Developing ALA’s Journal Publication Ethics Policy

Abstract

This editorial shares how and why the American Library Association developed a Publication Ethics Policy for all its journals.

Background

The School Library Media Special Interest Group (SIG) presentations at the 2022 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Annual Conference focused on two different areas of school librarianship—diversity and ethics. Little did attendees know that the presentation on ethics would lead to policy changes at the American Library Association. Lucy Santos Green’s conference presentation detailed the findings in an article she recently published with Melissa P. Johnston in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST). Although Santos Green’s presentation, "Upending Systems of Injustice: Educating Future School Library Researchers on Ethical Publishing for Scholarly Research" emphasized how to teach ethics, she also highlighted ethical misconduct in library and information science publishing.