Submission guidelines

It would seem fitting to have some sort of submission guidelines in each issue of the journal with the thought that people would at least glance at them before submitting an article...but I wonder how often some publishers or editors actually review
their own guidelines....


"The mission of [Journal X] is to serve the entire community...[and]...strives to publish results that are truly insightful." (from a math journal)

"Manuscripts should focus on issues related to X theory, research or practice, including but not limited to the following areas..." (list that follows includes every possible permutation of the subject matter) (from a science journal)


I think the submission guidelines should be more forthright and focused:

"If you have been in this field less than 10 years, please do not submit anything to this journal. If you do not already have an extensive list of publication credits, please do not waste our time. If you do not have at least 3 degrees behind your name, you are not qualified to write on this topic. Please submit all manuscripts in the top 3 languages of the country you are from, plus Aramaic, to prove you are qualified to be a scholar."

"Special Issues" and "Supplements"

Special Issues and Supplements can serve the same purpose: being devoted to one topic or expounding on a topic from a "regular" issue and that is what they should be used for.

Special Issues should not be so designated if it is a regular occurence (every 2nd issue of a volume for example) and there is no difference from a "regular" issue -- not even in numbering.

Supplements should not be issued at bizarre intervals from the main volume -- 2 or more years after the volume is published for example...!

Publication statements

The absurdities of publishing can be seen if one is to just look at publication statements from publishers...they can include useful information, but sometimes they just leave one more baffled... See some examples below:


In a mathematics magazine:
"...is published monthly except June and July, with a combined December/January issue..."

This one is actually a great example of what publishers should do:
"...is published in September, November, January, March and May..."

From a theological journal:
"...is published monthly except for combined issues in June/July and August/September..."

And then there is the disclaimer statement:
"...is published when enough material is available to warrant an issue..."

Tune in next time for fun with "submission guidelines."

Title Length

I understand why Charles Dickens' books were so long -- he was paid by the word when they were serialized in the newspaper. So, what is the excuse of publishers when they have titles that take up three lines? And do subtitles really add any value at all? And on the flip side there are journals that go by acronyms which mean nothing to the common patron browsing the shelves...Or those that abbreviate their titles on the spine, but their official title is quite long (e.g. The Journal which is really The Journal:Literary Magazine of Ohio State University).


I wish I knew an editor or publisher I could ask about this title conundrum -- it doesn't keep me up at night but it can make things difficult for my day to day work.


If I bind a title that has more than 2 or 3 words in it there winds up being a lot of dashed words on the spine...and titles that are acronyms are annoying to check in and display...Do I alphabetize it by the acronym? By the full title? By how most people would know it? What if more than one journal uses the same acronym but it means different things for each journal?

Missing issues

Combing through the sites and lists to find issues to replace missing ones can sometimes be amusing and sometimes it can be frustrating. Picture finding a small needle in a haystack...and you have the general idea on how the task presents itself. Most journal or magazine publishers sell their overstock to dealers who resell them to libraries at astronomical prices. These particular dealers also will create reprints of issues for a similar astronomical cost.


Yes, I understand that the dealers have overhead and shipping and handling to worry about. However, I think $280 for a 45 page issue borders on usury. The most I have ever paid to replace an issue is $16.98 ($10 for the issue and the rest was shipping and handling).

And then there was the missing issue that I tried to locate for 3 years before a helpful librarian at another school let me know that the issue was never published. I had combed through OCLC and other library catalogs but had never come across a note to say that Journal X did not publish issue 4 of v. 63....!

Sometimes working in serials I have sympathy for Sisyphus.....!

"Dead" or "Discontinued" titles

Let's think about this sensibly. If I was a publisher with a journal that needed a hiatus -- I would suspend publication. In an ideal world, this would also mean that there would be a target date to resume publication. In the strange world of serials, however, publishers must prefer to discontinue a title and then resurrect it rather than suspending it. I work at a Jesuit University and the Nicene Creed states that we believe "that he [Christ] rose again" but I don't remember this applying to serials....?
Although I try to avoid using titles in my blog posts, I will use a couple here to illustrate my point. Emerge was a serial that was published from the early 90s through 2000. In 2000, it changed its name to Savoy. Under this title it was published, but not on a consistent basis, until mid 2003. At that point the title ended completely. About a year later, in 2004, another publisher picked up the title and restarted it -- and started again at volume 1 -- but only published 2 issues. The website still exists and it looks like the magazine is a going concern, but with no new issues since 2005, I consider it a "dead" title.

Another title that believes in resurrection is American Heritage. It ceased and nearly a year later another publisher picked it up and began publishing again. Again, there have been only 2 new issues and no hint that publishing will continue.
I would like to caution publishers not to torment library workers by "discontinuing" and then resuming publication again and again on certain titles....

Tables of Content

I should change my signature to "Serials Troglodyte" instead of "Serials Serf" with the blog post topics I have been on lately. However, this next blog entry falls clearly on the side of technology.

Tables of content are very useful. It helps patrons have a "preview" of what is inside. Some professors look for certain authors or topics and they use this as a very quick screening tool. Tables of content are as inconsistently done as indices, but that is a topic for another day. Publishers that use tables of content are clever because it draws the reader to "browse" the new issues (in whatever format it is being viewed in) and sometimes leads to drawing patrons to read an issue. I laud the publishers that make tables of content available to patrons/professors via email. Oftentimes these publishers make the articles link back to the electronic versions or to the abstracts and this is also great advertising. Publishers that eschew tables of content, for whatever reason, risk patrons skipping over their publication in lieu of another one that has better "advertising" of its contents.

Since tables of content can be as short as one page with the title and author listed, why don't more publishers use them? Maybe only the "shadow" knows! :)

Indices

Those younger than Generation X, probably do not see a need for an index. After all, everything is "on the web" and "searchable" right?

The index does still have a purpose -- especially for those titles that are not accessible in a database or through a proprietary website. An index is still handy for titles that are accessible electronically, since a lot of the proprietary sites have embargoes for more current issues.
In addition, I cannot tally the number of incorrect citations that I have seen and it helps to locate an article if there is some sort of index, regardless of the format of the serial.

While I am on the topic, it would be a great boon if all indices were published in some sort of consistent manner. Publishers that publish an index two years after the volume was released are asking for it to be lost or not linked to the original item. Placing an index in the front of the next published volume is also problematic -- especially if there is no outward clue to this fact. And for some sort of bizarre reason, known only to publishers I am sure, indices often do not appear in electronic archives on proprietary sites.

Hidden enumeration

It might be too much to ask for a standardization of where enumeration and chronology are placed on a journal. So, I am content to hunt for it on the spine, the front cover, the back cover, the title page or within the publishing information. I have found a pattern of the news and sports magazines putting this information at the end of the editorial section on the last page and that is all right too. I am befuddled, though, at the publishers who cannot consistently put this information in one place. It might hold allure as a scavenger hunt for my assistants if it happened only occassionally, but....it has become a pattern for several journals. There is an entertainment magazine that I have given up predicting enumeration for. I only do cover chronology for that title anymore.

Frequency versus Cover Chronology

I understand that some journals actually use words in their titles to denote how often something is published....like Journal A Weekly, Journal X Quarterly and et cetera. I think, however, that some publishers think that frequency related words in the title are not tied to how often something is published. In general, I try not to pick on individual titles, but there is a math journal that is titled "______ Quarterly" that publishes 5 issues nearly every year. Then there is the classical journal (also called "quarterly") that publishes only 2 issues per volume. My favorite, though, is one in the management field that is called _______ Quarterly, but publishes 6 issues per volume. Have these publishers not heard of special issues? And shouldn't they change their titles to reflect the scope of the journal (as well as the frequency)?

The Dangers of Serials Work

Despite the preconceptions people have about library workers and the quiet environment surrounded by books, dust and antiquarians, the reality for serials workers is much different. The reality of serials work is that it is fraught with dangers: paper cuts, envelope cuts, broken nails from trying to pry open the "easy open" plastic sheafs the journals arrive in, dry skin, the risk of tetanus when dealing with staples and the most dreaded of all -- microfiche cuts. Since microfiche is so much thinner than paper, it is sharp and does cut if you are rifling through a drawer's worth of fiche.

Serials in other formats

Serials are a bit of a challenge when presented in formats other than print. Space issues demand that other formats exist. But there are issues that arise.

• Databases don't always include graphics or tables. Also, due to the Tasini case, some freelance work is not included in proprietary databases (though that may change due to the recent ruling in the Georgia case on e-reserves). Additionally, product ads, classified ads and stock tickers are often not included. These exclusions make it a challenge for patrons that are looking for those items and access is not available.


• Microforms are actually a great format, but some in the library community keep trying to sound the death knell of these formats because of digitization. I've been in serials for 8 years and we just bought yet another microform reading machine and so I am skeptical about the impending obsolescence of this material type. The machine we bought will allow editing and saving as .pdf files and that has come in handy.


• Electronic access to publisher sites through urls are problematic and depend on a whole host of issues in order to make sure that access is kept available and consistent.

I know that "print" serials will disappear, but access to the other formats of serials will also become obsolete and we will still need ways to utilize those "older" formats and access the same information contained there. Not to sound like a troglodyte, but it is so much easier to "access" information if you can go to the shelf, pull down the volume and open it to the correct page.

Editors, Publishers and Numbering

There must be a place in the universe somewhere that editors gather and conspire on making arbitrary changes to serials that will frustrate library workers. It would amuse me to be able to work for a publisher for 6 months or so to see if decisions really are carefully thought out or completely arbitrary in some cases.

One case that comes to mind is the weekly magazine that changed publishers and decided to start over with volume 1 at that point. The magazine got so many complaints about this decision (from libraries) that after volume 3 it went back to the old numbering as if volumes 1 through 3 never existed and there had been continuous numbering all along (it was on volume 176 when it changed publishers and went to volume 180 right after year 3). I can imagine what a mess this made for catalogers since it certainly made trying to get the MARC records to display correctly in the ILS a challenge.

Another journal, this time in the science field, that caused great concern was one that just dropped all numbering and chronology altogether. After 3 or 4 months the publisher did put the chronology back onto the cover, but it made it hard to check in an item that had no enumeration and no chronology! The journal editor did write a piece in one of the issues about why the change was made -- to make the journal appear current no matter when someone picked it up.

Name changes and splits

I think the one that comes to mind for name changes would be a journal that is in the education field and changed its title 5 times -- alternating back and forth between two titles. And then there is my favorite one in the physics field that split into sections A-G, but spun off even more with the subsections splitting off as well. That title wound up with 17 titles!

Odd regular, irregular and unknown publishing

It seems reasonable to me that a publisher would have some sort of timeline in mind when publishing a serial. I understand that there are subjects where few articles are generated and it takes a while to amass enough to publish. That should be when irregular or odd regular publishing schedules are utlilized. There are a couple of publishers who seem to take great delight, though, in publishing at such odd intervals that it makes trying to create a receipt pattern or a chronology pattern in an ILS nigh to impossible.

I once had an 8 year lag between cover chronology and actual chronology. Right now there are at least a dozen publications that are subscribed to by my library that are at least 2 years or more behind schedule. At what point does the publisher give up on back dating the cover and just deal with the year it actually is? When I received that 1992 issue back in 2000 I was befuddled. I had to hunt through old Kardex cards and through the catalog to find the record needed and then update everything. The situation became even odder when the publisher then decided to skip those intervening years and pick up with 2001 cover chronology!

Prepub web publishing of serials contents

Prepublishing onto a proprietary website or database the can create a problems for people dealing with serials. The main problem is that professors see the abstract or the advertising for the website and automatically assume that the library or corporation has access to the full content. There is often a time lag between when it is prepublished on that proprietary website and the availability of print or electronic access elsewhere. The serials person is then left trying to hunt down some other means of access or document delivery and can result in an irate patron who needed access when it was first requested.

Size changes of issues

I am sure there are good reasons for changing the physical size of a serial. Normally, this is a not an issue. :) However, those publishers who change sizes during the middle of a volume create havoc. Then the issue will not display in a stack very well. It causes minor problems when binding as well. And sometimes the format or layout is changed sufficiently that it complicates trying to find something in the newer issues. And then there are always the publishers that change sizes for one or two issues and then revert back to the original size -- causing a whole another set of nightmares.

Roman Numerals

Roman numerals are always a fun thing to deal with. I was fortunate enough to have taught seven classes (in one day) on Roman numerals once. Since they are pretty standard it is no problem for me to read them. However, sometimes the patrons or my assistants are not able to get a handle on what symbol stands for which number. And then there is always the fun that is created when the publisher loses track of where they are and then places whatever one they want (or so it seems) on the issue. Then there are the publishers who insist on using "X" as many times as they want -- disregarding the regular rules and making me have to go "ok, was that X for 10 more or to take away from the next symbol?"

Foreign Serials

I like foreign serials. They always have a different take on the world or the subject area they are writing on. However, it is often a bit of a hunt to find where they have put the date, volume, year and et cetera that the Integrated Library System (ILS) demands you enter. Sometimes the information is upside down on the spine and then it makes it fun to put the items on the browsing shelves in reverse chronological order -- because it makes them seem upside down. Sometimes they are hidden in the front or back of the issue. I applaud those, however, that actually publish the date and information on the cover.

Seriously Strange Serials

The serials world can be seriously strange. It is a wonder that serials personnel keep their sanity and that anyone stays working in that field. I have been in the serials field for a while now and have noticed one prominent trend: everything changes. This is part of what makes the serials world fun -- and sometimes frustrating. The way I cope with the changes is by approaching the serials world and its strangeness with a sense of humor.