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Policies

Submission Guidelines

Language, Scope, and Format

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 or movie reviews, case studies, original research 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 note from the field about conference (in)accessibility;
  • A poem that explores the bodymind experience of using archival collections of trauma.

Author Information

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.)


Citation Style

Citation style should be APA.

Estimated Review Timeline

3 weeks from submission to being assigned a reviewer
3 weeks for feedback from reviewer
3 weeks for author to incorporate reviewer feedback
3 weeks for copy editing
3 weeks for publishing

Media reviews

Book and movie reviews will go through an editorial review process. All media reviews are published open access under CC-BY-4.0 international license. We prioritize reviews by people who have lived experience with disability. We are open to publishing multiple reviews of the same work, to provide different perspectives. Works selected for review will range in audience and scope from picture books to academic texts to popular movies. Reviews can be short snapshot reviews (approximately 250-500 words) or longer analytical reviews (approximately 1000-1500 words).

Reviews should be submitted via the submission form using the review template. All reviews will be evaluated according to the media review rubric.

See one of our published reviews for examples.

Scholarly Articles

We will start accepting submissions in this category July 2025. Articles go through an open, collaborative peer review process. Articles are published open access under CC-BY-4.0 international license. We encourage scholarly article submissions to be approximately 4,000-8,000 words with appropriate citations, in APA style. 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.

Articles should be submitted via the submission form. We recommend authors use this template to structure their articles. We will review submissions using this rubric.

All submissions of other formats (poems, interviews, etc.) will go through editorial review. 2025 note: Contact the Editorial Board to discuss ideas: DisLisJournal@googlegroups.com.

Except where otherwise noted, all work on the DisLIS site is licensed under CC BY 4.0