Looking Backward to Look Forward

Abstract

This editorial marks the end of our tenure as founding co-editors-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE). We have three goals in this editorial. First, we provide a retrospective on how we positioned TOCE, both in terms of how it embodies our conception of Computing Education Research (CER) as a field, as well as the journal's role in the larger computing education community and the ACM. We focus on the process by which we determined what constitutes publishability for a manuscript submitted to TOCE, describing what is best understood as a living process negotiated among the authors, reviewers, associate editors, and editors-in-chief in interaction with manuscripts and one another. Second, having reviewed a bit of history, we look at some possible changes in TOCE's future, particularly in light of conversations that the ACM is engaged in at all levels regarding recent open publishing initiatives as well as the relationship between journal and conference publications. Finally, we thank the many people who have contributed to the success of TOCE for their significant effort in establishing TOCE as a publication venue for papers in computing education.