Vol. 2 No. 2 (2021): Nordic Journal of Library and Information Studies

In this issue, the four scientific articles connect to two research areas that have historically attracted a great deal of interest from Nordic scholars within LIS: public libraries, and research practices and publication patterns. The first two research articles present studies focused on public libraries. Even though theoretical and empirical approaches differ, the two articles express an interest in how library users are constructed and positioned in relation to library policies and activities. In the first article, “Public libraries for all? A study on accessibility and participation in library policies”, Lisa Engström studies the meaning ascribed to the concepts accessibility and participation in Swedish library plans, and how these concepts relate to each other as library users are constructed in these policy documents. The second article, authored by Bo Skøtt, is titled “Introducing society: A lifelong learning perspective on public libraries’ contribution to integration” and presents a study that suggests a shift from the notion of integration to lifelong learning in the context of public library initiatives directed towards asylum seekers in Denmark.

The next two articles of this issue concern research practices and publication patterns. In the article “Publication practices in the Humanities: An in-depth case study of a Swedish Arts and Humanities Faculty 2010–2018”, Joacim Hansson, Koraljka Golub, Jukka Tyrkkö and Ida Ahlström investigate characteristics of research practices and publication patterns against the background of digital scholarship and performance-based systems for managing and funding research. The article presents an in-depth study of publication patterns from a single faculty, as the relation between policy initiatives and publication practices are studied using bibliometric data from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Linnaeus University. The fourth article of this issue focuses a single discipline, but the perspective is transnational rather than local. In “Publishing patterns in pharmacy: A bibliometric analysis of publications from six Nordic universities”, Terhi Sandgren presents a bibliometrical study of publishing patterns among pharmacy researchers from six Nordic universities using data from Current Research Information Systems.

As usual, this issue also includes a section of book reviews – this time with no less than six reviewed titles. The review section begins with two reviews of current titles from the growing body of literature on Open Access. First, Antti Rousi reviews “Open access in theory and practice. The theory-practice relationship and openness” written by Stephen Pinfield, Simon Wakeling, David Bawden, and Lyn Robinson. Then Samuel Moore offers a review of “Corporate capitalism’s use of openness: Profit for free?” written by Arwid Lund and Mariano Zukerfeld. After these two reviews, we present four reviews of recent Nordic PhD theses from the field of LIS. First among the thesis reviews, Nanna Kann-Rasmussen reviews “Atmospheres of surveillance” by Karen Grova Søilen. The next review by Ola Pilerot concerns the thesis “Performing interdisciplinary knowledge: Information work in emerging interdisciplinary research” written by Eystein Gullbekk. After that, Ulrika Sjöberg reviews “Performing search. Search engines and mobile devices in the everyday life of young people” written by Cecilia Andersson. Anna Sparrman then reviews “(I) Kindly like: Participatory research with young people about identity and social media” by Amira Sofie Sandin.