Aims
The journal of Academic Librarianship and Information Research (ALIR) is a peer-reviewed, open-access quarterly journal dedicated to advancing knowledge and practice in library and information science with a particular emphasis on academic and research environments. Its primary aims are to:
- Foster critical inquiry into the evolving roles, functions, and services of academic libraries and university information centers within changing scholarly communication ecosystems.
- Bridge theoretical research and practical application by disseminating evidence-based findings that inform professional practice, policy development, and strategic decision-making in academic librarianship.
- Examine the multifaceted dimensions of information creation, organization, access, and use in higher education and research contexts from historical, contemporary, and future-oriented perspectives.
- Promote interdisciplinary dialogue on the social, cultural, organizational, and technological dimensions of information in academic settings.
- Support the professional development of academic librarians, information specialists, and researchers by providing a forum for scholarly debate, innovative practices, and reflective discourse on emerging challenges and opportunities in the field.
Scope
The journal of Academic Librarianship and Information Research (ALIR) welcomes original research articles, theoretical papers, systematic reviews, case studies, and critical commentaries that address topics within, but not limited to, the following areas:
- Academic libraries: missions, services, collections, spaces, and user engagement in higher education institutions
- Academic librarianship: professional roles, competencies, education, and leadership
- Information needs, seeking behaviors, and literacy of students, faculty, and researchers
- Information organization: classification, cataloging, metadata, ontologies, and semantic representation
- Information retrieval systems: search behavior, algorithms, user interfaces, and evaluation
- Digital libraries, institutional repositories, and electronic resource management
- Scholarly communication: open access, research data management, digital preservation, and publishing models
- Information and communication technologies in academic libraries (AI, linked data, cloud computing, etc.)
- Library assessment: metrics, analytics, impact evaluation, and evidence-based librarianship
- Informetrics, bibliometrics, scientometrics, altmetrics, and citation analysis in academic contexts
- Information policy, ethics, intellectual freedom, and copyright in educational settings
- Information economics, marketing, and management within academic institutions
- Social, cultural, and organizational impacts of information technologies on scholarship and learning
- Academic management information systems (AMIS) and decision-support tools for university libraries
- Historical and comparative studies of academic libraries and information services globally.
The journal particularly encourages submissions that address emerging challenges in academic librarianship, demonstrate methodological rigor, and offer transferable insights for the international library and information science community. All articles undergo double-anonymous peer review to ensure scholarly quality and relevance.
