The scope of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication was revised for clarity by a working group of Editorial Team and Board members in the spring of 2025. The scope is described on the new Scope page, now separate from the About page. The impetus for revising the JLSC scope is to provide clarity to authors, encourage greater diversity in topics and methodologies whilst retaining relevancy in submissions, and decrease the time to publication. 

One point of clarification for the scope is general. JLSC’s scope involves research and scholarship on both librarianship and scholarly communication. The scope states that any topic needs to relate to “the intersection of librarianship and scholarly communication.” The “and” in the title of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication includes both topics – librarianship and scholarly communication – and does not imply either/or. The new Scope page now makes this aspect more prominent for authors.

For the specific areas in the scope, this revised scope largely covers the same topics as it did previously but now with categories and subcategories in expandable sections of an accordion format. While the curation and management of digital collections have been removed, the list of topics in the scope is not meant to be exhaustive, and authors may write about topics as they pertain to librarianship and scholarly communication. Some sections of the scope, such as open access and diversity, have been expanded. Artificial intelligence has been added.

It is our hope that the revised scope helps inform authors’ submissions. Authors may also refer to the JLSC section policies and manuscript preparation guidelines, which have not changed.

If you have any questions about the revised scope, please contact the journal.