The Serials Librarian is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis concerned with scholarly resources and libraries.
The scope of the journal includes:
Welcomed are research articles, practical reports and theoretical or position papers.
The author rights policy for the Taylor and Francis Library & Information Science journal set is a liberal one; published authors retain re-use rights for posting to personal web pages and repositories.
For more information about The Serials Librarian, including complete submission instructions, please visit the journal's webpage: www.tandfonline.com/WSER
The journal receives all manuscript submissions electronically via their ScholarOne Manuscripts website located at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/WSER
To correspond with the editor, please write to: editorserialslibrarian@gmail.com
Thanks
--Andrew Shroyer
What’s in a name?
When The Serials Librarian came into being in 1976, everyone in the library world knew what the name denoted. Those 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 standard among libraries are in large part no longer 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 itself in the present day and what journals are becoming. This extends to issues of pricing models, open access, peer review, author 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.