ALIA's Taskforce on...[scholarly] publishing, and the Journal

Readers may already be aware that the Board of Directors of ALIA has established a taskforce whose terms of reference are as follow:

The ALIA Taskforce shall investigate and advise the Board of Directors on the future purpose and directions for ALIA publishing and actions to be taken over the next two years to build a longer-term program.

Promotional and marketing materials are outside the scope of the review.

The Taskforce should consider future models, recommended formats and coverage for scholarly publishing by the Association. This is to include, but is not limited to:

Publication of ALIA's journals ALJ and AARL, and inCite news magazine in an electronic environment, and channel conflicts that may arise;

The relationships of ALIA's news magazine, inCite, and communications and alerting service such as aliaNEWS, to a scholarly publishing program;

Other opportunities for publications, either electronic or print;

Development of a publishing model that can adapt to change;

Business models for publications

Best practice for publishing by professional associations;

Other matters as determined by the ALIA Board of Directors or that may arise during the Taskforce's deliberations.

Note the refinement implied by the phrase in the Taskforce's warrant '...future models, recommended formats and coverage for scholarly [my emphasis] publishing by the Association.' ALIA's website refers to the Journal as ALIA's 'scholastic' publication, which is not quite the same thing, but it does reflect a common view of the Journal.

The terms of reference are mute, however, on the definition of 'scholarly'. Although we were once used to talk of 'scholar-librarians' they were always a rare breed, and today are all but extinct. Further, the word 'scholar' is no longer in common usage, not even in the tertiary institutions where they might be expected to swarm, and each dictionary seems to offer a different variant. Most people employed in the universities go by the descriptor 'academic' (noun) and indeed it is academics (or educators, as ALIA seems to prefer) from whom the Journal draws a significant proportion of its copy. Indeed, our previous issue was largely devoted to contributions from a single institution: but although the articles were excellent, one or two even philosophical, we would hesitate to call them scholarly. Intellectually rigorous, certainly. Professionally challenging. Pragmatic rather than rarefied. But 'scholarly'? And although these particular contributions emanated from the academy, they were firmly based, as perhaps they should be in a vocational context, in professional practice. This seems to be the norm, at least as far as contributions to the Journal are concerned: of all the contributions that are received (as distinct from published) in any one year, only one or two are entirely theoretical, philosophical, reflective, or scholarly and untrammelled by concern for day-to-day professional considerations. And they may not invariably emanate from the academy. This perhaps reflects a degree of maturity in the profession's development? Curiously, in the sister vocations of archives and records management, there is appears to be much more concern with the 'why' than in librarianship. This depends of course on where any individual stands in the occupational spectrum, with those on the digital side of things generally focused on 'howness' rather than 'whyness'. In addition, in the majority of professional contexts our priorities are determined outside the library. Even in the universities, which have now embraced vocational and fiscal drivers to the exclusion or at least the disadvantage of the purely intellectual or philosophical, disinterested scholarship is much thinner on the ground than once was the case.

Nevertheless the Journal certainly publishes, and should continue to publish, 'scholarly' (however that term is defined) material, but as is asserted below, it should not, indeed cannot, publish this to the exclusion of other kinds of contribution. To illustrate, Library Quarterly is an exclusively scholarly [or research] publication. ALJ is not. Nevertheless it satisfies a number of the criteria for a scholarly journal:

It is stable, and has a clearly defined authority.

It operates on the basis of peer review.

Authorship and provenance is always clearly identified.

It is accessible to all who may wish to consult it.

Articles are publicly available in a stable format over the long term.

The contribution must be recorded in/on a durable medium.

Content must be reliably accessible and retrievable over time.

There should be a commitment not to withdraw the publication.

The publication must be publicly available, that is, available to any member of the public on demand as of right, whether for payment of a fee or not.

The publication should have stable identifiers.

(Adapted from Leah Halliday, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University UK 'Scholarly communication, scholarly publication and the status of emerging formats', Information Research, vol 6 n⩝ 4, July 2001)

These criteria are certainly debatable, and I suspect that they reflect a discussion which is taking place in the United Kingdom, and whose particular nuances are obscure to us. But what is interesting about them is that the roles of neither the editor nor the publisher are defined. In the production of the Australian Library Journal the picture is clearer: the publisher is the professional body and the role of the editor is to secure on a sustainable basis sufficient copy of an appropriate standard. S/he obtains opinion on its worthiness for publication by referring it to referees, and in the light of their advice renders it into a publishable form, often in discussion with the author and/or the referee. This copy is then submitted to the publisher [ALIA] on a regular (quarterly) basis. Referees are members of the profession, academic or otherwise, in good standing, and not the least onerous of the editor's duties is to ensure that the cadre of referees is sufficiently numerous as to ensure a reasonable distribution of the workload (which is undertaken on a purely voluntary basis) and representative of the profession as a whole. The Editorial Board's role is to advise the editor, but it does not routinely, as was once the case, assess individual contributions: this is now the role of the referees. The maintenance of the subscriber base, the marketing of the Journal, the management of advertising, the pricing of subscriptions, the management of copyright, the makeup of pages, printing and mail out are all the province of the publisher in the shape of the National Office. Book reviews are managed by Dr G Gorman of the Victoria University of Wellington.

I have been the editor for two separate periods: 1981-1991 and from 1995. Early in each term, I defined by way of my first editorial what I thought the role of the Journal, and by reflexion, the duties of its editor should be:

ALIA is a professional body: one of the attributes of a genuine profession is that it generates and publishes articles (including accounts of research) - the 'literature' - about the disciplines which comprise it, usually by way of an authoritative journal.
The Journal is open to all members of the Association, and it should not therefore be regarded as the vehicle of any particular group, set or interest within it. It should reflect, to the Association, and the outside world, the achievements, concerns and interests of its members. It should therefore be receptive to contributions from all sectors of the Association, and in the case of contributions of outstanding merit, from individuals who are not members.
It follows that the Journal, although it may, and often does, publish contributions from the academic sector, many of them outstanding and perhaps even scholarly additions to the literature, ought not to restrict itself to material from that sector.
It further follows that the Journal is not, nor should it be, exclusively academic or scholarly in its coverage - quite apart from the fact that a reliance on scholarly contributions would make for a very slim serial. Nevertheless, a contribution from a practitioner or an academic [as distinct from a 'scholar'], provided it meets the overarching requirements of authenticity, readability and authority and makes a genuine contribution to the sum total of professional awareness, is as welcome as one from the scholar.
The Journal is the Association's 'nursery' for beginning contributors to the literature of our disciplines, and the editor should be unusually receptive to, and encouraging of, contributions from those who may not have previously published in the professional literature. These first contributions may lack the scholarship or the maturity of the established author, but many of those who are now established in the profession published their first article in these pages.

The question of the primary format of the Journal - should it be print or digital - is also an issue, though the extent to which format of first resort and scholarship intersect is not yet clear. But it is apparent that digital is not a cost-neutral option, and it is certainly not a simple question to resolve. At some stage we might reasonably enquire of our private subscribers which format is preferable for them, and there are signs that even those for whom broadband is so accessible an option as to be invisible, would not in the first instance opt for the digital version. The institutions are another matter, and one can imagine that the patterns of use and other factors such as the costs of storing and accessing a non-digital copy might well incline them to opt for the electronic format.

These are all questions which will emerge during the Taskforce's deliberations, although it may not be in a position to resolve them within the very limited timeframe it has been afforded. It may also emerge that even the relatively small quota of scholarly material which is currently available for publication is of limited interest to the readership, whatever the editor thinks. However, the Journal is not the publication of a collective, nor can it be. Popular taste is notoriously unsteady, as the price of advertising company shares attests, and it would be folly to pursue it as a criterion for publication.

The issues facing the Taskforce are many and complex: not least of which is the entire question of scholarly publication: we wish its members, and its chair, Maxine Brodie, well. We believe that the Journal does have a considerable position in the publication of scholarly material in the disciplines which comprise the profession and we therefore await the outcome of the deliberations of the Taskforce with considerable interest.

In this issue we publish with sorrow and a deep sense of loss, the obituary for the late Wilma Radford, composed with admiration and affection by Dr David Jones and Dr Neil Radford: Wilma was a beacon for several generations of us, and we will miss her quiet but formidable presence. Dr Paul Genoni and his colleague Dr Kerrie Smith of Curtin University build on earlier work by Dr Genoni in identifying just what happens to graduates of library and records management courses from Curtin. Roxanne Missingham and her colleagues Margarita Moreno and Anne Xu review the achievements and complexities of Copies Direct, a service devised by the National Library to enable all interested Australians to more effectively gain access to 'their national documentary heritage'. Can't wait to get into it. Jennifer Kirton and Lyn Barton review the dimensions of information literacy in the workplace (as distinct from the classroom) and suggest that there is a considerable opportunity for those special librarians who work in a corporate context to take a leading role in the inculcation, improvement and diffusion of information literacy at the coalface. Professor Bill Martin, not a stranger to these pages, reviews the interplay between archives and knowledge management via a case-based examination of the National Archives of Australia and reveals that much progress is being made there. Dr David Jones, a true scholar-librarian, shares with us an illuminating and absorbing account of the meeting of minds when, in 1946, Lionel McColvin, then Librarian of the City of Westminster, was invited to Australia with a commission to report on the state of Australia's libraries, his principal host being John Metcalfe, a formative, even a dominant figure on the Australian library scene. Both were eminent, but neither was even faintly grise. A fascinating skirmish.

Book reviews a-plenty, of course: there's an opportunity for you to get your name into print and incidentally sharpen your critical faculties by signing up as one of our energetic cadre of reviewers. Look over the reviews in this issue with a critical eye: I'm sure you will come to the conclusion that you could do it as well or better than our seasoned reviewers. Step up!

An apology to Dr Yeslam Al-Saggaf, a contributor to our August issue, for the misspelling of his name on the contents page.

Thanks to all of those who have assisted the Journal this year: the authors of articles and book reviews which have graced these pages; Jennefer Nicholson, ALIA's executive director, always supportive; Dr Gary Gorman, book reviews editor; Ivan Trundle, witty, acerbic and informed observer; Emma Davis, dogged and dedicated in keeping the Journal on track and getting it into print, and her successor, Karen McVicker; Sharon Cunningham, girl friday and understudy and back-up to both; to Drs Broadbent, Clayton, Jones, and Radford, the patient and committed members of the Journal's Editorial Board. And not least, my gratitude to the subscribers!

One last thing: the censors among us have had their day with obscenity and blasphemy: now it's the occasion for unleashing the concept of sedition, that last unsavoury element in an unlovely trio and the pretext for resort to judicial execution or exile by many a tyrant, monarchic or otherwise, and as a means of restricting what the rest of us can read, write and utter. I speculate as to what will happen to the librarian accused of distributing via her/his collections material which the nomenklatura of the burgeoning anti-terrorist industry deem to be seditious.

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