About the Journal

Focus & Scope

The Communications of the Association of Austrian Librarians (in short: VÖB Communications) is a Diamond Open Access journal - that's following the "Fair Open Access" principles, so neither APCs (article processing charges) nor other fees (for submission, etc.) are charged for the publishing of contributions - with a disciplinary focus in the field of library and information studies.

In addition to the article, which should make a substantial contribution to a topic from the field of Library and Information Studies, the following types of contributions can be submitted: editorial, interview, report, essay, report, personalia, review, event announcement, communication. The submitted manuscripts or essential parts thereof may not have already been published elsewhere or submitted for publication. The presentation of any contents as a short version at a conference et al. is not considered as a pre-publication.

Authors can submit papers on their own initiative or will be invited to do so by a member of the Editorial Board. There will also be Call for Papers. More information in tihis regard can be found under Submissions. Furthermore, proposals regarding the publication of special issues can be submitted. For this, please contact the Editorial Board via redaktion@voeb-b.at.

Open Access Policy

The VÖB Communications provide Open Access to its content, based on the assumption that the free and public availability of research results and underlying data will benefit scholarly communication.

Copyright & Privacy

All authors assure that they have made a substantial contribution to the article and agree with the form and content of the manuscript. With the submission, authors confirm that any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.

The VÖB Communications are a so-called RoMEO green journal. That means authors retain all of their rights and grant the VÖB only the non-exclusive right for the unlimited storage in databases, distribution and reproduction of their contributions (in electronic and printed form). For all publications the Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International is used.

All names and e-mail addresses entered on the website of the journal are used solely for the purposes stated and are not disclosed to third parties.

Quality Assurance & Archiving

All articles are peer-reviewed (by an editor and an anonymous external reviewer), all other types of contributions are usually undergoing an editorial review process (by an editor only).

When assessing a contribution, the editors and reviewers will ensure that appreciative and constructive feedback is given. In case of objections, or that something should be added, revised etc., editors and reviewers should submit concrete suggestions for improvement to the authors. The following questions should serve as a guideline:

Basic issues

  • Does the submitted contribution fit to the focus & scope of the VÖB Communications?
  • Does the article have a recognizably practical relevance?
  • Are research results, questions or practical examples clearly presented?
  • Do the statements correspond to the current state of research and technological development?
  • Is the article written intelligibly?
  • Are tables, figures etc. vivid and appropriate/necessary, is the source and the rights holder quoted correctly in case of the use third-party materials?
  • Are the bibliographical references and citations in a consistent form?
  • Are subjective opinions of the authors recognizable as such?

Content issues

  • Do the findings result in an increase in professional/scholarly knowledge?
  • What are the results of the research/findings/results?
  • Are methods and/or theories new and/or original?
  • Were the results shown correctly in the conclusion?
  • Has the relevant literature on the topic been used appropriately?
  • Is the language understandable?

Formal issues

  • Does the text have a reasonable length?
  • Are any tables and representations clear and reasonably informative?
  • Are both title and abstract satisfactorily meaningful?
  • Is the presentation overall of good quality?
  • Has gender-appropriate language been used?

Methodological issues

  • Are there methodological errors? If yes, please specify them.
  • Are there errors in the results? If yes, please specify them.

The contents of the VÖB communications are long-term archived through participation in the Public Knowledge Project Private LOCKSS Network (PKP PLN).

Publication Frequency & Indexing

The journal appears 3-4 times a year and is indexed by the following search engines, repositories and databases: BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine), e-lis (e-prints in library and information science), DABI Datenbank Deutsches Bibliothekswesen,EBSCO®Library & Information Science Source, EBSCO® Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA), ProQuest® Library Science, Elsevier® Scopus, European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

All metadata is provided as Open Data, in a structured and machine-operable form, in order to support initiatives such as I4OC (Initiative for Open Citations).

Journal History

The VÖB Communications were founded in 1947 as working protocols of the Association of Austrian Librarians and published from 1949 to 1993 as Communications of the Association of Austrian Librarians. From 1979 to 2007, the so-called Online-Mitteilungen (ISSN 1015-1869) were also added to the individual issues. Since issue 3/4 (2002) the full texts can be obtained from the VÖB homepage, older editions from volume 30 (1977) are archived at Austrian Literature Online. Since 2008, both journals have now been combined in the Communications of the Association of Austrian Librarians, and since the beginning of 2011 they have been supported by an editorial team. The journal is published three to four times a year and since 2011 all issues are available as a free PDF for download in addition to the print edition. Since mid-2012, individual articles have also been published Open Access via E-LIS  (e-prints in library and information science). In 2015, the switch to Open Journal Systems (OJS) finally took place.