Author guidelines

 

Open Shelf, the online magazine of the Ontario Library Association

www.Open-Shelf.ca

AUTHOR GUIDELINES, EDITORIAL PROCEDURES, AND GENERAL POLICIES

 

Mandate and mission of Open Shelf
Open Shelf is the official magazine of the Ontario Library Association (OLA), published for members and the larger community as a continuing education service to keep them informed of trends and issues affecting the association and libraries across Ontario and beyond. The magazine is a forum for discussion, a place for news, and a source of ideas for developing and improving libraries, librarianship, and information management in the province.

Specifically, Open Shelf publishes articles on topics relevant to the constituencies reflected in the main divisions of OLA: College and university libraries, library and information technology, public library boards, public libraries, school libraries, bibliothèques francophones, and Indigenous Peoples libraries, including First Nations public libraries. The magazine also publishes various columns and features with information and commentary of interest across a broad range of divisions and readers.

The editorial team will edit all materials submitted to Open Shelf for publication for:

• Clarity
• Consistency (e.g., voice, tone, web-based writing practices)
• Length (i.e., word count)
• Grammar and style (including spelling, usage, and format as per the Open Shelf style guide)

If significant changes result from editing decisions, the submitting author(s) will be contacted for review and approval.

Indigenous style
When editing materials related to Indigenous matters, the editorial team will be guided by Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and about Indigenous Peoples by Greg Younging. The Indigenous style emphasizes the importance of process and protocols when writing about Indigenous Peoples—for a deeper exploration of these issues; please refer to the book. These principles include, but are not limited to; the following principles excerpted verbatim from Elements of Indigenous Style (Younging, 2018, Appendix A):

Principle 1: The purpose of the Indigenous style

The goal of the Indigenous type is to produce works that:

• Reflect Indigenous realities as Indigenous Peoples perceive them.
• Are truthful and insightful in their Indigenous content.
• Are respectful of the cultural integrity of Indigenous Peoples.

Principle 2: When Indigenous style and conventional styles disagree

Works by Indigenous authors or with Indigenous content should follow standard style references and house styles, except where these disagree with Indigenous style.

Principle 4: Recognizing Indigenous Identity

Indigenous style recognizes that Indigenous Peoples view themselves according to the following fundamental principles:

• They are diverse, distinct cultures.
• They exist as part of an ongoing continuum through the generations tracing back to their ancient ancestors.
• They have not been assimilated into mainstream Canadian society, and their national and cultural paradigms have not been fundamentally altered or undermined through colonization.
• They are currently undergoing cultural reclamation and rejuvenation, marked by significant participation from Indigenous youth.
• Natural, cultural change and adaptation do not mean that Indigenous Peoples have acquiesced to mainstream Canadian society, nor that Indigenous cultures have been fundamentally altered or undermined. 

Principle 5: Indigenous cultural property

The Indigenous style involves publishing practices that recognize and respect Indigenous cultural property.

Principle 6: Collaboration

Work in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples and authors to ensure that Indigenous material is expressed with the highest possible level of cultural authenticity and in a manner that follows Indigenous Protocols and maintains Indigenous artistic integrity.

Principle 7: Elders

Indigenous style recognizes the significance of Elders in the cultural integrity of Indigenous Peoples and as authentic sources of Indigenous cultural information. Indigenous style follows Protocols to observe respect for Elders.

Principle 8: Working with Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions

Indigenous style recognizes Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions as Indigenous cultural property owned by Indigenous Peoples and over which Indigenous Peoples exert control. This recognition has a bearing on permission and copyright and applies even when non-Indigenous laws do not require it.

Writers, editors, and publishers should make every effort to ensure that Indigenous Protocols are followed in publishing Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions. Where culturally sensitive Indigenous materials are in question, writers, editors, and publishers should try to consult an authoritative member of the particular Indigenous People for confirmation.

Principle 9: The Role of Relationship and Trust

Indigenous style recognizes the essential role of relationship and trusts in producing works with authentic Indigenous content and the source of connection and trust in truthfulness, honesty, mindfulness about community impacts, and continuity with history and heritage. 

Principle 10: Compensation

Indigenous style recognizes the importance of royalties to Indigenous Peoples and authors—and compensation to individual Indigenous contributors and Indigenous communities and organizations—as part of fair and respectful publishing practices.

Principle 11: Inappropriate terminology

Works should avoid inappropriate terminology used about Indigenous Peoples, except when:

• Specifically describing or discussing this terminology as terminology.
• Referring to a proper name, or the name of an institution or document, that contains the terminology.
• Quoting from a source that contains the terminology (e.g., a historical source).

If a work quotes from a historical source that uses inappropriate terminology, it is important to flag this content. This means discussing the language in a footnote or endnote, or better yet, in a paragraph in the run of the text.

Principle 12: The Names of Indigenous Peoples

The Indigenous style uses the names of Indigenous Peoples that Indigenous Peoples use for themselves. It establishes these names through consultation with Indigenous Peoples and compilations of words done through consultation with Indigenous Peoples.

Principle 13: Terms that should be capitalized

Terms for Indigenous identities; Indigenous governmental, social, spiritual, and religious institutions; and Indigenous collective rights should be capitalized.

Principle 18: Inappropriate possessives

Indigenous Peoples are independent sovereign nations that predate Euro-colonial states and are not “owned” by Euro-colonial states. Indigenous style, therefore, avoids the use of possessives that imply this, such as “Canada’s Indigenous Peoples,” “our Indigenous Peoples,” and “the Indigenous Peoples of Canada.”

Excerpted from Elements of Indigenous Style by Gregory Younging, published by Brush Education. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

How to submit your article or idea
The Editorial Board of Open Shelf welcomes submissions and queries of articles (including text-based and other media-based articles such as podcasts) to be published in the magazine. If you’ve already written the article, please submit it anytime. We are also happy to hear from you if you’re about to start your essay (in various media) or have an idea to pitch to the Open Shelf editorial team. Send all articles and pictures to the Open Shelf Editor-in-Chief.

Anita Lal
Marketing and Communications Manager
communications@accessola.com

Open Shelf features short articles (~400 to 750 words) written in a conversational tone (i.e., accessible to a broad audience). If you have a theme or an idea that is substantially longer or shorter than this—shorter than 400 words or as long as 1,500 words—please get in touch with the editors before submitting it.

If you submit an article or story idea related to academic libraries, please get in touch with the Editor-in-Chief of InsideOCULA. InsideOCULA is the official publication of the Ontario College and University Library Association (OCULA).

InsideOCULA Editor-in-Chief
insideocula@gmail.com

Photographs, illustrations, or other graphics are encouraged where they augment the article. We also encourage contributors to submit ideas for podcasts (from three to 12 minutes in length). These podcasts could be “stand-alone” articles or be part of a longer feature article. Likewise, short videos (three to 12 minutes long) are also welcome. Short video submissions must contain full transcript(s) of the content contained within the tape to allow for greater accessibility.

Submit your finished article in electronic format (preferably Word or RTF) as a simple attachment to email to openshelfola@gmail.com. Photographs, illustrations, videos, and podcasts should be sent as separate files/documents and not embedded in the text document.

Please also provide a brief bio (no more than 100 words), including your current job title, institutional affiliation (or other preferred identifying information), and contact information. In addition, include complete contact information at the end of your article. We also require an author photograph (high resolution preferred) if we publish your article.

Publication schedule
Open Shelf publishes once a month (except January and August). Submissions are accepted at any time throughout the year.

Copyright, permissions, deposit, and republication

The contributor(s) retain(s) all rights under Canadian copyright law. However, Open Shelf is an open-access publication. Unless otherwise specified, the contributor(s) of a given article or submission and the publisher (i.e., the Ontario Library Association [OLA]) agree that the contributor(s) grant(s) to OLA and the general public a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyright license.

As such, the contributor(s) grant(s) to OLA and the general public a royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive license to publish, reproduce, display, distribute, and use the article or submission, in any form, in Open Shelf. Photos, illustrative, and video or audio material must also comply with the Creative Commons license.

For photos containing a recognized individual, or a recognizable portion of an individual, authors should secure the individual’s permission to use the image in Open Shelf. Photos taken at public events, news events, or crowd shots taken in a public place do not require approval from the subjects.

As per the Creative Commons license, the Ontario Library Association must receive credit as the original publisher if the contributor(s) choose to republish an article or other published submission (e.g., a podcast) in another publication. The attribution statement must be formatted as follows:

This [article, podcast, video] originally appeared in the [Month Year] issue of Open Shelf magazine. Open Shelf is the official magazine of the Ontario Library Association, published for members and the larger community as a continuing education service to provide information about trends and issues affecting the association and libraries all across Ontario and beyond.

Open Shelf generally does not publish articles that have been previously published.

Photographs, illustrations, videos, and podcasts
Please attach photographs, illustrations, videos, and podcasts to an email. Photos must be saved as a TIFF, a GIF, or an EPS file in colour with an excellent tonal range.

Captions and credit(s) should be provided for all images submitted; i.e., please identify the subject, activity, place, and other relevant details shown in the photo and provide a brief text for a caption in addition to the photographer’s name.

The same applies to illustrative materials such as drawings, prints, graphs, charts, etc. All submitted material is subject to editing.

We suggest using a program such as Audacity and sending an MP3 file when recording podcasts.

Tagging
We ask for the following:

• Each article is to be assigned approximately three to five tags to make the content within the article more searchable. A piece of about 500 words should not need more than five tags, while it should be assigned at least three titles.
• Tags are to be created according to the methods, suggestions, and rules in the tagging document, which are attached in Appendix A.

Copy editing (clarity, simplicity, style, word count, grammar, punctuation, spelling, citations)
Open Shelf articles are to be written in a conversational tone. The editorial team will edit as needed, which may include some substantive editing for style because we are dedicated to ensuring a good reader experience. We will read and edit your article for clarity, simplicity, proper use of the Open Shelf style guidelines (see below), word count, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and citations. We will work collaboratively with all contributors throughout the editing and publishing process.

Copy editing is an essential step in our publication process—all Open Shelf articles are edited, including those written by our editors. These changes do not mean that we’re not good writers—they mean that we’re trying to make our articles the best they can be and meet a high professional standard. Contributors will be able to review and discuss the edited version before publication. Decisions of the editorial team are final.

We ask all contributors to think about the following when submitting their stories:

Clarity: Clarity includes an article’s overall structure or outline, redundancy, and ambiguity.

Think of the basics of news writing, the five Ws―who, what, when, where, why. When writing, think of how your work will affect readers. Why should they care? What impact will it have on them? What’s new or different? In addition, think about repetition and redundancy—are you saying the same thing twice, or can repetition be justified?

Simplicity: Keep prose simple and readable. Pretend you’re explaining what you do to someone outside the profession. Avoid jargon.

Reading online is different from reading print. As a result, writing for online publications is different as well. Shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs are more effective online. Subheadings are encouraged to break your text into logical sections (e.g., one subheading for every three or four paragraphs). Highly recommended as a guide: How to write short: Word Craft for fast times by Roy Peter Clark (2013).

Word count: Although articles can vary in length (from 400 to 750 words), generally, “less is more.”

Spelling: Open Shelf uses Canadian spelling based on the latest edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd edition, 2004) and follows the style guidelines of the Canadian Press stylebook (17th edition, 2013). See Appendix 2 for detailed guidelines and general house style and usage examples.

Citations: Open Shelf is a general magazine, not a scholarly journal. References are generally unnecessary and should be avoided. If your article does require citation of sources, provide them within the text of your paper, column, etc., with as much or as little bibliographic information as necessary for identification (see examples below). Include a URL where available and appropriate. Links as part of your text to external sources are encouraged but should be used sparingly (broken links frustrate readers and are time-consuming to track down).

If you feel that the works you cite require complete identification, please provide a list in bibliography style at the end of the article, formatted according to APA Style (6th edition, 2009). If you have any questions about the details, please get in touch with the editors.

Format of references
Following are some examples of in-text references:

Article in a journal

As Karen Wallace mentions in her article in Feliciter in 2007, Marketing mindset: Focusing on the customer, from technical services to circulation, …

article in an electronic journal

David Fox reports in The Scholarship of Canadian research university librarians (Partnership, 2007) that …

Chapter in a book

Paul S. Piper says that … (“Google and privacy,” in Libraries and Google).

book

Sharron Smith and Maureen O’Connor’s book, Canadian Fiction: A Guide to reading interests, provides …

Style
The Open Shelf style, which conforms with the Canadian Press style, the InsideOCULA Style Guide, and Elements of Indigenous style by Greg Younging, must be used consistently throughout articles.

Capitalization (names, titles, headings, subheadings, Indigenous terminologies)

The first word of a heading and any proper nouns will be capitalized. All other comments will be lowercase (e.g., Canada 150: Diversity and Library schools). Exception: When standard font requires all caps.

Terms for Indigenous identities; Indigenous governmental, social, spiritual, and religious institutions; and Indigenous collective rights should be capitalized. For example:

• Elder(s)
• Indigenous Peoples
• Oral Tradition
• Potlatch
• Sweat Lodge
• Traditional Knowledge

Note: Consult Elements of Indigenous Style by Greg Younging for more examples.

Numbers and dates

words one to nine, numerals ten and up

spell out common fractions below 1

4,200

4.5 million

19th (not superscript)

1970s

the ’60s

40 percent

$99 billion

$11 billion (US)

10 a.m.

March 23, 2010

September 2007

18th century

20 degrees C

Grade 7

First reference/abbreviations
On the first reference, refer to an organization, a publication, etc., in full and provide the abbreviation in round brackets. For example, Ontario Library Association (OLA). All subsequent references can use the acronym.

Punctuation

No serial comma (i.e., the comma after the second-last item in lists of three or more things) unless necessary to avoid confusion (e.g., my colleagues, John and Diane = two people, but my colleagues, John, and Diane = more than two people).

Em dash with no spaces on either side (—). The em dash is used in pairs. It is considerably longer than a hyphen and used to create a decisive break in the structure of a sentence or to mark off information or ideas that are not essential to understanding a sentence (e.g., Thousands of children—like the one in this photograph—love ice cream).

En dash without a space on either side (–). The en dash is shorter than the em dash but longer than a hyphen. It connects values in a range or related (e.g., 40–50 people).

Hyphen (-). A hyphen is shorter than either an en dash or an em dash. Generally, hyphenate two or more words when they come before a noun they modify and act as a single idea (e.g., six-page document, two-year-old child).

Spaces between initials (e.g., J. K. Rowling).

Space before and after, but no total spaces between periods of ellipses. Use sparingly and not at the end of a sentence (e.g., It was a dark and stormy night … when there was a knock on the door).

No space on either side of a slash/virgule.

Terminal punctuation (e.g., a period) at the end of a bulleted-list item if the item is more than a few words, is a complete sentence, or is more than one sentence. In a bulleted list, if one thing uses terminal punctuation, all items must use terminal punctuation.

Period within quotation marks at the end of a sentence ( .”).

Other

No “http://www” before internet addresses unless necessary.

Lowercase in email addresses.

Specific words

Afrofuturism anti-intellectual anti-oppression   binge listen binge watch blog post book list book lover book talk bylaw   cell phone copy editing co-worker custom-build   decision-maker dropbox   e-audiobook ebook e-community Elder e-learning email e-resource ex-officio members   First Nation or First Nations   genre-less guided reading instruction   health care professional homepage   Indigenous Peoples Internet Inuit Inuk   lifelong learning listen-alike lowercase

Métis microaggression microloan mid-career movie star multimedia multi-task   net (the internet) news writing non-exclusive   offline Ontario Library Service – North (en dash and spaces) Oral Tradition   percent Potlatch pro-inclusion     read-alike readers’ advisory transaction re-educate reimagine relearn resume (cover letter and resume)   sidebar side panel staffless story cast (podcast) Sweat Lodge   takeaway (message, conclusion) 3-D three-quarters tool kit Traditional Knowledge   uppercase   watch-alike web (the internet) website world view

 

APPENDIX A

Reference guide for tagging 

We ask that tags be created according to this document’s methods, suggestions, and rules.

Tagging should be treated like indexing. Indexing an article involves focusing on the main topic and important keywords that the audience may attempt to search for or want to learn more about. Tagging requires asking: What is the main topic of the article? For instance:

• What is the central concept discussed in the article? (E.g., Participatory design)
• Is there a location vital or specific to the topic at hand?
• Is there a specific organization relevant to the topic?
• Which type of librarianship (academic, government, public, school, or special) would benefit from the article?

The current sentiment regarding the appropriate amount of tags per article is that using fewer tags is best. Attempting to compile a list of all of the keywords within an article can result in a search results page containing articles that discuss the search term only in a peripheral manner.

We ask that each article be assigned approximately three to five tags to make the content within the article more searchable. A piece of about 500 words should not need more than five tags, while it should be assigned at least three titles. 

There is an effective text-analysis tool that can help with tagging: Voyant Tools (http://voyant.tools.huma-num.fr)

Voyant Tools provides a beneficial list of single-word keywords.

How to create tags

Copy and paste your article into the text-analysis tool above to generate at least three tags. Editors will assign tags to articles by irregular writers on an as-needed basis.

For video or podcasts: The transcript for the video/podcast will be used to assess which tags will be attached to the post.

For comic strips or other media with minimal text: The editors will determine which keywords figure most prominently in the piece and should be assigned as tags.

Using Voyant Tools

1. Copy and paste the text of the article into the text box and click “Reveal.”
2. Note the keywords listed under the “Terms” button on the top left-hand side of the results page.
3. The top terms are the keywords most frequently mentioned within the article and should be noted.

Minimize redundancy

Aim to avoid redundancy. Consult the existing tags and note which are similar to your list. Use titles that communicate your concept to the best of your ability rather than reword an idea.

1. Always give preference to the root word, e.g., using “digitize” over using “digitizing,” “digitized,” or “digitizes.”
2. Exceptions:

o If the word is a proper noun, e.g., if an initiative is called “Digitizing the library today.”

o When possible, give preference to the person over the place or thing. For instance, choose “public librarian” over “public library” or select “digital librarian” over “digital library.”

2. Contractions are not preferred unless they are proper nouns; e.g., for a library program called “It’s Literacy Day,” the “It’s” must remain.
3. Hyphens are not preferred. Instead, leave a space between sometimes hyphenated words, e.g., Maker space or Makerspace, but not Maker space.
4. When naming a two-word-plus keyword or concept, always capitalize the first word and use the lowercase for other terms, e.g., Participatory design or Academic library.
5. Exceptions:

o  For an abbreviation, all caps are acceptable. For example, OCULA is acceptable.

o  For the names of associations, such as the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association, leave the capitalization of the first letter of each word.

5. Certain words, such as “university,” “information,” “management,” “book,” “education,” “research,” and “higher education,” are too vague on their own. These words are largely more effective when compiled into two-or-more-word concepts or keywords. For example, “research” would need a qualifier, as in “evidence-based research,” to be used as a tag.

 

 

Updated June 2023