Aims & Scope

Ⅰ. Journal Overview

Korean Journal of Research in Music Education (KJRME) is the very first official and most prestigious academic journal in music education in Korea. Korean Music Education Society (“KMES“), founded in 1956 as the only Korean music education institution at that time, published it first publication in 1973.

For more than six decades, KJRME, through its academic research, has been the pioneer and accelerator in developing music education in Korea. Keeping the tradition for more than six decades, KMES and KJRME have played pivotal role in the history of music education in Korea. In a nutshell, KJRME’s accumulated experience and knowledge have led Korea’s music education to appear to the global arena. The existence of KJRME has become the rich nourishment of K-wave such as K-Pop, K-classic and K-traditional music in the global community. Furthermore, KJRME was able to lay firm grounds for multicultural and multifaceted subjects in the music education in Korea. KJRME also expanded its domain by allowing scholars with diverse backgrounds to submit their research to this journal. Taking these into account, KJRME was awarded as an “outstanding academic journal" in the music field of arts and humanities division by the National Research Foundation of Korea. In addition, in 2022, KJRME became the first domestic academic journal in the field of music and music education to be indexed in the international academic database SCOPUS. With this achievement, KJRME is recognized as a leading academic journal in the field of music education both domestically and internationally, not only in terms of its history and scale but also in terms of its content and academic status.

As we all agree, global community can no longer exists separately. Under the circumstances, music education also cannot stand alone without interacting with the rest of the world, both culturally and academically. We believe that it is an appropriate time for KJRME, a local journal in Korea to share its academic results with other researchers in the global community.

Ⅱ. Subject Coverage

KJRME is unique in its research content compared to other journals in the field of musicology. KJRME publishes high-quality academic research papers in the entire field of music education. In terms of research content, KJRME is a journal that includes both theoretical discussion and practical application in that, while other journals focus on either theory or practice, the authenticity of music education is revealed when music theory and practice are combined. As a result, papers on KJRME have a great influence on the application of the theory. KJRME is a local journal in Korea but KJRME aims to broaden the range of readers and researchers around the world. KJRME includes the followings topics in the field of music education.

• Music curriculum
• Music pedagogy
• Music teaching and learning method
• Music teacher education
• History of music education
• Philosophy of music education
• Psychology in music education
• Aesthetics in music education
• Use of new media in music education
• Learning theories in music education
• Multicultural aspects in music education
• Music education in the era of the 4th industrial revolution, ect.

Ⅲ. Academic Excellence

There are several distinctive features that differentiate KJRME from other music education journals.

First, since the first volume of KJRME was published in 1973, a total of 79 volumes have been published by 2021. Such accomplishments are reflected in the citation index of articles in the field of musicology. Looking at the two-year impact factor(IF) index of 2019, it was the second-highest among all 20 journals in musicology including music education. Furthermore, KJRME was included as one of the three outstanding academic journals out of the 153 journals that currently exist in the field of arts and sports. It was the only journal to achieve such status in the field of musicology. Therefore, the excellence of KJRME has been verified through various data in Korea.

Second, the submitted manuscript must go through KJRME’s comprehensive scrutinized process, which apparently differentiates itself from other journals. If the manuscript does not meet the purpose and criteria of the journal’s publication, based on the suitability evaluation process, the editorial board would exclude the submitted work. Due to such strict screening and quality management process, the publishing rate is substantially lower than any comparable journals.

Third, KJRME is different not only from domestic journals but also from musical journals overseas. While music education overseas emphasizes diversification, Korean music education aims for both diversification and standardization. Thereby, KJRME has the advantage of covering all aspects of standardized music education at the regional and national level as well as various music education at the school level. Furthermore, KJRME is a journal with outstanding originality even when compared to journals in other fields such as language, society, science, and art beyond the music field. Considering the pursuit of human aesthetic values ​​in life, the large role of music in the multicultural era, the globalization of Korean culture, KJRME has a higher influence than any other field. In particular, K-Pop, K-classic, and K-traditional music are at the center of the recent K-culture craze that leads the global art culture, all of which are the results of Korean music education. The world music education community is curious about Korean music education that leads K-culture and hopes to study together. Therefore, KJRME will play an important role in promoting Korean music education and Korean music culture to scholars around the world.

Ⅳ. Growth into a Global Music Education Leader

KJRME is making various efforts to grow into an international academic journal based on the excellence and originality of this journal described above, establishing administration and procedures, emphasizing research ethics, globalization of editorial board members, and international exchange.

First, to enhance the transparency and the automation of the paper submission and review process, KJRME introduced an online paper submission and review system in 2015 and began assigning DOI to all papers published since February 2018 to enhance domestic and international access to the paper. To increase accessibility to and subscribe to published papers, all music educators and researchers have participated as readers by allowing free access to journals through the KMES website. We have established and operated an English website for researchers overseas so that they can easily access published papers and submit them. The published articles in the journal can be downloaded by anyone without logging in, and in the journal archive of the website, researchers can check the contents of the published articles through an XML document, along with the PDF files. Currently, KJRME provides free access to the journals for domestic and foreign music educators & scholars to more conveniently access journals.

Second, to pursue a global standard of research ethics, KJRME considers ethics as a top priority of academic activities. Since the implementation of the first research ethics regulations regarding the paper submission, review, and publication in March 2008, it has been revised three times to strengthen the regulations. In 2016, the Research Ethics Committee was established in the KMES to prevent research irregularities and firmly establish the integrity of research and the ethics of researchers. The Ethical Guidelines of KJRME consist of the “Research Code of Ethics'', which deal with the ethical regulations of authors, editors, and reviewers, and “Guidelines for the Implementation of the Code of Ethics'', which deal with the composition, authority, responsibilities, investigation, and deliberation of research ethics committees. All research ethics regulations are posted in detail on the website of the journal so that the guidelines can easily be referred to when you submit a paper and review a paper.

Third, the editorial committee of KJRME consists of music education experts who are the most active academically at home and abroad. They are very proud that KJRME has become the most prestigious journal representing the history of music education in Korea, and now they are looking forward to being reborn as an academic journal contributing to the research and development of music education in the world. To this end, KMES and KJRME have consistently made efforts to establish their status as international journals. In addition to Prof. Chet-yeng Loong(Univ., of Hawaii, USA) and Prof. Chengji Jin (Yanbian Univ., China), who have contributed since 2010 as editors of KJRME, Prof. Yong-chun Xu (Yanbian University, China), Prof. M. Hefer(Bar-Ilan Univ., Israel), Prof. T.Imada(Hirosaki Univ. Japan), Prof. K. Fugii(Shimane Univ., Japan). Prof. S. Kang (Rider Uni. USA) Prof. R. Allsup (TC Columbia Univ. USA), etc. music education scholars have been enlisted as editorial board members. Their participation as an editorial board is expected to greatly contribute to the regeneration of the academic level of KJRME into an international journal.

Fourth, despite being in a difficult situation during the Korean War, we joined the International Society for Music Education as a member country's representative organization in 1956 and made efforts to accept the trends of music education in the international community. The KMES, which published the first KJRME in 1973, surprised the world by holding the ISME World Conference (Seoul, Korea) in Korea in 1992. In 1997, the APSMER Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education Research (APSMER) was established, led by the KMES (President, Prof. Lee, H.) where professors, teachers, and students from Asia-Pacific countries meet once every two years to share global trends in music education. In 2007, APSMER was invited to ISME's Asia–Pacific regional conference, and Professor Kim, Y. and Yang, J. of the KMES have served as board members of APSMER. Since 2010, we have been contributing to promoting Korean music education to the world by continuously participating in the UNESCO World Culture and Arts Education Conference. The Korean Society for Music Education is about to host the 2023 Asia Pacific Music Education Symposium (APSMER) in Korea. This international academic event will greatly contribute to bringing KJRME to the next level of international standards. As such, KMES members have constantly made efforts to make KJRME an international journal by inviting foreign scholars to the conference and contributing as a responsible member of the international music education community.

In light of these factors, including a long history of representing music education, the journal's high quality and originality, as well as active international exchanges and efforts, KJRME will not only continue to be a representative of music education in Korea but also grow into an internationally acclaimed academic journal in the field of music education. KJRME Welcomes foreign scholars from all over the world to participate in academic research and submit papers.