Submissions

All submissions to Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication should be made using the online submission form. Submissions to JLSC must comply with all items on the Manuscript Preparation Guidelines, Section Policies, and Submission page. Non-compliant submissions will be returned to authors for revision before any further consideration.

Note: If the primary submission is not in manuscript format (i.e. a textual document), but is in another form of media (video, audio, etc.), please consult with the editors for appropriate submissions guidelines.

About

The Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (JLSC) is an online-only, peer-reviewed, open-access journal with no article processing charges for authors. JLSC publishes original articles, reviews, and case studies that analyze or describe the strategies, partnerships, and impact of library-led digital projects, online publishing, and scholarly communication initiatives. JLSC is published on a rolling basis, with a general issue for each year and occasional special issues.

Focus and Scope

Heeding Benjamin Franklin’s prescient proposal for “promoting useful knowledge,” the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication seeks to share useful innovations, both in thought and in practice, with the aim of encouraging scholarly exchange and the subsequent benefits that are borne of scrutiny, experimentation and debate. As modes of scholarly communication, the technologies and economics of publishing, and the roles of libraries evolve, it is our hope that the work shared in this journal will inform practices that strengthen librarianship and that increase access to the “common Stock of Knowledge.”

JLSC is particularly interested in the intersection of librarianship and publishing, and the resulting roles for libraries in both content dissemination and content creation. The scholarly communications system is global and the solutions to challenges are likely to be globally relevant. JLSC pursues a global authorship and aims at a global readership.

Areas of interest include: new methods for the creation, dissemination and exchange of information; the theory and practice of the organization, use and curation of information; and issues related to the review, credentialing, reputation and impact of scholarly work.

For additional information on the focus and scope of JLSC, please review the Focus and Scope section on About JLSC

Submission Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
All authors have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper and meet the requirements for authorship outlined in the journal’s policies.
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
The text is double-spaced and uses a 12-point font.
Illustrations, figures, tables and audio/video files are included in the manuscript itself, and are available as separate files (for provision upon acceptance). See the manuscript preparation guidelines for formatting these files.
All requirements specific to a certain type of submission (e.g. Research Articles) have been satisfied. See the section policies for additional guidance.
All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
Tables and figures are all cited in the text.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the manuscript preparation guidelines.
Consent has been obtained from the authors from all individuals or institutions named in the acknowledgments section (no documentation is required).
If you have additional information you would like to provide about your submission, enter it in the “Comments to the Editor” field in the "Review your submission" section of this form.
For all sections except Brief Reviews of Books and Products: The submission has been properly prepared for anonymous review, with no individually identifiable information/references to the authors included in the manuscript. (With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file.) Acknowledgments, including financial support, should not be included in the manuscript for review; they may be listed separately during the submission process.

Copyright Notice

As a condition of publication in JLSC, all authors agree to the following terms of licensing/copyright ownership:

First publication rights to original work accepted for publication is granted to Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication but copyright for all work published in the journal is retained by the author(s).
Works published in Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication will be distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). By granting a CC BY license in their work, authors retain copyright ownership of the work, but they give explicit permission for others to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the work, as long as the original source and author(s) are properly cited (i.e. a complete bibliographic citation and link to the JLSC website). No permission is required from the author(s) or the publishers for such use. According to the terms of the CC BY license, any reuse or redistribution must indicate the original CC BY license terms of the work. Exceptions to the application of the CC BY license may be granted at the editors’ discretion if reasonable extenuating circumstances exist. Such exceptions must be granted in writing by the editors of the Journal; in the absence of a written exception, the CC BY license will be applied to all published works.
Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.
Authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.

It will be the responsibility of the authors to secure all necessary copyright permissions for the use of third-party materials in their manuscript. Authors will be required to provide written evidence of this permission upon acceptance of their manuscript.

Peer Review

All articles will undergo peer review following section guidelines, regardless of contact prior to submission. 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).

For additional information on JLSC's Peer Review Process, please visit the Editorial Policies page.

Licences

The following licences are allowed:

CC BY 4.0
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees

JLSC provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

In order to lower barriers to publication for authors, JLSC does not charge submission or any other form of author fees.

Publication Cycle

The journal is published online continuously in annual general issues. Articles includes in special issues are published at one time, and the issue is then closed to additional articles.

Sections

Section or article type	Public Submissions	Peer Reviewed	Indexed
Special Issue - Open Access: Diverse Experiences and Expectations
Commentary
Research Article
Practice Article
Theory Article
Literature Review Article
Brief Reviews of Books and Products