Editorial Policies

Peer Review Process

JLSC uses a double anonymous review process for peer-reviewed submissions, meaning the authors' and reviewers' identities are not revealed to each other during review.

For articles where it would be difficult to fully anonymize the author, we allow authors to opt into a semi-anonymous review, where the author's affiliation is not anonymized in the manuscript. In no case is the author's name shared with the reviewers. Published articles will indicate which type of review the article underwent (semi- or fully anonymous).

The editor(s) will perform an initial review of all submitted manuscripts and may reject papers that are clearly outside of the scope of the journal. Manuscripts within the scope will be sent to at least two reviewers. Reviewers will not receive or be able to view any documentation or metadata that includes individually identifiable author information. Authors will be provided with similarly anonymized reviewer comments to aid in the revision of their manuscripts.

The review process takes, on average, eight twelve weeks. Authors may not submit the manuscript to other publications while a review is in progress.

All articles will undergo peer review following section guidelines, regardless of contact prior to submission. See the Recruiting and Submission Policy [Link forthcoming] for further details.

Peer Reviewers

JLSC strives to utilize reviewers from diverse identities, backgrounds, geographic areas, and career levels. Editors primarily draw upon those who have registered as reviewers on the JLSC site and have clearly articulated reviewing interests, although external reviewers will be sought when needed. Selection is based on reviewer expertise on the manuscript topic, through practice and/or scholarship.

In an initial query, reviewers will be provided the article title and abstract and a due date for the article. If you are interested in reviewing but unable to make the proposed due date, please discuss an adjusted date with the JLSC editor; extensions can typically be granted, within reason. Upon acceptance, reviewers will be provided with access to an anonymized manuscript and a form on the JLSC site with questions to guide their feedback. Reviewers will also be asked to provide a general recommendation for the manuscript (e.g. accept, revisions required, declined). Reviews will be shared with authors anonymously and retained on the JLSC system, although reviewers will retain copyright of any comments submitted. Reviewers are uncompensated, but editors will provide letters of acknowledgment and thanks for potential inclusion in annual review documentation.

The JLSC editorial team encourages those with experience in any of the topics listed in the Focus and Scope and interested in reviewing to:

Sign up using the “Become a Reviewer” button.
Please make sure to clearly articulate your reviewing interests.
Reviewers need not have reviewed previously or have a publication history.
Early career professionals are welcome.

More information on JLSC’s views on diversifying peer review and an introduction to the peer review process can be found in our Peer Review Toolkit.

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Copyediting

As a no-fee, open access publication, JLSC’s ability to provide extensive copyediting of manuscripts is limited. Authors are expected to submit manuscripts free of major typographical and grammatical errors, and may be requested to perform additional editing on their manuscripts if it is deemed necessary.

The editors may strongly encourage employing a colleague or professional reader to review the manuscript if a submission exhibits potential but requires extensive stylistic revision.

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Correction, Retraction, and Removal of Articles

Correction. Despite the best of efforts, errors occur and their timely and effective remedy are considered the mark of responsible authors and editors. JLSC will publish a correction if the scholarly record is seriously affected (e.g., if accuracy/intended meaning, scientific reproducibility, author reputation, or journal reputation is judged to be compromised). Corrections that do not affect the contribution in a material way or significantly alter the reader's understanding of the contribution, such as misspellings or grammatical errors, will not be published. When a correction is published, it will link to and from the work. The correction will be added to the original work so that readers will receive the original work and the correction. All corrections will be as concise as possible.

Retraction. JLSC reserves the right to retract items, with a retraction defined as a public disavowal, not an erasure or removal. Retractions will occur if the editors and editorial board finds that the main conclusion of the work is undermined or if subsequent information about the work comes to light of which the authors or the editors were not aware at the time of publication. Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, inaccurate claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data will also result in retraction of the work.

Removal. Some circumstances may necessitate removal of a work from JLSC. This will occur when the article is judged by the editors and editorial board to be defamatory, if it infringes on legal rights, or if there is a reasonable expectation that it will be subject to a court order. The bibliographic information about the work will be retained online, but the work will no longer be available through JLSC. A note will be added to indicate that the item was removed for legal reasons.

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Corresponding Author Responsibilities

The corresponding author must submit the manuscript and related files (e.g. supporting data files, media, etc.). From the point of submission through to publication, all communication related to that manuscript will be directed to and received from the corresponding author. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors are aware of and approve the submission of the manuscript, its content, authorship, and order of authorship. Confirmation of this action is required at submission of all manuscripts.

Masking Manuscripts Prior to Submission

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring the submitted manuscript has been appropriately prepared for blind review. No individually identifiable information/references to the author(s) should be included in the manuscript (or title page). Acknowledgments should not be included in the manuscript; they may be entered separately during the submission process.

In addition to removing all individually identifiable information from within the document, the corresponding author should check the Microsoft Word document properties and remove any identifiable information. For information on removing this information, please consult Microsoft help documentation or contact the editors.

All supplemental files (figures, images, data sets, etc.) should also have any individually identifiable information removed prior to submission.

If a cover letter will be submitted with the manuscript, it may contain identifiable information, and will be submitted/uploaded separate from the manuscript file to preserve the blind review process.

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Data Sharing

Authors of research papers submitted for publication in JLSC are encouraged to make the data underlying their articles available online whenever possible. For the purposes of this policy, the term "data" is understood broadly and refers to both quantitative and qualitative research outputs, spanning observations and analysis of social settings (producing numbers, texts, images, multimedia or other content) to numbers attained through instrumental and other raw data gathering efforts, quantitative analysis, text mining, or citation analysis, as well as protocols, methods, and code used to generate any specific finding reported in the paper. The JLSC editorial board prefers that the data be submitted as supplemental files accompanying the article, or be archived in a secure repository that provides a persistent identifier, assures long-term access, and provides sufficient documentation and metadata to support re-use by other investigators. Acceptable solutions include institutional repositories; repositories specifically focused on data curation, or domain specific repositories. If there is no relevant public repository available, and the data cannot easily be included in a supplement, authors should describe how the data are being curated and made available or, in the case where they cannot be made available (e.g. IRB restrictions), why that is so. In any case, a citation to the dataset should be made in the article itself in accordance with the data citation principles of the FORCE11 "Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles", including an ORCID for the researcher(s) associated with the data. Finally, we recommend that whenever possible authors explicitly define the terms of re-use by assigning a license to their data, choosing, for instance, among Creative Commons or Open Data Commons licenses.

This JLSC data policy does not require data publication and citation at this time due to still-emergent standards for data peer review; the lack of sufficiently robust and distributed infrastructure to support the variety of disciplinary research occurring in our field; uncertainty whether JLSC should provide a third mode of data publication in the form of “data papers” or “data descriptors”; and insufficient preparation and notification to JLSC contributors to ensure datasets are properly curated with the aim of publication. Authors unable to share their data must provide written explanation of this circumstance in their cover letter at the time of submission.

Author who wish to deposit data should refer to the Manuscript Preparation Guidelines regarding data.

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Human Subjects Research

All research involving human participants must have been approved by the authors' institutional review board or equivalent committee(s) and that board must be named by the authors in the manuscript.

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Originality

Only articles that have not been published previously, that have not been simultaneously submitted elsewhere, and that are not under review for another publication should be submitted to this journal. The journal editors will assume that submission of an article to this journal implies that all the foregoing conditions are applicable.

Grey literature (e.g. conference papers, presentations, white papers, blog posts, and other unpublished work) may be submitted for review and publication in JLSC if all copyrights still reside with the submitting author(s). Preference will be given to works for which publication in JLSC will expand access or add value to the work. As a professional courtesy, authors should indicate if they are submitting such work, and if and where the work currently appears or has appeared. This information should be shared in the author’s cover letter at the time of initial submission.

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Plagiarism

JLSC does not accept articles containing material plagiarized from other publications or authors.

For the purposes of this policy, plagiarism is defined as copying of or reliance on work — including text, images and data — by others or yourself without proper attribution. Please be aware that you can plagiarize yourself; you must provide proper attribution in all cases where your previously published material or previously used data or images are included in your manuscript. (See JLSC’s Originality Policy above.)

Plagiarism detected prior to publication will cause rejection of your manuscript. Plagiarism detected after publication will cause the published article to be amended to state that it contains plagiarized material; in extreme cases of plagiarism, the publication will be removed at the Editors’ discretion, and the reason for removal stated on the journal's website.

JLSC does not consider the following situations to be plagiarism when proper attribution is made:

Translations into English of a previously published paper not in English;
Publication of all or part of a revised thesis or dissertation;
Publication of a paper previously made public as a conference presentation, white paper, technical report, or preprint

JLSC follows workflows developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to deal with cases of plagiarism.

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