Journal of Library Innovation (LIBBI) is committed to maintaining a fair, transparent, independent, and academically rigorous editorial process. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological or analytical quality, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, and contribution to library and information science, information management, digital knowledge, archives, scholarly communication, information literacy, and related fields.
Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, institutional, technological, political, or personal interests. The publisher does not determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted or rejected.
Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on scholarly quality, originality, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal, and contribution to the development of library and information science.
All manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening before peer review. The editorial team assesses whether the submission is consistent with the journal's Focus and Scope and whether it meets minimum scholarly, ethical, methodological, and presentation standards.
Initial screening may consider:
Manuscripts that are clearly outside the journal's scope or do not meet minimum scholarly requirements may be declined during editorial screening without external peer review.
LIBBI applies a double-anonymous peer review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during the review process.
Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with expertise relevant to the manuscript's topic.
Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, confidential, evidence-based, and academically independent assessments of originality, methodology, interpretation, contribution, and presentation.
Peer-review reports inform editorial decisions but do not automatically determine the final outcome. The responsible editor considers reviewer recommendations together with the manuscript's overall scholarly merit.
Editorial decisions may include:
Acceptance depends on the quality of the final revised manuscript and does not result automatically from completion of a review round.
Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose financial, professional, institutional, personal, technological, or other relationships that could reasonably influence or appear to influence the research, peer review, or editorial decision-making process.
Editors should not handle manuscripts where a relevant conflict exists. Responsibility should be transferred to another qualified editor whenever editorial independence may be compromised.
LIBBI supports internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing and publication-ethics practices informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, data misrepresentation, and undisclosed conflicts of interest are not acceptable.
Allegations of research or publication misconduct will be evaluated objectively, confidentially, and proportionately based on the available evidence.
Manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Similarity reports are interpreted contextually and are not judged solely on the basis of a numerical percentage.
Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate publication, redundant publication, or substantial reuse of previously published material may result in rejection or appropriate post-publication action.
Artificial intelligence systems, generative AI tools, large language models, or autonomous software agents cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for scholarly content, originality, ethical compliance, or accountability.
Authors remain fully responsible for all submitted content, including text, analysis, metadata, code, images, references, classifications, summaries, and interpretations generated or assisted by AI systems.
Substantive use of generative AI in manuscript preparation, coding, data analysis, metadata generation, classification, translation, visualization, literature synthesis, or other research activities should be transparently disclosed where relevant.
Editors and reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished research data, reviewer reports, or editorial correspondence to publicly accessible AI systems where confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, or data security cannot be assured.
Research involving library users, information behavior, digital platforms, usage logs, personal records, archival materials, or other potentially sensitive information should comply with applicable ethical, privacy, and data-protection requirements.
Authors should explain how personal or sensitive information was collected, protected, anonymized, stored, and analyzed where relevant.
Studies involving human participants should report institutional ethics approval and informed consent where required.
Research involving archives, cultural heritage, indigenous knowledge, restricted collections, or confidential institutional records should respect applicable access conditions, permissions, copyright, community rights, and ethical responsibilities.
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that a significant factual, methodological, procedural, or ethical issue affected an editorial decision.
Appeals should identify the specific issue being challenged and provide a clear scholarly justification rather than merely expressing disagreement with the decision.
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, publication ethics, or published content will be considered objectively by an appropriate journal representative.
LIBBI is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.
Corrections may be issued when errors affect the accuracy, attribution, interpretation, metadata, or completeness of a published article without invalidating its principal findings.
Retractions may be considered when findings are unreliable because of major error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, manipulated data, or other serious integrity concerns.
An Expression of Concern may be issued when substantial concerns exist but sufficient information for a definitive editorial action is not yet available.
