• Executive Editor: Nathan D. Grawe , Carleton College
• Senior Editors:
  • H. L. (Len) Vacher, University of South Florida
  • Gizem Karaali, Pomona College
  • Bernard L. Madison, University of Arkansas (Co-founder of NNN)
• Contributing Editor: Dorothy I. Wallace, Dartmouth College
• Book Review Editor: Michael T. Catalano, Dakota Wesleyan University

Len Vacher and Dorothy Wallace, two of the NNN's founding board members, had a grand plan to fill a major void: create a peer-reviewed journal to "promote education that integrates quantitative skills across all disciplines and at all levels." At the NNN's August 2006 board of directors' meeting in Seattle, Vacher and Wallace proposed the idea for the journal, which was unanimously approved. They then got to work. In December 2006, Wallace, Vacher, and Todd Chavez, from the University of South Florida's Libraries, guided a subset of NNN board members and associate editors in a journal planning meeting at Dartmouth College.

The planners agreed that the journal should publish scholarly research and evidence-based case studies on a wide array of QL topics, including education research, teaching strategies and resources, curriculum design, assessment strategies, and faculty development. They agreed that the journal's scope should also include perspectives, notes, reviews, and commentaries. Since its first edition on January 1, 2008, Numeracy has published two issues per year. By the start of 2013, Numeracy had more than 32,000 downloads. We hope you enjoy reading the journal and that you will consider submitting to it, as well.

In 2015, Numeracy was awarded the Directory of Open-Access Journals (DOAJ) Seal for its high degree of openness and for adhering to best practices and high publishing standards. In 2019, Numeracy was accepted for indexing in the Scopus Journal of Metrics. Scopus is the largest abstract and citations database of peer-reviewed literature. Their Cite-Score is an open-access tool for documenting the scholarly impact of journals and their publications.

The National Numeracy Network (NNN) hosts the annual Steen award. Named for Lynn Steen, one of the early leaders of the quantitative literacy movement and author of many influential works promoting QL, the award goes to the best article from the most recent volume of the NNN’s journal Numeracy as judged by the Awards Subcommittee of the Board of NNN. Criteria for selection include the overall quality of the paper, its effectiveness in promoting a significant numeracy theme or the movement in general, use of evidence-based research in QL, possible impact on teaching and learning within QL, and relevance to larger societal issues impacted by QL.

Each year, the NNN selects one article from the prior-year issues of Numeracy as being the 'best paper". The author(s) of that paper will receive the Lynn Steen award. The articles reviewed include only the peer-reviewed content: articles, perspectives, and notes. They exclude anything that is not peer-reviewed such as editorials and book reviews. The NNN President selects the committee.

The criteria is quite flexible, but it should uphold or advance the idea of numeracy

• as being important for a citizen in a modern democracy [Lynn Steen];
• as being a habit of mind [Bernie Madison];
• as being applicable across the curriculum;
• as being inclusive: quantitative reasoning, quantitative literacy, statistical literacy, health literacy, financial literacy, etc.;
• as being of value students;
• as being relevant to reading and interpreting data.

Steen Award Past Recipients