Editorial

Abstract

As a journal belonging to a professional body (the Library and Information Association of South Africa), an important role fulfilled by SAJLIS is contributing to the mentoring and development of the next generation of authors and researchers in the Library and Information Services (LIS) profession. Hence, the journal encourages submissions co-authored by students and their research supervisors. In the spirit of supporting and mentoring, the teacher and mentor in this co-publication partnership should encourage the mentee to embrace rigorous comments from reviewers for improvement of the manuscript and to learn and grow from this experience in research and publication. University research supervisors should view the peer-review process resulting in a ‘revise and re-submit for review’ outcome as contributing to the learning experience of emerging authors and researchers. An equally rigorous journal is likely to produce a similar result. Hence, withdrawal for publication elsewhere, without any improvement to the manuscript, is not only sadly unfortunate, but also a missed opportunity for growing quality in research and publication, especially among aspirant authors. On this note, SAJLIS  is proud to observe that among the six papers published in this issue (out of a total of forty submissions made to the journal in the second half of 2017), the average time between first accepting the  manuscript for review and the time of accepting for publication was four to five months. Further, more than 50% of these published papers are co-publications between research supervisors and their students and almost all of these manuscripts endured a process of ‘revise and re-submit’ for review. SAJLIS wishes to congratulate the authors in this issue on the publication of their papers and to thank them for their patience and commitment to quality in research and publication.