Publications in Comparative Education Journals: Types and Uses of Literature Reviews and Systematic Reviews

In any research field, there is the need to understand paths taken by researchers in order to properly contribute to the development of the assumed field, and, to address this, researchers often conduct and publish reviews. In the field of Social Sciences, literature reviews are more common than systematic reviews, especially in Education; this is different from the field of Health Sciences, where systematic reviews have well established protocols and platforms are available to register this type of studies. As part of a project under development, the study aims to explore scientific journals within the field of Comparative Education, and map and analyze the different types and uses of reviews in articles published in this century. Expected results for the first stage of the study consist of an analytical framework of journals in Comparative Education as to their length of existence, volume of publications, characteristics of publications, journal indexations, platforms, and formal dimensions (standards and submission procedures). At a second stage, researchers anticipate the building a database and the conduction of content analysis, considering as variables data collection procedures and different analysis processes, according to the uses and purposes of the investigation. For the last stage, from the results obtained, it is projected to present an analytical map of the different types and uses of literature review and systematic review in articles within the scope of Comparative Education and a good practice guide for the use of this methodological resource in the educational research field. This paper will narrow its presentation to the mapping of three [3] key journals – Comparative Education, Comparative Education Review and Compare, identified from JCR ranking (with SSCI).