CALL FOR PAPERS

The Serials Librarian is an international journal concerned with complex and challenging issues libraries face today--and with the larger environment for scholarly communications in which libraries operate.  In particular, we continue to welcome articles dealing with the management of serials and other subscription resources, such as ebooks, monographic series and databases. Works submitted may derive from any point in the life cycle of scholarly resources, ranging from publishing and purchase to usage analysis and deselection.  Submissions can address fundamental or tertiary concerns—peer review, cataloging, resource discovery or consortial developments, for instance. Welcomed are case studies, best practices, research papers, bibliographies and position papers.  Providing a forum for discussion and innovation throughout the serials/scholarly resources information chain, The Serials Librarian accepts contributions from librarians, publishers, database creators, subscription agents and others who provide content to library users. Articles may be theoretical or practical in nature.

Some possible topics include:

-Reports on the acquisition and management of content by libraries/consortia  
-Literature reviews tracing developments in the field
-Annotated bibliographies to aid collection development decisions 
-Sustainable “win-win” models for library-publisher commerce
-Procedural innovations in processing or organizing e-resources
-Reports on uses of tools such as ERMs, discovery products, unified management systems, etc.
-Open access, peer review and the future of the journal gatekeeping function
-Studies of end-user ease of access

-Cataloging rules or practices

-Theoretical or position papers addressing creator or librarian concerns about scholarly resources

Copyright is retained by the author, who grants a license to Taylor & Francis to publish the version of Scholarly Record, but who remains copyright holder and is free to post versions of the Article – Author’s Original Manuscript (preprint) and Author’s Accepted Manuscript (postprint) – at any time, without embargo, with a link to the Version of Scholarly Record.

For more information about The Serials Librarian, including complete submission instructions, please visit the journal's webpage: www.tandfonline.com/WSER

Co-Editors
Louise Penn
University of West London
&
Andrew Shroyer
California State University, Los Angeles

Publication Details
Volume 67, 2014
2 volumes of
4 issues per year
Print ISSN: 0361-526X
Online ISSN: 1541-1095

*************************************************************************************************************************************             

What’s in a name?

When The Serials Librarian came into being in 1976, everyone in the library world knew what the name denoted.  The librarians who held the title of serials librarian in those days were conversant with and responsible for the most complicated, challenging and unpredictable of publications.  The world has changed a good deal in the intervening years.  The traditional format divisions that were once in vogue among libraries have ceased to be operational;  a plain “serials unit” that works with journals or serials in isolation and does not also deal with e-resources is becoming increasingly rare.  Currently, decisions about journals and e-journals are frequently interwoven with decisions about database contents and ebooks and subject-specific needs; and now e-books (“the new serials”) can be purchased on a subscription basis.  In the present day librarians with a variety of formal roles are taking on processes and decisions that require a grasp of some very complicated issues and the capacity for dealing with serial-like ambiguity.  Librarians who are e-resource managers, subject specialists and public service professionals are the serials librarians of today, and they do at turns interact with players in the commercial serials industry.  

The journal has broadened its readership to this wider range of library and industry professionals, and so an update to the formal scope of the journal has become necessary.   We continue to offer content with a focus on serial publications, whether print or electronic.  We are very concerned with the nature and functionality of the journal in the present day and what journals are becoming; this extends to issues of pricing models, open access, peer review, author’s rights, institutional repositories and the new business models or other adaptations by publishers to this evolution in access.   But we also embrace the broader context of serials librarianship today where work with one format in isolation has become a rarity.  You have seen or will see in our pages discussions of e-books and databases and streaming videos as well as processes and tools, such as discovery products, that encompass a blend of formats.  Like the information professionals we serve, we are now concerned with all manner of end-user access, across formats.  

The Serials Librarian each year continues to devote a full volume to the proceedings of the annual conference of The North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), as we have for many years now.

We hope that the legacy of our name and our record of quality content will continue to inspire potential authors and readers alike.