Submission Deadline: 14 May 2015

IFLA Journal

Cultural Heritage (CH) preservation and management present unique practices and challenges worldwide.  In Africa these are amplified by the number of languages and indigenous knowledge systems, the range of economic conditions, varying climates, and histories that encompass ancient civilizations and post-colonial realities.  To contribute to an deeper understating of Cultural Heritage preservation  and highlight case studies and practices from within the  cultural heritage community and context, IFLA Journal invites papers for a special issues focused on CH Preservation, focusing on the African context, but not excluding other continents.  The issue will be published in October of 2015 (Volume 41:3).  Submissions are welcome from practitioners, professionals, researchers, and policy makers.

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In particular, the main goal of the special issue is to gather inter-disciplinary and inter-professional research on CH in Africa; the use of new technologies in protecting, restoring, and preserving CH; and the use of digitalization, documentation, and presentation to make CH content accessible.

Guest Editors:

Mr Douwe Drijfhout
Programme Executive: Preservation services
National Library of South Africa

Tanja de Boer
Head Collection Care
National Library of the Netherlands

Topics of interest include:

  • Damage assessment and monitoring for preventive conservation and maintenance of CH
  • Protecting cultural assets from risks and damages resulting from earthquakes, fires, storms, looting and extreme events
  • Long term availability and accessibility of content (digital libraries)
  • Standards, metadata, ontologies and semantic processing in CH
  • Legal issues: orphan works, copyright and IPR
  • The economics of cultural informatics (cultural heritage)
  • Strategies for and impacts of heritage asset management initiatives
  • Preservation and Conservation management in African libraries (challenges, networking, transformation, cross continental collaboration)
  • The impact of natural disasters and conflict on preserving CH (African case studies)

Submission Deadline:

Articles for the special issue should be submitted to IFLA Journal for peer review before 14 May 2015.

About IFLA Journal

IFLA Journal is the international journal of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles on library and information services and the social, political and economic issues that impact access to information through libraries. The Journal welcomes submissions of research articles, case studies and essays that reflect the broad spectrum of the profession internationally. All articles are subject to peer review. Articles are published in English. Abstracts will be translated by IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) into the other official languages of IFLA – Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Russian or Spanish – for publication.

1. Peer review policy

IFLA Journal adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. The final decision rests with the Editor. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, and authors should expect to have reviewer's comments within approximately 6 weeks of submission.

2. Article types

Articles and features are normally published only in English. Authors whose first language is not English should not be inhibited from submitting contributors in English because of this; the correction of minor grammatical and linguistic errors in English is considered to be an integral part of the editorial process.

Articles should normally be between 3000 and 8000 words in length. Articles must be original contributions which have not been published elsewhere, and which are not under consideration elsewhere.

Articles should be accompanied by an English-language abstract of not more than 150 words, five or six keywords, and a brief statement of the professional qualifications and experience of the author(s), including current official designation and full address and contact details.

Authors are expected to check their work carefully before submitting it, particularly with regard to factual accuracy, completeness and consistency. They should provide sufficient background information to enable readers unfamiliar with the activity or country being described to understand it easily. Acronyms and abbreviations should be spelled out in full the first time they are used.

3. How to Submit a Manuscript

IFLA Journal is hosted on ScholarOne™ Manuscripts, a web based online submission and peer review system SAGE Track. Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines and then simply visit the IFLA Journal Manuscript Submission website to login and submit your article online.  Make sure to note that your manuscript is for the Cultural Heritage special issue in the Details and Comments section of the article submission module.

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 possible that you will have had an account created.

All papers must be submitted via the online system. If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission, please contact Steve Witt, Editor Designate of IFLA Journal: swwitt@illinois.edu.