Academic journals are central to a discipline’s professionalism and are the principal means of communication. The purpose of this symposium is explore the nature academic journals, their purposes and what they reveal about the field from the perspective of nine editors whose primary mission is to cover the broad field of adult education. Introduction Much can be learned about a field of study through its research accomplishments, policy orientations, and reflections on practice that are regularly disseminated in scholarly journals, books, and other manuscripts. Academic publications not only represent the knowledge base of a given discipline, but as well reflect its history, trends, and research norms. They also play a role in establishing scholarly credentials and maintaining recognition by providing a social structure of communication between scholars and others with professional expertise. (Brockett, 1991; McGinty, 1999). This is particularly crucial for a relatively new field like adult education. How adult education practitioners and scholars talk to each other through their journals and other publications, although necessarily partial and subjective, both reflects and constitutes the field and helps shape its future development. In a field that so values self-reflection, it is perhaps not too surprising that the practice of considering the scholarly publications in adult education has existed for some time (e.g., Dickinson & Rusnell, 1971; Hayes, 1992; Taylor, 2001). Over the last 30 years there have been several analyses of journal publication patterns relating to the gender, status and institutional affiliation of authors, the length of articles, their subject, methodological orientation and receptivity to feminist and international issues. As laudable as these efforts are, however, most analyses have focused on one publication—Adult Education Quarterly—to the comparative exclusion of other journals in the field. Furthermore, one voice that is rarely heard (at least publicly) in such discussions is that of the journal editor—the human face behind the metaphorical gate. Academic journals are central to a discipline’s professionalism and a principal means of communicating knowledge among scholars. Their editors, therefore, play a crucial role in any process of legitimization and control (Wellington & Nixon, 2005). What perspectives on adult education do different editors provide through the window of their journal? What might they say about the nature of an academic journal itself, its ends and purposes, epistemological emphases, and academic norms? How do academic journals contribute to or downplay particular worldviews of adult education? What are editors’ motivations and interests? What tensions and contradictions exist in their work? In an effort to address such questions, this symposium brings together several journal editors from the international field of adult education to subject this important aspect of academic work to greater scrutiny. The journals represented in this symposium are those whose primary mission is to cover the broad field of adult education: the Studies in the Education of Adults, Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, Convergence, Adult Learning, International Journal of Lifelong Education, Canadian Journal of the Study of Adult Education, Adult Education Quarterly, and Studies in Continuing Education. Studies in the Education of Adults – Miriam Zukas, Editor At the back of each edition, the journal sets out its stall: to acknowledge and promote the study of the education of adults as a field of study in its own right; to recognize the importance of theory in academic debate and encourage its development; to support innovative research which challenges conventional wisdom; to ensure a diversity of voices and paradigms to express the variety in the field as a whole; and to provide a forum for critical debate. But these are not just warm words: the Editorial Board, who meet regularly, debate what these aims mean; the International Advisory Group (IAG) for the journal challenges the Editor and Board about these aims; authors are asked to assess whether or not they meet the aims before submitting to the journal, and encouraged to contact the Editor early in the process; reviewers are encouraged to bear these aims in mind when reviewing papers; and regular editorials return repeatedly to discuss them. I tend to use the Editorial as a way of talking through some of these issues, although I am not always sure anyone’s listening. In other words, as Editor, I try to develop a shared understanding of the journal’s scope and purpose, so that each time I open a newlyarrived manuscript and decide whether or not to send it out for review, I do so mid-conversation, as it were. This is not to suggest that members of the Editorial Board and I are always in agreement with each other, with authors or even with reviewers: but by publishing certain papers and not others, we are acutely aware that not only do we legitimate the claim that there is a field of study, but we also co-construct that field of study. We do this in agreed ways. For example, although a journal likes Studies cannot deny its British identity, for a while now, the IAG and the Board have been keen to internationalize the content of the journal because we see, as part of our role, the promotion of different philosophical and research traditions and the encouragement of intellectual discourse across those traditions. An analysis by IAG members a couple of years ago suggested that, although we were making some progress, as one member put it, ‘the journal seemed to represent the UK and the parts of the empire that became dominated by people from the UK and its traditions, educational systems and perspectives.’ (Zukas, 2004, p 161). There are challenges in working with and supporting contributions from colleagues from, for example, Europe, not least because regular reviewers may be confronted with discourses and ideas with which they are not familiar and could be dismissive. But it works both ways. In seeking to push the boundaries we may reject excellent papers about adult education but, being good educators, we attempt to do so constructively, rather than dismissively. This process may act against authors’ best interests: clear rejections with helpful suggestions from reviewers on how to improve the paper can result in resubmission, with all the work that entails. Sometimes I wish we were less educational and more brutal at the start! Journal of Adult and Continuing Education Mike Osborne, Editor The challenge for me over the last few years has been to turn what was originally a rather parochial practice-orientated Scottish journal into one which still reflects its origins, but which draws upon contributors around the globe offering policy, practice and research perspectives. I am strongly motivated to provide a voice for those who can offer scholarly contributions from a range of perspectives, and particularly from those who are under-represented in some mainstream publications. I have therefore strongly encouraged contributions from non-OECD countries, particularly in Africa, and whilst not compromising in quality have been willing to work with authors not experienced in the conventions of the journal. Similarly there has been an effort to engage with potential authors from the non-university sectors of education, particularly from vocational education. Adult education is not defined tightly by JACE and a lot of what we publish tends to be on the edge of the interests of other sectors. The focus is best described as post-compulsory, encompassing the formal, the non-formal, and the informal. It would be quite possible to consider publishing an article about the informal continuing education of adolescents who had left compulsory schooling at age 12. I have also been keen to seek research articles that are strong both quantitatively and qualitatively, and give equal prominence to each approach when I can, and encourage multiple methods. Whilst encouraging pieces that are reflections on policy, this does occasionally lead to tensions, since this appears to be interpreted by some authors as an invitation to contribute an extended essay that merely summarises a literature and little more. The encouragement that I have given to authors from non-English speaking backgrounds has created tensions is as much as I receive a number of pieces that would require extensive editing for language, and I have to balance how much of this work can be done at an editorial level against the objective of extending our coverage. Like Studies in the Education of Adults, it’s not possible to ignore our British origins, but perhaps to an extent like all journals not within the ‘mainstream’ of Education we are ignored by some of the British. Informal league tables as they pertain to that (principally though not totally) British obsession with research quality as manifested by outlets cited in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which amongst other things assesses the quality of individuals’ contributions, and then aggregates these to an overall discipline score, which in turn has a huge impact on government funding. None of the journals represented here would get into the top 20 using citation criteria derived from the RAE and despite the assertion that it is quality not location that determines scoring in the exercise, I suspect few believe this. This is, however, a little partial on my part since University Continuing Education (UCE) did itself few favours in the exercise of 1992 when clearly many submissions form the UCE community were even to the most partial of eyes were at best ill-judged and at worst poor. This may have coloured the view of generic journals to submissions from UCE, and the wider educational community to both research in UCE/Adult Education and the journals within that tradition. Yet at the same time with the emerging scholars