by Virginia Wilson
Director, C-EBLIP

Last week, C-EBLIP launched a list of peer-reviewed LIS journals. Selinda Berg created this list originally and Kristin Hoffmann picked it up and updated it. The open access titles are indicated with the OA symbol and Canadian titles are highlighted with a little maple leaf. The original idea of the list is to give librarians, information professionals, and archivists a place to go when they are searching for somewhere to send a manuscript. Love it!

Well, it seems that many, many others love it, too. Carolyn Doi (@cdoi) tweeted about the list on January 15 at about 4:45PM SK time. As of January 18, mid-afternoon, according to Twitter Analytics, her tweet had 897 total engagements including 361 link clicks, 200 likes, 127 retweets, 86 detail expands, and 4 replies (it’s all more now).

Fig 1: Twitter analytics for @cdoi’s Jan. 15, 2018 tweet (click on image for larger, clearer picture)

News of the list went seemingly around the world! Others tweeted, and Kristin Hoffmann had a blog post in Brain-Work about the list, and then the list announcement was sent to several listservs. The response has been amazing! People have been contacting us with additional journals to add. We’ve received emails thanking us for this useful list. An announcement showed up in the Canadian Association of Research Library‘s (CARL) E-lert email (thank you, CARL!) and on Librarianship.ca (thank you, Cabot!). It’s been extremely exciting and gratifying.

Obviously, the need for such a compendium of LIS journals is there. This list fills a gap. And this makes me wonder what else we are missing. What other great LIS resources are on hard drives or usb sticks or in file cabinets that would be useful if they only had an online home? It’s a commitment, that’s for sure. Providing online access to content takes time. For example, the plan is to revisit the journal list periodically. The links need to be checked, journal names change, some go from closed to open access, and there are journals coming and going all the time. And that means maintenance as well. There’s a workflow involved that right now consists of 2 people, Google Drive, and a website.

Even though there is a time commitment to a project such as this, it is such a worthwhile endeavor. It’s offering a service to our profession. It’s helping librarians and other info pros find a place to publish their articles (research studies, opinion pieces, thought pieces, book reviews, etc.), and it’s providing directions to resources for evidence based library and information practice and for professional development. I’m thrilled with the response to the list and I hope people continue to engage with it long into the future.

I encourage colleagues to think about anything they might have created to support research, practice, or professional development in librarianship. Is there a way you can get it online and available to all? Or, you could tell me about it and maybe we can make something work.

This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.