Welcome to the September 2013 issue of the EBLIP Journal. For academics this time of year presents time to consolidate, reflect and plan in preparation for the year ahead. From an EBLIP journal point of view, a presentation that I prepared for the EBLIP7 conference at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada in July provided this opportunity for consolidation and reflection. The conference was a welcome opportunity to meet with some of our users in person, as well as to provide them with a journal update. As many of our users were not able to attend the conference I want to use this editorial as an opportunity to share the information that was presented in Saskatchewan.

The journal has continued to grow and develop, however it remains a zero budget publication that is firmly rooted in practice. All our editorial team members contribute to the journal on top of their day jobs, so to meet with the growing editorial workload the team has been expanded to nine people (http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/about/editorialTeam). To ensure quality and consistency the copyediting team has also expanded to eight individuals with a lead copyeditor forming part of the editorial team.

Although the journal is hosted by the University of Alberta, and has a strong Canadian influence from its roots, it is a truly international affair. The editorial and copyediting teams have representatives from the USA and the UK as well as from Canada. There are 19 Evidence Summary writers from a range of countries and the editorial advisory team (or peer reviewers) comprises 97 library practitioners or academics from countries ranging from Botswana to Portugal with many others in between. The advisors undergo a selection process which ensures that the team has a balance of expertise across library disciplines and research methodologies. This in turn ensures that the highest quality and most appropriate feedback is given to authors.

The journal is now in its eighth year of publication and is indexed in LISA, LISTA, Library Literature, Google Scholar and Scopus. It has a combination of peer reviewed and non peer reviewed sections, with an average of 13 peer reviewed items per issue (articles and Evidence Summaries). The acceptance rate is 67% and our turnaround for peer reviewed items is fast: on average 31 days for review and 102 days to publication.

Our most popular items (based on the number of downloads) are about research methods. This includes the EBL 101 column as well as our most-downloaded paper Goddard (2007) “Getting to the Source: A Survey of Quantitative Data Sources Available to the Everyday Librarian”. Downloads for articles are high, with the top most-downloaded paper (Goddard, 2007) having 12,375 downloads and 11 other papers having more than 5,000 downloads each (http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/announcement/view/149link). The most downloaded paper in 2011 was Davies (2011) “Formulating the Evidence Based Practice Question: A Review of the Frameworks”, and in 2012 the top download was Raven (2012) “Bridging the Gap: Understanding the Differing Research Expectations of First-Year Students and Professors”.

On average, articles are downloaded 1,491 times; individual authors can use Open Journal Systems (OJS) to see how frequently their papers are viewed. In 2011 we introduced an html format in addition to PDF downloads and this has proved popular with an average view of 169 per item, a top view of 1,842 and 10 items with more than 1,000 views.

We also try to bring an evidence based approach to the journal and thus far have focussed on examining the Evidence Summaries and how librarians use them in their practice (Kloda, Koufogiannakis & Mallan, 2011). The editorial team members who authored this paper received the Robert H Blackburn award in 2012. A follow up project which looks at the impact of evidence summaries on library practice has been presented at three international health library conferences: Medical Library Association, US 2012; Health Libraries Group, UK 2012 and EAHIL 2012 (Europe). This project is currently being written up for publication.

I began this editorial by saying that reflection enabled planning for the future and so it is timely to end by briefly describing some future developments for the journal. The December 2013 issue will feature the EBLIP7 conference, including a commentary from the Keynote speaker and summaries of the Lightning Strikes! presentations. Given the popularity of the items which focus on research methods, we are currently compiling them into a wiki-based resource which will mean that users can access all the research methods material from one place (thank you to one of our users for this idea). Finally, we are revising our reviewer and author guidelines and these will be available by the end of 2013.

I continue to feel proud and honoured to be Editor of the EBLIP journal and thoroughly enjoy working with an inspirational team. I hope you continue to find this issue of use to your practice; feel free to submit your ideas for future features or improvements to ensure its continued development and relevance to your needs.

References

Davies, K.S. (2011). Formulating the evidence based practice question: A review of the frameworks. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 6(2), 75-80. Retrieved 4 Sept. 2013 from http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/9741

Goddard, L. (2007). Getting to the source: A survey of quantitative data sources available to the everyday librarian: Part II: Data sources from specific library applications. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 2(1), 68-88. Retrieved 4 Sept. 2013 from http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/152