Submissions

Author Guidelines

Please, read carefully. Manuscripts may be rejected without peer review if they do not comply with these instructions or are beyond the Aim and scope of the journal.

RRBSI will accept only manuscripts which were not published in English or submitted before to other journals. Please, see Ethics for extenden information regarding our policy of upholding the integrity of the work we publish.

A. FORMAT

Manuscripts must be written in clear, concise and correct English. If you need help with your English, we strongly recommend to use a proofreader with good written English skills.

Manuscripts must be submitted in electronic version only, via Open Journal System. The submission file will be in Microsoft Word or RTF document file format. Author identification should also be removed from the properties of the file (by clicking on File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save).

The manuscript text should be typed with font size 12, Times New Roman, without footnotes, single spaced, 6pt after paragraph, justified, left indentation 0cm, on A4 (210 x 297mm) paper, with margins at 25mm on each side. All pages should be numbered consecutively in the bottom, right-hand corner.

Figures and tables drawn by the authors are preferable. Materials taken from previous publications can be included when it is absolutely necessary and official permission is obtained from copyright owner.

All figures (charts, diagrams, line drawings, web pages/screenshots, and photographic images) should be of high quality, legible and numbered consecutively with arabic numerals. Graphics may be supplied in colour.

• Figures created using MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, Adobe Illustrator should be supplied in their native formats. Electronic figures created in other applications should be copied from the origination software and pasted into a blank MS Word.
• Figures which cannot be supplied as above are acceptable in the standard image formats which are: .pdf, .ai, and .eps. If you are unable to supply graphics in these formats then please ensure they are .tif, .jpeg, or .bmp at a resolution of at least 300dpi and at least 10cm wide.
• Submitted photographic images should be of high quality. They should be saved as .tif or .jpeg files at a resolution of at least 300dpi and at least 10cm wide.

Tables should be typed and included in a separate file to the main body of the article. The position of each table should be clearly labelled in the body text of article with corresponding labels being clearly shown in the separate file.

The article should be divided into clearly defined sections and subsections,  numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering) and have a brief heading.

B. STRUCTURE AND CONTENT 

Each manuscript should have the following three sections:

1. Identification data and short description of the content

• Title: must be unambiguous, specific (not general), understandable to specialists in other fields, and reflect the content of the article
• Abstract (max. 250 words): must reflect the content of the article. For book reviews, the abstract is not required!
  • For original research - the abstract should be informative: briefly explain why you conducted the study, what question(s) you aimed to answer, how you performed the study, what you found, and your interpretation and main consequences of your findings.
  • For review and other wide-scope articles - the abstract should be structured, giving concise information on the main sections of the manuscript, and descriptive, i.e. listing the major topics discussed but not giving outcomes; the background, aim, and literature search strategy should be outlined in 2-3 short sentences, followed by the statement of messages stemming from literature analysis and conclusion. Do not refer in the abstract to tables or figures. References to the literature are also not allowed unless they are absolutely necessary (but then you need to provide detailed information in brackets: author, title, year, etc.). All the information given in the abstract should also appears in the main body of the article.
• Keywords (4-8 keywords): include all relevant scientific terms or only additional keywords that are absent from the title. Whilst RRBSI will endeavour to use submitted keywords in the published version, all keywords are subject to approval by the editorial board and may be replaced by a matching term to ensure consistency.

* The information regarding the author(s) will not be included in the manuscript, but will be added during the submission process using Open Journal System. Please, use the third person to refer to work you have previously undertaken, e.g. instead of phrases like "as we have shown before" use: "has been shown before [Anonymous, 2007]". The order of authors should respect the importance of their contributions, i.e. the authors listed first should be those who contributed the most. 

2. Body text

Depending on article type, the body text of the article must have the following content and structure:

• Research articles (max. 6000 words)
  • Original research - studies which report on any type of research undertaken by the author(s), including hypothesis, background study, methods, results, interpretation of findings, and a discussion of possible implications.
  • Case studies - analyses, individually or as groups, of librarians, users, libraries or other information institutions, events, decisions, projects, policies, studied holistically by one or more method.
    • Introduction: present background of the study described - what the problem is - and  end with a clear statement about the hypothesis to be tested; explain why the study was needed and specify your research objectives or the question(s) you aimed to answer.
    • Methodology: describe in detail how the study was carried out and mention all factors that could have affected the results.
    • Results: present the new results of your study. All tables and figures must be mentioned in the main body of the article, and numbered in the order in which they appear in the text.
    • Discussion and conclusions: answer your research questions (stated at the end of the Introduction) and compare your main results with published data, as objectively as possible; interpret the findings and discuss their possible implications; mention the strengths and weaknesses (limitations) of the study; emphasize how do its results compare with other research and, if there are findings that run contrary to your point of view, explain why; at the end of this section emphasize your major conclusions and the practical significance of your study.
• Review article (max. 5000 words)
  • overviews of existing literature in the field, identifying specific problems or issues and analysing information from available published work (literature reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses)
    • Introduction: sufficiently informative and short, must be written in a way that reflect novelty and previous similar attempts to comprehensively cover the topic. Present historical perspectives of the topic covered in the main text. The last sentence must contain the purpose/aim of the review.
    • Methodology: mention the search methodology used (information on the databases accessed, terms, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and time limits). Collect and critically analyze all relevant sources, ensuring also their diversity and avoiding a selection bias.
    • Main body: present the main ideas of the review, aggregated in the aim/purpose.
    • Conclusions: present the major conclusions derived from the analysis of the literature; bring together new findings and clearly outlines major points for future research and/or practice; mention inherent limitations of the review and their impact on the validity of the main messages; briefly express an opinion on how these limitations could be overcome.
• Articles describing new library projects or services (max. 2500 words)
• concise, freestyle descriptions of innovative library projects, services and good practices which could be applied in similar institutions 
• Perspective/opinion/commentary (secondary literature)
• Perspective (max. 2000 words) - scholarly reviews of a single fundamental concept or a few related concepts or prevalent ideas; usually, essays that present a personal point of view critiquing widespread notions pertaining to the library and information science field.
• Opinion articles (max. 2000 words) - present your viewpoint on the interpretation, analysis, or methods used in a particular study, your opinion on the strength and weakness of a theory or hypothesis, based on evidence.
• Commentaries (max. 1500 words) - draw attention to or present a criticism of a previously published article, book, or report, explaining why it interested you and how it might be illuminating for readers.
• Book review (max. 1500 words)
  • provide insight and opinion on recently published scholarly books.

3. References and other mentions

• Acknowledgements (if needed): mention all people who contributed substantially to the study but cannot be regarded as co-authors, and acknowledge all sources of funding. If you reproduce previously published materials (e.g. figures), mention the copyright owners whose permission you asked for. Also, you should declare here all sources of external research funding, if it's the case, and describe the role of the funder or financial sponsor in the entire research process, from study design to submission.
• Notes (if needed): should be used only if absolutely necessary and must be identified in the text by consecutive numbers, enclosed in square brackets. If in the body text of the article you use quotes from non-English publications, it is mandatory to include into a note the quoted text in its original language.
• References: must be in Harvard style (see a guide to the Harvard referencing system in English & Romanian) and carefully checked for completeness, accuracy and consistency. Make sure that you have provided sources for all information extracted from other publications; wherever appropriate, cite primary research articles instead of reviews. For non-English publications, give the original title (transliterated according to English rules if necessary), wherever possible followed by its translation into English in square brackets. When referring sources published on the Internet, correct URLs and date of access have to be provided. Avoid referring to unpublished and inaccessible sources. At the end of the paper a reference list in alphabetical order should be supplied.
• DOI: In order to ensure the discoverability and persistent identification of cited documents, authors must include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) of these documentes in the references (where available). The DOI is a unique identifier for digital objects and has the form: https://doi.org/10.nnnnn/xxxxx. DOI also acts as a persistent (permanent) link to its assigned electronic document. Usually, the DOI can be found in the bibliographic details area of the cited document or in the bottom or header of the cited document pdf. More information about DOIs and how to find them in this video. 
  • DOIs must respect the Crossref display guidelines. The current correct form of a DOI is: https://doi.org/10.nnnnn/xxxxx. DOIs should never be preceded by „doi:” or „DOI:” and should be given in a „https” (instead of a „http”) format. Previous forms including “dx” such as http://dx.doi.org/10.nnnn/xxxx are no longer accepted.
  • In order to find the correct DOI form for the documents cited in your article, please use the Crossref search tool.
  • Please note that not all documents have DOIs. If, after using the Crossref search tool, you do not find DOIs for some of the cited documents, you may submit the article without the DOIs for that documents.
  • If, after using the Crossref search tool in order to find the correct form of the DOI, you do not find a new form, please use the old form DOI in the references.