KSHEC’s Higher Education for the Future ranked world’s leading education journal in 2024

Higher Education for the Future (HEF), a biannual peer reviewed journal published by the Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC), has achieved a historic milestone by emerging as the top-ranked education journal globally in 2024.

According to an official release, HEF, published in association with SAGE Publications (India) has seen remarkable performance in Scopus international rankings over the years.

In 2023, the journal recorded a CiteScore of 24.1, securing the third position out of 1,543 journals worldwide in the field of education. HEF achieved a CiteScore of 31.4 to top the rankings among 1,620 education journals in 2024.

These metrics, coupled with a strong SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 2.115 and Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP) of 4.950, makes HEF not only India’s leading education journal, but also a global frontrunner in scholarly publishing, the release stated.

KSHEC vice-chairperson Rajan Gurukkal attributes the success to the journal’s rigorous editorial practices, which involve elevating pragmatic submissions into theoretical contributions through sustained blind reviews. He emphasised that this relentless commitment to quality has enabled HEF to achieve international distinction.

Launched in 2010 as the Journal of Convergence Studies by K.N. Panikkar, the council’s first vice-chairperson, the publication was later renamed under the tenure of T.P. Sreenivasan. Initially managed with a modest budget of ₹1 lakh per year until 2018, the journal has since transformed into a royalty-generating, globally recognised platform.

The editorial board is led by Prof. Gurukkal as chief editor; P.K. Michael Tharakan as editor, and council member secretary Rajan Varughese as associate editor. The council’s documentation officer Deepika Lakshman has been handling the editorial administration.