School Libraries Worldwide is the only scholarly journal in the field focused entirely on research and practice in school librarianship on a global level. As the official research journal for the International Association of School Librarianship, SLW supports the mission of its parent organization "the establishment and development of school librarianship in every country in the world." SLW solicits and publishes high-quality research articles from global contributors, building a knowledge-base for international school librarianship. This worldwide perspective enables teacher librarians and school library educators to investigate institutional factors that shape our profession, strengthening the practice of school librarianship throughout the world. Manuscripts undergo a double-blind review process involving a panel of two reviewers with initial outcomes usually provided within three months. Instructions for submissions are detailed in SLW's submission guidelines.
Research Papers: Both quantitative and qualitative research papers are encouraged. Such reports describe the design and methodology, and present the results of a study of an innovation or the application of theory to issues and methods in school librarianship. They typically contain a statement of problem or description of the issue to be explored, a review of the research literature, a section describing research methodology, the results of the study, and implications for future research.
Literature Reviews: Literature reviews must be in the form either of a qualitative or a quantitative summary (i.e., meta-analysis). Reviews explore the research literature on a topic in order to determine major issues of importance for future research, to understand these issues in relation to theory and application, to find the frontier of research on a problem, to relate a problem to existing theory, or to put a conceptualized problem in the context of previous research.
Critical Scholarship: Scholarship in this category involves working within contemporary alternative research paradigms, grounded in critical theory, philosophy, narrative studies, postmodern and post-structural studies, historical research, discourse analysis, post colonial and feminist studies. These papers typically identify and explicate the type of analysis to be used, followed by the analysis itself.
School Libraries Worldwide is a diamond open access journal that provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports the greater global exchange of knowledge. Authors will never be charged to submit or publish a manuscript through School Libraries Worldwide, and all articles will be made available under a Creative Commons license, as indicated in the Copyright Notice section under the Submission Guidelines.
School Libraries Worldwide is archived with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Preservation Network and Scholars Portal Journals. These programs offer a decentralized and distributed preservation, perpetual access, and preservation of the authentic original version of the content.
Under the terms of the Creative Commons license, authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in School Libraries Worldwide as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.
This journal is committed to upholding the highest standards in research publication ethics. The editors are committed to eliminating plagiarism and other forms of publication misconduct and fraud within our journal. Any detected cases of misconduct are vigorously pursued. This journal fully endorses the COPE International Standards for Editors and Authors. In addition, all editors affirm and abide by the Ethical Practices of Journal Editors: Voluntary Code of Conduct.
About SLW
School Libraries Worldwide is the official professional peer-reviewed (refereed) research journal of the International Association of School Librarianship. Beginning 2021, SLW will be published on a rolling basis, online-only.
School Libraries Worldwide is indexed in Children Literature Abstracts, Contents Pages in Education, Educational Resources Information Clearing house (ERIC), Library Literature, and Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA).
