Journal of Information Science
Information Science (General)
The Journal of Information Science is an international journal of high repute covering topics of interest to all those researching and working in the sciences of information and knowledge management. The Editors welcome material on any aspect of information science theory, policy, application or practice that will advance thinking in the field.
Information Science is a broad based discipline which has a potential impact in almost every sphere of human activity in the emerging information age.
There have been significant advances in information technology and information processing techniques over recent years and the pace of innovation shows no sign of slowing. However, the application of these technologies is often sub-optimal because theoretical understanding lags behind.
The Journal seeks to achieve a better understanding of the principles that underpin the effective creation, organization, storage, communication and utilization of information and knowledge resources. It seeks to understand how policy and practice in the area can be built on sound theoretical or heuristic foundations to achieve a greater impact on the world economy.
Articles written from a theoretical or applied perspective are welcomed. However, theoretical articles should consider the possible application of the proposed theory in other fields of research, commerce, education or government.
Conversely, articles focusing on applied information science topics should seek to highlight the underlying theoretical principles and show how their application has been novel or lead to unusual or exemplary results
Any correspondence, queries or requests for information should be sent to the Editorial Office as follows: journal.information.science@gmail.com.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Journal of Information Science is now ranked 5/20 in the Google Scholar category Library & Information Science.
All issues of The Journal of Information Science are available to browse online.
The Journal of Information Science is a peer-reviewed international journal of high repute covering topics of interest to all those researching and working in the sciences of information and knowledge management. The Editors welcome material on any aspect of information science theory, policy, application or practice that will advance thinking in the field.
Material on all aspects of information science will be considered for publication including:
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information processing and management
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information flow and communication
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knowledge structuring and organization
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information literacy and information education
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information seeking behaviours
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economic impact of information and knowledge
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information and knowledge policy formulation
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legal and political issues relating to information
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meta data and structured vocabularies
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search, navigation and retrieval techniques
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information architecture
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information and knowledge audit
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content management
| Dr Allen Foster | Aberystwyth University, UK |
| Dr Pauline Rafferty | Aberystwyth University, UK |
| Alan Gilchrist | Editor Emeritus, UK |
| Yi Bu | Department of Information Management, Peking University, China |
| Gobinda Chowdhury | Northumbria University, UK |
| Alton Chua | Nanyang Technology University, Singapore |
| Ying Ding | Indiana University, USA |
| David Ellis | Aberystwyth University, UK |
| Fabio Gouveia | Departamento Museu da Vida, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Jane Greenberg | The College of Computing & Informatics, Drexel University, USA |
| Hamid R. Jamali | School of Information Studies, Charles Stuart University, Bathurst, Australia |
| Lokman Meho | American University of Beirut, Lebanon |
| Enrique Orduna Malea | Department of Audiovisual Communication, Documentation and History of Art. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain |
| Jennifer E Rowley | Manchester Metropolitan University, UK |
| Joanna Sin Sei Ching | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore |
| Mike Thelwall | University of Wolverhampton, UK |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Journal of Information Science
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/infosci to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of Information Science will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Journal of Information Science may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services
4.6 Other conventions - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Journal of Information Science, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
The average length of papers is 5000 - 7500 words (8-12 printed journal pages). Brief Communications of 1500 words or less are also welcomed on particularly topical issues in the field.
The abstract should be clear, descriptive, self explanatory and normally not longer than 150 words. Remember that it will be used in the various abstracting and indexing services covering the Journal and is often the only thing that a reader will see of your paper before making the choice to order a copy. Keywords will be added to your paper at the copy editing stage but the author is encouraged to apply relevant keywords based on their own experience. Footnotes should be used only if absolutely essential to improve the readability of the text.
Submission of an article is understood to imply that the following conditions are agreed to by all the named authors:
- that the material in the paper is new original work of the authors except where duly referenced;
- that the article has not been published (in print or online) in its present form or in a form which substantially overlaps with this submission;
- that the paper has not previously been refereed and rejected by another publication in its present form or in a form which substantially overlaps with this submission;
- that the copyright of the contents are yours to assign or licence and that you have obtained copyright clearance for all referenced material reproduced in full or in part in the manuscript.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
The journal adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are concealed from both parties unless this proves impossible because of extensive self-citation or other identifying features in the text.
Editorial Review Process: All manuscripts are reviewed initially by the Editors and only those papers that meet the scientific and editorial standards of the journal, and fit within the aims and scope of the journal, will be sent for outside review.
Peer Review Process: Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees but for most (especially technical) papers five reviews are sought.
For highly technical papers Authors are requested to suggest the names, affiliations and contact information of five qualified but independent individuals who may be suitable to serve as referees on a technical panel to supplement the Editorial Board input. The five recommended referees should come from a minimum of three different countries. The Editors are under no obligation to use all or any of these individuals as reviewers. Please be aware of any conflicts of interest when recommending reviewers. Examples of conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) the below:
- The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of your submission.
- The reviewer should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors.
- Reviewer nominees from the same institution as any of the authors are not permitted.
All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible with reviewers asked to provide responses in 28 days. An editorial decision is generally reached within 6 weeks of submission unless the paper is highly specialised in which case longer may be required to find reviewers who are prepared to contribute.
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
Journal of Information Science requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Journal of Information Science encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Journal of Information Science and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Journal of Information Science offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Journal of Information Science adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
All diagrams should be captioned "Figure nn. Title" and referred to by number in the text. Tables should also be captioned "Table nn. Title". Both should be positioned in the text where the author feels is appropriate but the Editors reserves the right to re-organize the layout to suit the printing process.
To aid readability and usability, extensive appendix material should normally be avoided unless it is essential to the understanding of the article. As the article will be available electronically on the publisher's web service, appendix material can be referenced online rather than being reproduced in full. Questionnaires would not normally be reproduced unless they were core to the arguments presented. Authors would normally be expected to reference a persistent on-line copy of these materials.
Algorithms, XML schema, thesauri and taxonomies can be included in full or in part in support of the article. The author would then also be encouraged to reference a persistent on-line copy of this material to aid readers in understanding and using the resources.
Mathematical expressions should be clear and unambiguous and be prepared using Mathtype or the native Microsoft Equation Editor. Articles with extensive mathematical expressions should be accompanied by a PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) copy of the article to ensure that the expressions are correctly transcribed during typesetting.
Journal of Information Science is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/infosci to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to should be sent to Allen Foster and Pauline Rafferty at journal.information.science@gmail.com.