Two respondents had suggestions they thought would increase their satisfaction with JCSE Online & Annual. One person suggested more diverse-teaching oriented material and the other thought increased frequency of publication would help.

When examining questions that have these possibilities, I would expect that if the satisfied customers do not constitute a solid majority, there is a problem. That majority might need to approach 2/3 to 3/4 of the respondents on "satisfaction" items. Using that benchmark, it appears that readers are generally satisfied with the journal but we clearly need to work on frequency and regularity of publication.

3 Form and Frequency

The second set of questions asked more specifically about the form (online or print), size (articles per issue), and frequency (issues per academic year) of the journal. The questions had unique responses.

When asked, "Do you prefer online publication, print publication, or a combination of the two?" the responses were:

• Both: 55%
• Print only: 18%
• Online only: 9%

Nine percent did not respond.

Responses to, "How important is a printed version of the journal?" were:

• Very important: 55%
• Somewhat important: 18%
• Neutral: 18%

Nine percent did not respond.

An online publication need not be of a particular size. We wondered what readers might prefer on a continuum of one article per issue, some indefinite quantity called "many", or something in between these two end points of a continuum. The responses were:

• One at a time: 36%
• Many at once: 9%
• Something in between: 55%

We also asked about the regularity of publication, i.e., should we try to maintain a regular schedule or publish material as it became available. The responses in this case were:

• Regularly: 64%
• As available: 36%

Finally, we asked how often we should attempt to publish an issue. We try to span the school year with our journal so the maximum number of issues is likely to be nine (September to May). At the other extreme might be one issue per year with , two, three, or four issues seeming reasonable alternatives in between. As one might expect most choices were selected by someone:

• One: 9%
• Two: 9%
• Four: 27%
• Monthly/nine: 36%

It was suggested that we not try to publish more often than monthly.

Results here suggest that we should maintain the use of online issues with an annual print compendium. Responses about frequency suggest we should try to be more frequent but probably try to publish at least a couple items in each issue. As noted above, regularity is important to the readers.

4 Content

The next set of items related to the nature of the content of the journal. We have gone from a newsletter format to a peer-reviewed journal to a relatively formal journal with mostly peer-reviewed articles. At all times, the nature of the journal was largely the choice of the editor (with, with some impact from the submissions received). We were hoping to gain some insight into what content and style our members would prefer in the future.

The first question addressed the "formalness" of the articles we seek to publish. We might wish to publish academic, often research-oriented publications that would often come from writers who teach at the college level. On the other hand we might look for more informal articles that people at all levels might write. The responses here were:

• Formal: 9%
• Informal: 9%
• Both: 82%

Academic journals generally require peer review (refereeing) of the article they publish. We wanted to see how important our readers felt refereed articles were to our journal. First we asked about the quantity of peer-reviewed articles that should be included. The responses were:

• All: 9%
• Most: 27%
• Some: 55%
• None: 9%

Approaching the same topic from a slightly different angle, we also asked about the importance of including peer-reviewed or refereed articles. The responses were:

• Very important: 36%
• Somewhat important: 36%
• Neutral: 9%
• Totally unimportant: 18%

We have been republishing articles from other venues relatively often during the last several years. This has been mostly due to not having enough new articles to fill the issues. We wondered if that mattered to the readers and asked about the importance of publishing only original articles. The responses for this question were:

• Very important: 18%
• Somewhat important: 18%
• Neutral: 45%
• Totally unimportant: 18%

Next we asked about the kinds of articles readers would like to see, suggesting a variety of possibilities. The choices offered and the percentages of respondents who thought each should be included are:

• CS Ed research: 100%
• Informal teaching discussions/examples: 91%
• Reviews of books, applications, programming environments, etc.: 82%
• Computing tutorials (e.g., how encryption works): 73%
• Scholarly pedagogical articles: 64%
• AP CS-related articles: 64%
• Editorials and opinion pieces: 55%
• Letters to the editor: 27%

Clearly we should continue publishing refereed academic articles on computer science education. However, we should also be accepting of much other content that relates to teaching computing. Indeed, we probably should seek out such material.

5 Importance of JCSE

Finally, we asked about the importance of the journal in relation to the other work currently done by SIGCS. Respondents rating of how important an element of SIGCS’s work the journal is were:

• Very important: 55%
• Somewhat important 27%
• Neutral: 18%

This last item was very gratifying. Over 80% of the readers think the journal is an important part of SIGCS's work. No one indicated it is unimportant.

6 Summary

While the results cannot be assumed to represent all readers, I believe we can validly reach several conclusions. We should

• continue to publish JCSE Online and the JCSE Annual
• publish more often
• work much harder to adhere to schedule
• broaden the content of the journal

In a companion piece in this issue, I discuss my vision for the journal in the near future. That vision includes doing all the above as well as expanding level of coverage from high school to most of K-12.