Review process Call for Papers

The results of the review process for contributions to the 30th Congress of the GERA are now available in ConfTool.

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This is how the selection process worked:

The program committee appointed by the GERA board is responsible for reviewing submissions and designing the program, with the support of 240 reviewers (see below). Two independent reviews are written for each submission. An average score is calculated based on these two reviews, which include both free-form text and point scores.

As we received a large number of submissions in response to our call for papers, we were unfortunately unable to accept all contributions—even those that received very good ratings had to be rejected, so that ultimately only the best contributions could be considered.

In the interests of maximum transparency, the Program Committee decided to provide the submitters with the individual ratings and comments of the reviewers in addition to the overall assessment.

When selecting the contributions (accepted/rejected), the program committee decided to use the reviewers’ point assessment (average of two reviews) as the decisive criterion. Care was taken to keep the cutoff point—i.e., the lowest score at which a contribution is still accepted—as similar as possible across all contribution formats.

It appears that the average quality of symposia is higher than that of individual contributions. Since significantly more individual contributions than symposia were submitted, the acceptance rate (submitted/accepted contributions) of symposia is higher. This is in line with expectations, since

• symposia require considerable coordination and organizational effort, which already implies a certain degree of quality control in advance, and
• the variance in the quality of individual contributions is naturally higher given the significantly larger number of submissions.

To ensure the highest possible reliability of the scoring process, several quality assurance measures were implemented:

• If there was a discrepancy of at least one scale point between the two reviews, a third review was requested.
• Each individual review was checked by at least one member of the program committee with regard to the quality of the substantive feedback, in order to avoid major outliers, cases of poor scientific practice, etc.

The spatial conditions of the LMU Munich main building allow, as in previous years, the hosting of up to 34 parallel sessions. The official conference program will likely be published in ConfTool in August. The general program structure can already be found here on the congress homepage (LINK).

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Criteria for the evaluation of submissions

Rigour and coherence

Symposia / Work groups / Research and topic forums: Do the individual contributions conceptually fit together? Is the argumentation systematic and rigorous? Is the conceptual and/or theoretical framework appropriate in relation to the research questions of the individual contributions?

Individual submissions: Is the argumentation systematic and rigorous?

Relevance

Is the contribution relevant for educational research, educational professions, or educational and social policy?

Originality

How inspiring, novel, or innovative is the contribution? What potential does it have to expand the discourse in educational research?

Presentation

How would you assess the formal quality of the presentation? Does it meet the criteria of good academic practice?

Overall impression

How would you assess the overall quality of the contribution?

Relevance to the conference theme

Is the contribution relevant to the conference theme? If “no” is indicated for a symposium, it will be reassigned as a workshop in case of a positive evaluation, and vice versa.

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Members of the Program Comittee

We sincerely thank the program committee for their dedicated and meticulous work in reviewing and selecting the contributions for the 30th GERA Congress 2026.

• Prof. Dr. Sabine Hornberg, Technical University Dortmund
• Prof. Dr. Tobias Jenert, University Paderborn
• Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kesper-Biermann, University Hamburg
• Prof. Dr. Ruprecht Mattig, Technical University Dortmund
• Prof. Dr. Anna Moldenhauer, University Bremen
• Prof. Dr. Vera Moser, Goethe-University Frankfurt
• Prof. Dr. Falk Radisch, University Rostock
• Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schmidt-Hertha, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
• Prof. Dr. Christine Wiezorek, Justus-Liebig-University Gießen

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Reviewers

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all reviewers for their time, expertise, and valuable commitment during the review process for the GERA Congress 2026.