Policies
Submission Guidelines
Language used to discuss disability can be contentious. We will in general follow the practices of the Disability Style Guide maintained by the National Center on Disability and Journalism. If an author’s personal identifying language preference differs from the Disability Style Guide, we will ask them to provide an introductory statement in the article explaining their choice.
All textual and multimedia submissions must be related to the topic of disability and libraries/archives. Submissions can take many forms, including book reviews, case studies, scholarly articles, poems, videos, visual art, oral histories, interviews, and more. Examples of what this might look like include but are not limited to:
- An autoethnography of a neurodivergent library worker situating their experiences within broader professional discussions;
- A write-up of empirical research using interview data to learn how accessible a building, website, or service is for different user populations;
- A critical analysis of epistemic exclusion of perspectives that center chronically ill BIPoC in collections;
- A case study about emergency planning practices for people who use portable oxygen devices;
- A poem that explores the bodymind experience of using archival collections of trauma.
Book reviews will go through an editorial review process. All reviewed books will be reviewed by a person with at least one disability in common with one of the featured characters; when possible we will provide multiple reviews of the same book, to provide different perspectives. Books selected for review will range in audience and scope from picture books to academic texts. Contact us if you would like to submit a book review. All book review proposals will be reviewed according to the book review rubric.
Scholarly articles will go through an open peer review process and will be noted as such. We encourage scholarly article submissions to be 4,000-8,000 words with appropriate citations. We will only review completed manuscripts but if you have an idea that you are considering developing into a publication, you may contact us earlier in the creation process to request developmental guidance. 2024 note: we are not yet accepting submissions in this category.
All submissions of other formats (case studies, poems, interviews, etc.) will go through editorial review. 2024 note: we are not yet accepting submissions in this category.
Author Guidelines
We prioritize work that represents disabled perspectives. This can include writings by people with disabilities and writings about the perspectives of people with disabilities. This can be from the perspective of an employee, library user, vendor, etc.
We require authors to include positionality statements as part of the submission process and encourage authors to include those statements within the text of the article or in their author bio as appropriate. Positionality statements let us know why you have chosen to write about a particular topic and how that influences your approach to the topic. (See this brief overview for guidance.)
We expect that some authors will have disabilities but not want to publicly disclose that identity. We do not require disclosure of disability identity within the positionality statement. However, for some types of writing it may not be possible to hide disability status (e.g., in an autoethnography). Because of this, we welcome anonymous or confidential submissions. (Anonymous = no one on the editorial board knows who you are at any point in the process. Confidential = some members of the editorial board may know your identity but will not disclose it during or after publication.)
Frequency
- Submissions: once a year for reviewed articles and rolling book reviews
- - Articles: first issue submissions 2025
- - Book reviews: open submissions starting spring 2024
- Published issues:
- - Article: first issue 2025/26
- - Book reviews: rolling publication starting summer 2024
Citation Style
Citation style should be APA or Chicago notes-bibliography.