Strengthening Education Research Publications Through Open, Principled, and Pragmatic Experimentation: AERA Open Editors’ Vision Statement 2025–2027

This editorial presents our vision for AERA Open, highlighting open access, innovation, and responsiveness to current challenges in education research. As AERA Open’s new editors, we critique rigid publishing standards, indirect metric-driven evaluations, and political threats to academic freedom. In response, we propose reforms such as diverse article formats, a new AERA ReOpened series, and increased engagement with global and multilingual scholarship, among other initiatives. We advocate for more inclusive, timely, and transparent research dissemination, including new abstract formats to extend the accessibility of AERA Open articles even further. As such, we, as AERA Open’s new editors, aspire to offer a dynamic space for scholarly exchange that fosters rigorous, trustworthy, usable, and transformative research to tackle complex education issues and support a more equitable future.