September 2022

This month, the AERA journals platform was redesigned with a new look and added features. With SAGE Publications carefully researching how authors and researchers use SAGE Journals, the redesign introduces evidence-based improvements to the journals’ websites as well as the latest technology advances from Atypon, the journal platform provider. The new design aims to improve overall the user experience and enhance accessibility.

In addition to having a cleaner layout with a brighter color palette, users will immediately notice that the content is now front and center immediately below the “Browse by” heading. Below this header readers can browse the most recent articles, most read (showing most-read articles over the last 6 months), and most cited (showing most-cited articles published in the last 3 years). The most-cited tab will be updated weekly using data sourced exclusively from CrossRef, a nonprofit membership organization that makes research objects easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse.

The "Browse by" section also includes a “Trending” area, which shows the top five articles with the highest Altmetric scores from the most recent 3 months. Altmetric is an increasingly important alternative metric in scholarly publishing, measuring online mentions of academic journal articles across social media, news outlets, blogs, and reference sites. The score is a helpful measure of online engagement and visibility but is not directly linked to citations or usage.

AERA encourages its readers to explore the updated journal sites to experience the above new features as well as improved article features such as a new e-reader interface, a “You Might be Interested In” section, and the two new navigation menus.