Editorial

Citation

Mitchell, E. and Barbara Watstein, S. (2009), "Editorial", Reference Services Review, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/rsr.2009.24037daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Reference Services Review, Volume 37, Issue 4

Reference and instruction librarians today function not only in the current context of extraordinarily constrained resources, but also in a changing landscape of stakeholders – students, scholars, lifelong learners, and the general public. The articles in this issue illuminate such changes and help practitioners prepare for them.

Our continued relevance in a changing landscape of stakeholders is demonstrated by Amy Hoseth’s exploration of library participation in a campus-wide teaching program. Stephanie Simard also tackles the fundamental challenge of relevance in her discussion of an information literacy program built for relevance and purpose.

Several authors respond to both opportunities and emergent needs by looking at technological approaches. Christopher Chan and Dianne Cmor consider blogging toward information literacy; Allison Carr and Pearl Ly take a close look at screencasting as a reference tool. Kate Gronemyer and Anne-Marie Deitering return to the virtual reference environment and assess librarians’ attitudes about instruction in this environment.

Robin A. Paynter describes one approach of applied social science researchers and helps reference and instruction practitioners prepare to support their efforts in her timely manuscript, “Evidence-based research in the applied social sciences.”

Felicia A. Barrett focuses her attention on connecting older adults to quality health information on the internet. This critical theme is particularly important in our times; front-line reference and instruction librarians alike will benefit from the different perspectives and different assets Barrett brings to the table.

We continue to be proud of the information literacy bibliography, an annual feature of the journal, published in the last issue of the year. This year’s compilers, Anna Marie Johnson, Claudene Sproles and Latisha Reynolds provide readers with a particularly robust reading list of 517 items. This perennial favorite is consistently among the top ten articles downloaded by Reference Services Review (RSR) readers.

In these times, libraries are facing unprecedented challenges. One unforeseen consequence has been an increase in professional “chatter.” Amidst the doom and gloom that characterizes much of this “chatter,” we are all trying to glean what we can from others in similar situations. Mindful of this, we have recommitted to making RSR not only relevant but timely to our readers.

Two developments in particular position RSR to aggressively reduce the turn-around time from submission to publication, while continuing to devote strong and thoughtful review and editorial oversight. These include the journal’s migration to ScholarOne, and our use of EarlyCite.

With Volume 37 Number 4 RSR has now fully migrated to ScholarOne, an innovative, web-based, database-driven peer review and online submission application for scholarly publishers. ScholarOne automates manuscript submission to journals and allows for easy administrative, editing and reviewing capabilities. Most importantly for our readers, ScholarOne promises to reduce the time to decision, eliminate paper distribution costs, decrease administrative overhead and increase submissions with hundreds of configurable system options, flexible and fully automated email reminders, an easy to use, intuitive user interface with face to face prompts allowing quick and simple completion of tasks; comprehensive, journal-specific workflows, task settings, submission questions, letter template, and more; and top notch customer support and services.

Additionally, we are delighted to announce that RSR is now publishing articles in EarlyCite, Emerald’s online pre-publication service that enables authors to get their work published, disseminated and so potentially cited, earlier. It also allows readers access to journal articles prior to official publication, ensuring they get the most up to date research. Papers can be made available at least three months and, in some cases, as much as one year before they appear in the hard copy and final online journal issue. A phenomenon of academic journal publishing is that articles can often be held in a queue, awaiting publication for many months until an issue becomes available. EarlyCite articles are fully peer-reviewed and made available online before they undergo the full sub-editing and page-proofing stages. Once the final copy of the article is ready for publication, it replaces the EarlyCite version. Every EarlyCite paper is assigned to an issue, which enables correct referencing.

We look forward to publishing articles that serve to cast our future forward, articles that will be particularly energizing to our readers.

Eleanor Mitchell, Sarah Barbara Watstein