EDITORS
• Francisco David Guillén-Gámez, University of Málaga (Spain), Faculty of Education Sciences, Department of didactics and educational organization. 
• Carmen Llorente-Cejudo, University of Seville (Spain), Faculty of Education Sciences, Department of didactics and educational organization. 
• Melchor Gomez, Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain), Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Department of Pedagogy.
• Antonio Palacios Rodriguez, University of Seville (Spain), Department of Didactics and Educational Organisation.

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IMPORTANT DATE
Initial manuscripts due from April 1 til July 31, 2024
Full Issue published within December 2024

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Download the Call for paper

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• Follow the Author Guidelines on how to write a paper and on the paper format.
• During the submission, select the name of the call in the menu of Section.
• A post-acceptance pre-publishing fee of 150 euros.
• The journal publishes in open access.
• Publication will follow an "online first" approach.

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In the educational context, the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) has revolutionized education by providing access to open educational resources (Nipa & Kermanshachi, 2020), collaborative learning resources or knowledge management platforms (Sharifov & Mustafa, 2020). Furthermore, thanks to technological advances, education as it is known today has also been transformed into virtual learning (Alí, 2020) or mobile learning (Dahal et al., 2022), allowing access to be democratized mainly to higher education.
But the integration of ICT in educational processes has facilitated greater benefits than those described so far. The use of ICT has also revolutionized the field of research in all its disciplines, providing researchers with unprecedented tools and resources that have transformed the way they conduct their research, collaborate with other scientists and disseminate their results (George & Salado, 2014). Furthermore, the integration of ICT in the teacher's research process has allowed not only access to more information, but also to improve the efficiency of the research itself, facilitating collaboration with other researchers, and facilitating broader and faster communication in the transfer of scientific results found (Molano-Bernal et al., 2022).
Firstly, the integration of ICT by teachers in their research work makes it possible to democratize access to an immense amount of research resources (Alvarado-Vélezi et al., 2023), where researchers have the opportunity to access digital databases, scientific journals, digital libraries from anywhere in the world (Ocholla & Ocholla, 2020). Secondly, the expansion of ICT has allowed the creation of new data analysis and processing software (Candraningrat et al., 2021). Thirdly, the integration of ICT has allowed the publication and dissemination of scientific findings to be much faster and broader (Molano-Bernal, et al., 2022). And, fourthly, the use of digital resources in the management of bibliographic references in the field of research has strongly emerged (Ram & Paul, 2014). Last but not least, AI tools represent new tools in the digital context that can support research, education, and academic service if used ethically (Barros et al., 2023).
For all these reasons, the integration of ICT in teachers' research processes is vital in all areas of knowledge. If a researcher uses ICT in their research work, they can accelerate the scientific process and contribute in a relevant way to the generation of new knowledge. However, in order to use them, a teacher is required trained not only in digital skills, but also and more specifically, in digital skills oriented towards research and transfer of scientific knowledge.
As stated by Torelló and Pérez (2012), a good university professor must develop three main dimensions in his/her academic tasks (teaching, research and management). Therefore, teachers must not only integrate educational technology into the curricular plans of their institution (Pozos, 2015), but also promote research and participation in innovation and research projects supported by digital resources (Twalib, 2012), with the purpose of being able to communicate the scientific results of their good pedagogical practices to the rest of the teaching community (Padilla-Hernández et al., 2020).
However, the scientific literature has generally shown that there is a difficulty on the part of teachers, since many of them have not received solid digital training, to be able to face the techno-pedagogical demands that are posed to them in their profession (Adetimirin, 2019). The studies carried out on teaching digital competence in higher education highlight that the majority of them have a low level (Dzikite et al., 2017), or at best intermediate (Cabero-Almenara et al., 2021), regardless of the area of knowledge to which the teaching staff belongs (Guillén-Gámez et al., 2020). What's more, most studies on digital competence have focused on one of the previously mentioned dimensions of the academic tasks of teachers, teaching, leaving aside the in-depth analysis of research work.

As a result of these reflections, different questions arise.
• Are teachers digitally trained in research skills?
• What skills do teachers have to use digital resources developed for the research context?
• What factors influence the digital competencies of teachers in their research work?
• How do AI tools impact the digital skills of teachers in research work?

For this reason, we welcome studies that cover topics related to:
• digital skills in research work;
• analysis of the use of digital resources and AI tools for the research process;
• factors incident to the digital competencies associated with the research process;
• infrastructure of university institutions on digital resources for the research process.

REFERENCES

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