Editorial
| Published date | 10 February 2020 |
| Pages | 1-3 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-02-2020-049 |
| Date | 10 February 2020 |
| Author | Juan D. Machin-Mastromatteo,Anna Maria Tammaro |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Records management & preservation,Information repositories |
Editorial
Welcome to Digital LibraryPerspectives (DLP). It is been a while since we had an editorial for
opening an issue of the journal. In fact, since the journalwas renamed to DLP, we only had
one in a guest-edited issue. With theturn of the decade, we are changing this, to ensure that
readers also get a welcoming note as a presentation to the issue and a friendly update on
what we are doing, which articles are presenting,and if there is also anything noteworthy to
highlight in the field of digitallibraries and information systems.
Editorially, we are working harder to improve DLP and we have thus reached some
important milestones, such askeeping the periodicity, ensuring a very prompt and efficient
workflow from submission to publication and, during past year, we have been receivingan
increasing number of manuscriptsubmissions that are also increasing in quality.All of this
has been possible and is further reinforced by our readers, the contributing authors, our
editorial board, the support of the peer reviewers and, of course, the support of our
publisher.
We are looking forward to transcending the confines of the journal’sformat and build a
community around it. To do so, during 2019, we have started a Facebook page for DLP[1]
and a Twitter account[2] to have a social media presence and for bringing more
opportunities to engage with our community; you are most welcome to visit and follow us
there. In these social media sites, we have been featuring the new articles as they are
becoming available through EarlyCite, which is Emerald’s early publication option before
the appearance of the full issue. We are also encouraging authorsto submit a video abstract
of their article (if you are interested in doing so, please check Emerald’sguidelines for this),
we have published the first call for papers, although we are permanently welcoming high
quality research articles to maintain DLP’s periodicity; and we will also be sharing video
editorials.
Why is all of the above important? We believe that this allows working toward
improving DLP’s quality and positioningwithin library and information science journals, to
build a more dynamic communityaround the journal and, lastly, altmetrics.
Here is a relevant thought exercise: When was the lasttime you read through all or most
of a scientific journal? The vertiginousspeed of our daily lives and our current academic and
research endeavors might have driven us away from this long-gone practice. When we
study or conduct research, the most usual practice is just to center on the most relevant
articles that we retrieve and sometimes we do not even look at the titles of the journals
publishing them, except when it is time to reference them. We pose another provocative
question: What needs to occur for us to go back and enjoy readingor looking throughout a
whole journal issue?
Going back to the topic of altmetrics, as you may know, we have been at a crossroads
regarding the assessment of research visibility and impact. Altmetrics is an alternative to
bibliometrics and it seeks to measure research’s visibility in places that are not necessarily
scientific. So, if a research product is being shared in social media, blogs, Wikipedia, has
readers in Mendeley, and is being featured in news sites, then its altmetrics scoreincreases.
Hence, as citations, altmetrics allows measuring the interest toward a given research
product; but the difference is that it is measured much more quickly than citations. The
challenge is that altmetrics has not yet been universally considered for assessing research
visibility and impact. Althoughthey are very useful indicators for researchers, especially for
those who study these topics.
Editorial
1
DigitalLibrary Perspectives
Vol.36 No. 1, 2020
pp. 1-3
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2059-5816
DOI 10.1108/DLP-02-2020-049
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