College and Research Libraries Letters To the Editor: It was with some surprise that I opened the July 1996 issue of C&RL to find an article by Barbara Via · entitled "Publishing in the Journal Literature of Library and Information Science: A Sur- vey of Manuscript Review Processes and Acceptance." In that article Via states that she was updating a previous study done by me (which, in turn, built upon a study by Phyllis Van Orden and Daniel O'Connor). The surprise I experienced was due to the fact that I have just con- ducted a study building upon my previ- ous work and, at the time the C&RL is- sue was received, my paper was being reviewed for publicat;ion by the editors of Library Journal. I should state that I do not dispute Via's findings or method. What I do have a problem with, however, is the apparent renunciation of research protocols and the absence of professional courtesy that this published paper rep- resents. Several years ago I was intrigued by the survey of Van Orden and O'Connor and thought that updated information could be of interest to prospective au- thors. At that time I contacted the authors and asked if they intended to conduct a follow-up study. When they informed me that they had no such plans I sent a ques- tionnaire to editors. I received no such query from Via and, since I had assumed that I had something of an intellectual claim staked, planned to undertake the follow-up. The work I have done, how- ever, is rendered redundant by the ap- pearance of the article. Library education probably has to ac- cept some responsibility for less than adequate preparation of librarians as re- searchers. We educators should be more diligent in our efforts to acculturate stu- dents into the society of researchers, and its attendant responsibilities. Individuals, 575 though, need to accept the re- sponsibility that accompanies ~ publication. This letter may sound, to some, like sour grapes, but the breach of cour- tesy that the article represents transcends the sensibilities of l!::::====..~ any one individual. I hope that this inci- dent can serve to increase an awareness of protocol and that such an experience can be avoided in the future. John M. Budd University of Missouri-Columbia Author's Response: In response to Professor Budd's letter, I am sorry if he feels that I was profes- sionally discourteous and I regret any inconvenience that the publishing of my article may have caused him in pursu- ing his own research. Barbara Via University of Albany, SUNY To the Editor: In the July 1996 issue of C&RL, we read an article by Barbara J. Via in which our recently published monograph was re- ferred to in this manner: In a recent monograph, Guide to Pub- lishing Opportunities for Librarians, Carol F. Schroeder and Gloria Roberson define a refereed journal as "one in which submitted manu- scripts are evaluated by an indepen- dent expert or a panel of experts. The reviewers evaluating the manuscript may be members of the journals' editorial board, or external review- ers, or a combination of both" The list of refereed journals provided in the book includes several titles that did not include on the survey re- ported here that they employ a ref- eree process in their review of manu- 576 College & Research Libraries scripts. These titles included: The Bottom Line, Collection Building, and The International Journal of Micro- graphics and Optical Technology. We wish to advise you of the follow- ing errors, and request that you consider publishing a correction. 1) The Bottom Line is not refereed and we never indicated in our book that it was a refereed journal. 2) The International Journal of Micro- graphics and Optical Techcnology is not included in our book, and there seems to be no explanation for Via's reference to it. 3) Collection Building is refereed. We endeavored to support the veracity of our survey by consulting the journal itself. In "Guidelines for Contributors" (Collec- tion Building, Vol. 14, No.1, 1955) it states that "other than solicited articles, all manuscripts will be blind-refereed prior to publication." Further, in "Guidelines for Contributors" (Vol. 15, No.3, 1966) it states that "each paper submitted to Col- lection Building is ... reviewed by the edi- tor for general stability." If found to be suitable, "two reviewers are selected and a blind review process takes place." As conscientious librarians, we feel that the explanations presented here clearly demonstrate that Via's statement concerning Guide to Publishing Opportu- nities as "misinformation on whether given journals are refereed or not abounds" does not apply. Thank you in advance for your atten- tion to this matter. Author's Response: Carol Schroeder Gloria Roberson Adelphi University The above letter from Carol F. Schroeder and Gloria Roberson points out errors in my article. Schroeder and Roberson are indeed due an apology for the editing error I inadvertently allowed to appear in the published article. It ap- November 1996 pears, from my rereading of the article, that somehow, in one of numerous re- writes, I repeated titles of journals which Molly Skeen listed as refereed in her book (which I also cite), in my reference to Schroeder and Roberson's book. The titles that I intended to cite from Schroeder and Roberson's list of refereed journals are: The Acquisitions Librarian, Public Library Quarterly, The Reference Li- brarian, and Resource Sharing and Infor- mation Networks. Both the Acquisitions Li- brarian and the Reference Librarian, edited by Bill Katz, solicit all manuscripts. The editor of Public Library Quarterly indi- cated on my survey that he alone decided on acceptance. The editor of Resource Sharing and Information Networks indi- cated that he alone reviews and decides on manuscripts, except in cases where the subject of the manuscript is outside his areas of expertise. While I regret the errors in my article, I do stand by my assertion that Schroeder and Roberson's book, and the others I cited, do not provide their readers with reliable information as to which journals are refereed. Schroeder and Roberson define a refereed journal as being "one in which submitted manuscripts are evaluated by an independent expert or a panel of experts. The reviewers evaluat- ing the manuscript may be members of the journals' editorial board, or external reviewers; or a combination of both." By this definition, any journal, except those wherein the editor and/ or the editorial staff alone review and make the accep- tance decision, would qualify as refereed. The list of refereed journals provided by Schroeder and Roberson, in an otherwise excellent author's guide, does not help to clarify for the prospective author which journals are truly and consistently refereed. The differing answers provided by jour- nal editors to Schroeder and Roberson's survey and my survey provide further evidence that for the field of library and information science the concept of a ref- ereed journal is not well defined, nor con- sistently applied. Barbara f. Via University of Albany, SUNY To the Editor: In the July 1996 issue of C&RL, Bar- bara J. Via made several statements with which I, most respectfully, disagree. In several places in her article, Via con- cludes that the more articles that are pub- lished, the lower the quality of the aver- age article. She quotes Eric Moon: "per- haps the most constructive single thing that could be accomplished would be to persuade at least one in three publishers of a library periodical to cease publica- tion." Later she states, "most certainly spreads the limited number of quality articles among diffuse journals." Via presumes that there is some magic number of high-quality articles written each year. Is that number equal to the precise number that will fit into ten journals or twenty-two journals or thirty-seven journals. Everyone knows of fine articles refused by one journal and accepted by another. Where do these articles fit in the magic number theory? Do we have any genuine research on the relative quality of articles in various journals? Why doesn't someone gather a group of referees to blind review a ran- dom selection of articles in several jour- nals? I believe several prestigious jour- nals are running on past glory. Is ours a richer profession because Wilson Library Bulletin is gone? Will American Libraries and Library Journal im- Letters 577 prove because Wilson is gone? Are we better off because we do not have Mary Jackson's monthly interlibrary loan col- umn to read? Journals serve another purpose. When I announced the first issue of the Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery and Information Supply, I received several let- ters thanking me. The letter writers felt that interlibrary loan was not really a field of librarianship unless it had a jour- nal. A journal certifies and legitimizes an area of expertise. It may be true that the scope of some of the articles in smaller field journals are narrow. I do not read journals about music librarianship. They are out of my area, but how often will someone write an article about music librarianship that has enough general interest to be pub- lished in C&RL? Via does not seem to understand that the economics of publishing journals has changed. Formerly, journal publishing was so expensive that only large print runs were economical. Therefore, only a few journals in each subject were profit- able. As the price of short print runs has declined, the economics of journals ad- dressed to smaller audiences has become more practical. The future economics of journal pub- lishing probably mean that even more specialized journals will emerge. My advice to Via is to vote with your checkbook. Do not subscribe. Lester R. Morris Editor, Journal of Interlibrary, Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply A CURE FOR AIDS WILL HAVE TO GET PAST THE FDA. THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION. AND THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL. 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