Technology integration in early childhood education: principles and boundaries

• Children’s digital rights and protection

Digital Transformation of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning

• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and open education

• Micro-credentials, digital badges, and alternative credentials

• Digital learning spaces: from smart classrooms to virtual campuses

• Unbundling and restructuring higher education: the platformisation of edtech

• Scholarly publishing, open science, and academic communication in the digital age

• Digitalisation of workplace learning and continuing professional education

• Digital ecosystems for lifelong learning: micro-learning, just-in-time learning, and the learning society

Informal Learning and Digital Culture

• Social media, content creation, and informal learning among young people

• Online communities, peer culture, and interest-driven learning

• Digital educational innovations in museums, libraries, and cultural heritage institutions

• Citizen science, the maker movement, and public digital education

• Intergenerational digital learning and ageing societies

Emerging Technologies and the Future of Education

• Educational applications and ethical reflections on generative AI (e.g., large language models)

• Blockchain, decentralisation, and the future of educational credentials

• Brain-computer interfaces, neuroscience, and the boundaries of learning

• The metaverse, digital twins, and the spatial reshaping of education

• The potential impact of quantum computing on education

Interdisciplinary Dialogue
DE consistently welcomes boundary-crossing scholarship from computer science, cognitive science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, communication studies, information science, design studies, anthropology, linguistics, and related fields, provided it carries a clear connection to digital education.

Why Choose DE?

• Focusing on education’s fundamental questions in the digital age: In an era of incessant technological hype, DE offers an academic home for research that prioritises educational value over technological novelty, that poses deep questions rather than merely offering tool descriptions.

• Covering all fields within the discipline of education: Whether your concern is young children’s use of digital media, blended teaching in K-12, the platformisation of higher education, or digital ecosystems for lifelong learning, DE welcomes your research so long as it pertains to the profound impact of digital technologies on education.

• Global reach, permanent free access: As a Diamond OA journal, your research is immediately available to readers worldwide with no economic barriers. From edtech labs in developed countries to village school teachers in developing regions, anyone can freely access and use your findings.

• No financial burden: Regardless of institutional resources, all authors may submit free of charge. For papers that are recognised through peer review as being of exceptional scholarly quality—demonstrating outstanding originality, rigour, and academic contribution—DE will waive all publication fees or Article Processing Charges entirely. For other accepted papers, we maintain a minimal fee structure far below industry standards, solely to sustain the journal’s operations. We are particularly mindful of digital education researchers from under-resourced regions and the Global South, and through our flexible fee and waiver policies are committed to providing them with equal opportunities for international publication.

• Rigorous and efficient review: A mature double-anonymous review system with professional, constructive feedback helps strengthen your scholarly work. Our reviewers attend both to technical rigour and to a study’s educational significance and social value.

• Inclusive of multiple disciplines and diverse methods: DE welcomes experimental, quasi-experimental, design-based, action research, survey research, mixed-methods, case study, ethnographic, discourse analysis, computational social science, and philosophical inquiry approaches—indeed, any robust paradigm—provided the work is rigorous and insightful.

• Open copyright and social impact: The CC BY 4.0 licence ensures that your research can be freely used in classroom teaching, teacher training, curriculum development, and policy formulation, maximising the real-world social value of your academic work.

DIGITAL EDUCATION warmly invites digital education researchers across the globe, scholars across all fields of education, educational technology developers, education policy-makers, and all thinkers and practitioners concerned with the future of education in the digital age to join us in building an academic commons that puts education first, treats technology as a means, pursues depth, respects plurality, and keeps its borders open. Whether as author, reviewer, or reader, your participation is an essential part of this community.

Hengbai Academic Bookseller & Publishing LLC

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Always Open for Submissions
We accept submissions year-round with no deadline restrictions. Work at your own pace and submit when your research is ready—no cutoff date applies.

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Peer‑Review
All manuscripts undergo a robust peer‑review process to ensure they meet rigorous standards of scientific validity, methodological soundness, and significance to the research community.

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Online First
Accepted articles are published online immediately upon acceptance, without waiting for issue compilation. This ensures your findings reach the scientific community as rapidly as possible.

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Publishing Models

Open Access
Your work will be permanently available online, free to download, share, and read, maximizing academic impact and global visibility.

Non‑Open Access (Subscription)
We offer a traditional subscription‑based pathway that protects copyright and accommodates commercial reuse, suitable for authors with specific publication policy requirements.

Our Mission: Preserving and Disseminating Scholarly Knowledge

We provide a comprehensive digital platform dedicated to the preservation and open dissemination of academic research. Our services include:

• Repository for Diverse Scholarly Materials – We accept and host a wide range of academic content, including research papers, manuscripts, printed publications, and electronic versions of journals. This includes materials from discontinued journals, lost or rare print editions, sole surviving copies, and publications from defunct presses—ensuring that valuable scholarly heritage is not lost to time.

• Preprint Repository Across All Disciplines – Researchers are welcome to submit and publish preprints covering all fields of study, including natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary research. Submissions are accepted in multiple languages: English, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and other languages.

• Free and Open Access – Submission, publication, and viewing of preprints are completely free of charge. All content is made publicly available online at no cost to readers.

• Reusable Under Author‑Defined Terms – To maximize the reach and impact of scholarly work, users may reuse, reproduce, or redistribute content for public purposes, subject to the terms specified by the author. This flexible framework encourages broader dissemination and collaboration across the global research community.

Our Community

We partner with like-minded individuals and organizations to develop open infrastructure that enables the publication of open-access works, the sharing of our academic journals through open platforms and services, and the global promotion of our vision and core values. Below is a selection of our partner organizations.