Journal Policies
Authorship Policy
ISTL has adopted the authorship statement drafted by McNutt et al. (2018):
“Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND to have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND to have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature” (p.25).
When there is an unresolved question about authorship or competing interests in a submitted paper, the editors will delay the review and production processes until a satisfactory resolution of all unresolved issues has been reached.
Works submitted for publication must not have been previously published in other venues nor be concurrently submitted elsewhere for publication. Manuscripts that derive from material previously presented at conferences may be considered if they have been substantially revised.
Co-First Authorship
When authors of a submission request co-first authorship, column editors will indicate this by adding an asterisk after each author name on the galley with a note below the author names that states “*co-first authors, all subsequent authors equally contributed and listed alphabetically.” Contributor Roles may be further defined if needed using the CRediT definitions. For example,
Conceptualization, Luna; Methodology, Luna and Strunk; Investigation, Luna, Strunk, Whittle, and Matanabe; Writing – Original Draft, Luna and Strunk; Writing – Review & Editing, Luna and Strunk; Resources, Strunk.; Supervision, Luna and Strunk.
In addition, this information may be added to an Authors’ Contributions section in the manuscript. Contributions to the work that do not meet the criteria of Authorship as defined by CRediT may be indicated in an Acknowledgements section.
Data Sharing and Reproducibility
Authors are encouraged to deposit research data in a data repository and provide a citation and link to the data within the article manuscript. Authors may use their own institution’s digital repository or use re3data.org to find a relevant repository.
Generative AI Tools Policy
ISTL’s editorial board acknowledges the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its evolving roles in our lives. This generative AI policy is therefore subject to change. For this policy, AI refers to generative large-language model (LLM) tools and does not include citation software or plagiarism detectors.
The use of generative AI tools in authorship
Authorship is a distinctly human endeavor. As such, authors may not list a generative AI tool as a co-author. Authors who use these tools to assist with aspects of their research or to prepare their manuscripts must bear all responsibility for their submitted work. Authors are also required to acknowledge use according to the following guidelines.
Acknowledging use of generative AI tools
Generating, analyzing, or organizing content: Authors who use generative AI for content creation, language translation, data analysis, or organizing results are required to describe how, when, and to what extent AI was used in an appropriate section of the text. In a refereed article, the appropriate section will normally be the methods section. Authors should cite the generative AI tool according to the current version of the APA style guide (see specific examples of citing AI tools in APA style). Authors are also required to include the full output of the generative AI tool as an appendix.
Discovering source materials: Authors who use generative AI technology to discover source materials are responsible for verifying and citing those materials as usual.
Editing text: Authors should not use generative AI tools to write their manuscript, but authors who use generative AI tools to improve grammar, syntax, style, and overall readability should include a note detailing such use in the cover letter when submitting a manuscript. Authors do not need to disclose such detail in the methods section (or another appropriate section for articles without a methods section). Grammar checkers and word processing programs with auto-complete functionality are permitted and are considered editing.
The use of generative AI tools in figures, images, and artwork
We do not permit the use of generative AI tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts. This may include enhancing, obscuring, moving, removing, or introducing a specific feature within an image or figure. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original.
The only exception is if the use of generative AI tools is part of the research design or research methods (such as an AI-assisted imaging approach to generate or interpret the research data or a corpus of works, for example in the field of special collections and archives). When this is done, such use must be described in a reproducible manner in the methods section. This should include an explanation of how the generative AI tools were used in the image creation or alteration process, when the tool was used, and the name of the model or tool, version and extension numbers, and manufacturer. Authors should adhere to the generative AI software’s specific usage policies and ensure correct content attribution. Where applicable, authors could be asked to provide pre-AI-adjusted versions of images and/or the composite raw images used to create the final submitted versions, for editorial assessment.
The use of generative AI tools in the editing and peer-review process
No submitted content (review manuscripts, supplementary materials) may be entered into generative AI tools as this violates the confidentiality of the peer-review process. Peer reviewers and editors may not use generative AI tools to write their assessment, but they may use the tools to improve the grammar, syntax, style, and overall readability of their comments.
ISTL peer reviewers focus their reviews on assessing the quality, validity, and significance of submissions, including those submissions that use generative AI. The use of generative AI, when disclosed, will be considered in relation to the guidelines above. Concerns about misuse or improper acknowledgement should be brought to the editorial team so they may address these concerns through communication with the authors.
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Applying generative AI technology should be done with human oversight and control and authors should carefully review and edit the result, because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. The authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the content of the work.
Authors who use generative AI tools for aspects of their manuscript that are not explicitly addressed in this policy should query the ISTL editorial team prior to submission: stribelhorn@sdsu.edu. We also welcome feedback on this policy.
We would like to acknowledge that our policy was greatly influenced by the Communications in Information Literacy policy, the Elsevier policy, the COPE position statement on authorship and AI tools, and the APA policy on the use of generative artificial intelligence in scholarly materials. Thank you!
Name Change Policy
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship recognizes that authors may change their names for a variety of reasons, including - but not limited to – gender identity, marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. We respect that there may be sensitivities surrounding name changes and wish to reduce or remove any barriers to inclusion, professional mobility, and author credit. We respect the right of our authors to their own identities. It is therefore our policy to facilitate changes to author names, e-mail addresses, pronouns, and any other identifiers that may be necessary as a result in the change of author name. Going forward, all requests to make a name or pronoun change will be honored. In order to protect authors’ privacy, ISTL will not publish a correction notice, nor require any form of proof or supporting documentation.
It would be helpful for authors requesting name changes to identify the articles that require the name change. The relevant papers will be “republished”, meaning that they will be fully replaced online, and that their indexing metadata (which affects how authors appear in various databases) should subsequently be updated accordingly; however, we acknowledge that we are not able to enforce the replacement of metadata on other platforms. While the author name is replaced, citation information such as the DOI for the paper remains the same. All previous citations to the paper remain valid.
In order to enable co-authors to update the way they cite the paper in the future, we recommend informing them of the name change to the article.
Please note that we will not normally facilitate changes to correct spelling errors that were present in the author versions, out-of-date affiliation details, or changes to e-mail addresses that do not result from name changes. We are also unable to correct citations to papers in which a name change has been made.
Process for requesting a name change:
- Contact Sarah Tribelhorn or Hannah Lee, Co-Editors-in-chief.
- Verify that you are requesting the name change for yourself. Note: no official documents are required for this request.
Publication Ethics Policy
Articles with serious research errors, or showing signs of research misconduct (including plagiarism), will be investigated by an editorial committee made up of the editor-in-chief and two members of the editorial board. If a published article is found to have research misconduct, that article will be retracted from publication. This will entail marking the article galleys “Retracted” with an explanation and retraction date appended to the article to explain the retraction. Other errors, such as errors in unpublished manuscripts, may be addressed at the discretion of the editorial board, including by rejection of the manuscript. Reviewers who suspect research or publication misconduct in a submitted manuscript should contact the Editor-in-chief with a detailed explanation of what the perceived misconduct is.
Misconduct Investigation Procedures
If an author of a submitted (but as yet unpublished) manuscript or a published article is suspected of research misconduct, ISTL will initiate an impartial and confidential investigation. The investigation will be conducted by an editorial committee made up of the editor-in-chief and two members of the editorial board. The committee will review the allegations, and determine what additional information is necessary to make a decision. If necessary, the committee will interview the authors(s), as well as all other individuals involved in the publication. The investigation may involve the sharing of relevant information among the committee members. Any such information will be shared in a secure fashion. The editor may also contact other journal editors or institutional review boards to ascertain if there has been possible data fabrication, lack of ethical approval, serious plagiarism, or duplicate publication affecting multiple papers. This will only occur in the event that a response from the author(s) is inadequate or there is no response at all within a reasonable time (e.g. a month).
Post-Publication Discussion and Correction
Readers are welcome to respond to or debate content published in ISTL by submitting a letter to the editor. This will be published in the next available issue.
Special Issues
ISTL occasionally publishes special issues on focused topics of interest. Special issues may or may not have guest editors. Special issues' articles follow the same peer review process as other ISTL refereed articles. The Co-Editors-in-Chief maintain responsibility over the entire journal (including special issues) and oversees the work of any guest editors.
