UL Professional Development

First, huge thanks to Stefanie for pointing us to this journal. She mentioned them in her talk on publication as a peer-reviewed venue for database and library online product reviews.

The Charleston Advisor (which is actually a library journal despite the name). They do database reviews — lengthy reviews, peer reviewed! Sign up.

I signed up Thursday morning using the web form, and by Thursday night had an email from the managing editor showing interest and giving me a wealth of information about guidelines, the author agreement, etc.  and a possible timeline for submission and publication. (Quick turnaround — review due in February 2011, publication in April 2011 if accepted. They publish quarterly, and it is online). Also, it looks like they do still pay if your review is accepted.

Their main focus is databases and other content publishers — so while I made a few suggestions for my particular expertise, those of you who work with specific databases should take a look at what’s been done already and see if we have anything new or exciting that would be a good candidate (you specify which products you are interested in reviewing in the sign up form). Open access and Open Source databases and products are accepted — they’ve done reviews of Google, Google Voice, LibStats, PLoS one, etc. They have a browsable Index of reviews on their site, and we do have access to the full text so you can take a look at their reviews.