In previous editorials we have mentioned the role indexing and ranking systems play in academic journals nowadays. They acknowledge the compliance of national and international standards for publication in terms of editorial processes and, in turn, have an impact on the evaluation of scholars’ and institutions’ productivity. The results of such evaluations do also count for the accreditation of pre- and postgraduate programmes as well as the accreditation of universities, among others.

Profile has worked steadily to incorporate such standards and thus, has been accepted in several ranks, as shown in Figure 1, where we depict the journal’s timeline in its inclusion in databases and indexing systems.

Figure 1 Profile’s Timeline in Databases and Indexing Systems 

It took us six years to be included in the Colombian rank and another one to be accepted in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The inclusion of Profile in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) in 2008 and in Redalyc, in 2010, together with the change in its periodicity, from annual to biannual, marked a turning point in the advancement towards higher visibility thanks to the open access policies that characterize both digital repositories. In 2016, the journal was included in the Emerging Sources Citation Index and, at the same time, submitted to Scopus for a two-year observation period. This paid off and, after a positive evaluation, the journal was included in Scopus for the first time in 2018. That achievement was an important step to become part of the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), which classified Profile in Quartile 2, in the report for the year 2019.¹

In the 2020 report of the SJR (published in May 2021), the Profile journal moved from Quartile 2 to Quartile 1 in the category of linguistics and language. Within this area the journal is now Number 229 of the 997 journals classified worldwide, Number 2 in Latin America, and Number 1 in Colombia. The fact that the journal moved up one quartile in one year tells us that it is consistently gaining a space among the most prestigious publications in the area, regionally and around the world. It also evidences the interest it has generated in the international arena and the role it is playing as a reference source for scholars in the field of education, in general, and in the areas of English language teaching, teacher education, linguistics, and language, in particular.

According to the SCImago website (https://www.scimagojr.com/aboutus.php), the SJR represents an attempt to visualize the current behaviour and dynamics of published scientific knowledge in 27 major thematic areas (which are further subdivided into 313 subject categories). The report is issued annually and classifies the titles that are part of the Scopus database according to their citational impact. Thus, the more the contents of a publication are cited by the scientific community, the higher the ranking that publication can achieve. The idea here is that those contents that are part of an active discussion are also the ones which are effectively impacting the way new knowledge is constructed.

There is no lack of controversy surrounding this kind of ranking, and two issues can be mentioned in this regard. First, data are drawn from a selected group of publications (those in the Scopus database) with the exclusion of a substantially greater number of publications outside the database. Second, the impact of a title is almost exclusively measured in received citations without consideration for any other kind of impact that is not directly determined by citations. For instance, in our field, practitioners may resort to the contents of a publication to shape their daily practice or use those contents for class activities, among other alternatives. This may take place in English language classrooms or in teacher education programmes. In the former, the publication can have an impact on the incorporation of new teaching practices. The latter can embrace the examination of articles to update teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, the familiarization with new trends or further development of given issues, or a means to foster research and academic writing.

Despite the controversy behind metrics that are too quantitatively oriented, the SJR can be used as an additional tool to assess the characteristics of a scientific publication and thus allow editorial teams to take more informed editorial decisions (in terms, for instance, of international collaboration or relevant topics) or authors to decide which venues are more attuned to the findings in their studies (the report offers a series of similar publications which can be contrasted). In brief, as in many other cases, it is the good use we give to such information that helps strengthen any publication endeavour.

In this issue, we are very pleased to share with you 17 articles. Fourteen correspond to the section Issues from Teacher Researchers, one to the section Issues from Novice Teacher- Researchers and two to the section Issues Based on Reflections and Innovations. The contributions come from six countries, Colombia with 10 articles, Mexico with three articles, and Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Iran with one article each.

The topics discussed by researchers in the current issue concern English language teaching, foreign language teacher education and teacher professional development, the development of skills from different perspectives and actors, as well as English in content areas, identities, remote teaching, emotional intelligence and tutoring as the main topics. These topics occur at different levels: in elementary education, in secondary education, but mainly at the tertiary level with undergraduate preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners.

Juanita Argudo, from Universidad de Cuenca (Ecuador), opens the first section with an article dealing with expressive writing to relieve academic stress at university level. The paper sheds light on the need to study the impact of academic stress on university students and looks for different strategies that can alleviate it. Expressive writing has a positive effect on helping to ease academic stress and overcome some difficulties caused by this issue. This article is followed by a paper dealing with the gains and challenges experienced by an interdisciplinary group of EFL students who participated in the implementation of a critical reading unit taught within a reading comprehension course at a university in Medellín, Colombia. The article is a joint effort between Juan David Castaño-Roldán, from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellín, and Doris Correa, representing the Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia). The authors found that students experienced several gains but also had some challenges related to aligning with the author’s position, seeing positionality in factual texts, and taking middle positions. The authors concluded that there are some specific areas in which these students need additional support. The next article is a contribution from Patricia Carabelli, professor at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay. The paper deals with the hypothesis that the greater the vocabulary that dentistry students possess, the better they will be able to understand written dentistry texts. The results reveal that not only does a good vocabulary bank contribute to the understanding of an academic text but that multiple reading comprehension skills are involved in the process.

The fourth article of this section is a contribution from Albedro Cadena-Aguilar and Claudia Patricia Álvarez-Ayure from the Universidad de La Sabana (Colombia). The researchers wanted to improve comprehensibility in undergraduate EFL students via self- and peer-assessment of student-generated podcasts with special attention to the use of suprasegmentals. Results unveiled the exhibition of self-regulated behaviours and gains in comprehensibility. This study highlights the importance of helping learners look critically and reflectively at their own oral production and of incorporating training in suprasegmentals within EFL courses to help learners communicate more effectively within a globalised context. Josefina Quintero and Diana Yurany Álvarez from the Universidad de Caldas (Colombia) and Andrea Arcila from the Centro Colombo Americano in Manizales (Colombia), contributed the next article. It deals with the integration of the teaching of English and the natural sciences through cross-disciplinary lessons that followed the principles of content-based instruction. Results revealed that the cross-disciplinary lessons were appropriate and useful to connect the foreign language learning with other school subjects. The topic of the next paper is the fostering of citizenship and English language competences in teenagers through task-based instruction by Yanilis Romero and Adriana Pérez from the Universidad del Norte (Colombia). This paper proposes the design of a unit with social components as the main meaningful task for the teaching of the English language and for fostering citizenship competencies for A2 level learners. Findings report that tasks might foster English language use if those are designed taking into account students’ context and interests and if they are authentic.

The following article is a contribution from Catalina Juárez-Díaz, who is a teacher at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico), and Moisés Perales from the Universidad de Quintana Roo (Mexico). They discuss a topic that has changed the way we do things in the present: remote teaching from the perspective of English language teaching faculty and preservice EFL teachers. Both groups reported negative feelings, which were connected with some faculty’s focus on delivering content without interaction and with insufficient Internet access. Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina, Karen Vanessa Varela, and Katherine García from the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (Colombia) in the next article developed a study in which they discuss the relationship between racial identity and language learning. This article addresses the connection in an attempt to shed light specifically on English language learning and teaching. The results relate language learners’ racial experiences as a crucial factor in the configuration of their identity as well as the economic, social, and cultural factors involved. Iranian researchers Minoo Alemi, Atefeh Rezanejad, and Bijan Marefat, from the Islamic Azad University and the Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran, Iran, explored the reasons behind academic failure among Iranian students of the teaching of EFL. Results indicated that four main factors led to the academic failure of the students, namely, (a) the student, (b) the professor, (c) the university, and (d) the source materials. As an end product, a number of guidelines to prevent academic failure in this context are presented.

Janeth Sanchez-Aguilar from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico) studied tutors’ and tutees’ behaviours, attitudes, and perspectives regarding EFL peer tutoring in higher education in Mexico. Results indicate that the participants were positive about the experience, the sessions, their peers, and the influence in their learning. Edgar Lucero and Andrea Margarita Cortés-Ibañez from the Universidad de La Salle (Colombia) researched the pedagogical practicum in an ELT undergraduate program. The pedagogical practicum contains several academic, professional, and experiential aspects that configure this space with established (pre-)requisites, tasks, and roles for student-teachers; these aspects in turn help these individuals in their construction with particular manners of must-be and must-do.

A second article on identity is presented now. It is connected to teacher identity and language pedagogy from the perspective of a teacher educator’s experience. The researcher Diego Ubaque-Casallas from the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (Colombia) locates the intersections between English language pedagogy and the identities of English language teachers. Findings suggest that although there are still colonial roots that repress other ways of being and doing, English language pedagogy goes beyond the instrumental sense of teaching. In this way, English language pedagogy is about transformation as it is never static because it is an extension of identity. In order of appearance now we count on our Chilean colleagues Maritza Rosas-Maldonado and Macarena Durán-Castro, from Universidad Andres Bello, and Annjeanette Martin from Universidad de los Andes, in Santiago, Chile, who reveal the socio-emotional influence of past teachers on novice English teachers’ beliefs. They assert that teachers’ past learning experiences, also referred to as “apprenticeship of observation,” can affect their beliefs and, in turn, their teaching practice. Results showed that the teachers’ apprenticeship of observation influenced their socio-emotional and affective views on teaching with a main concern on teacher-student relationships.

Our last article from this section, comes from Mexico. Perla Villegas-Torres and M. Martha Lengeling from the Universidad de Guanajuato (Mexico) approach teaching as a complex emotional experience as our previous contributors have also commented on. This article presents the study of a Mexican English teacher and examines the professional-developmental stages based on Huberman’s (1993) career cycle model. The article shows the realities a teacher faces by exploring the concepts of emotions, identity, socialization, and agency. It questions the belief that teachers achieve expertise through accumulating years of practice.

Our Section 2, Issues from Novice Teacher-Researchers, includes one article. In it, Sara Bata and Cristal Castro from the Universidad de Pamplona (Colombia) examine how a group of six elementary students that study EFL manage their emotional intelligence while taking their speaking exams. The results provide further insight into the students’ emotional intelligence and the coping mechanisms/strategies used to manage their emotional intelligence while taking two different speaking exams.

Our issue closes with the section Issues Based on Reflections and Innovations. In this opportunity we welcome two articles from two different contexts in Colombia. In the first article Frank Giraldo from the Universidad de Caldas (Colombia) presents a review of the literature on the topic of language assessment literacy and teachers’ professional development. The author analysed the features and impacts of 14 programmes which promoted teachers’ language assessment literacy. Findings suggest that the programmes were geared towards practical tasks in which teachers used theory critically. Also, the studies show that teachers expanded their conception of language assessment, became aware of how to design professional instruments, and considered wider constructs for assessment. Finally, we rest on the article provided by Martha Garcia-Chamorro and Nayibe Rosado-Mendinueta from Universidad del Atlántico and Universidad del Norte (Colombia). The authors argue that current conceptualizations of foreign language teacher education fail to represent the complexity of teacher education. They suggest that efforts in this direction may better prepare prospective English teachers to face challenging realities in educational settings and will eventually improve students’ learning.

As you see, the contents in this issue include a series of diverse and complex topics, and we hope the selection of articles presented here will provide readers with valuable insights into some relevant aspects related to the teaching and learning of English. Thank you for all your support!