About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies is an international, scientific journal on working life, written in English. The journal is edited by an Editorial Board of 8-15 Editors from Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. 

The journal aims to strengthen the exchange of experiences, perspectives, methods and outcomes of the Nordic working life research across the Nordic countries, and promote Nordic working life research internationally.

The mission of the journal is to present studies concerning changes in work and how these changes affect qualifications, health, occupation, innovation, economy, identity, social orientation and culture. The journal aims at an interdisciplinary profile. Most of the articles in the journal have authors from the Nordic countries, but researchers from outside the Nordic region are also invited to contribute to the journal, to the extent that such contributions improve the understanding of Nordic conditions.

If you want to submit an article

Please see our guidelines for setting up your paper, before submitting it! All manuscripts should be submitted to the Journal manager, Bo Carstens, bo.carstens@gmail.com. (The automatic workflow-system at this web-site is not being activated by us). 

Peer Review Process

Each article, if admitted by the Editors, is reviewed by two anonymous referees, normally from two different Nordic countries in a double blind review process. The Editors may also recommend revisions. Introductions, book reviews, essays, reports and commentaries. are not subject to this review process.

When asked to be a Referee for an article submitted to this journal, the title and an abstract of the article and a suggested deadline will be provided. If this task is accepted by the Referee, the Journal manager will send the article (in anonymous form) + a Referee Form with indication of the deadline for the return of the review to the Referee.

The Referee Form can be seen here.

Normally the deadline for the review is 1 month.

The Journal wants to emphasize, that reviews should take a constructive approach to its points of criticism in order to facilitate dialogue and development of the texts.

The Referee is asked to number each element of the review in order to facilitate the dialogue between author(s), Editor and Referees about revisions etc. Likewise it is important that the arguments in the review are specified. All reviews must be provided in English.

The referees are invited to use Word-documents for their reviews and comments (and not PDF-files). Reviews are sent to the Journal manager, using the Referee Form. Hereafter they are forwarded to the Editor of the article.

The Editor communicates through the journal manager his or her remarks and propositions + the reviews to the author(s), and sets a deadline for the return of a revised version (if a revision is called for).

If a revised version is being made, the author is asked to comment upon the remarks and propositions from Referees and Editor with reference to the numbering of the elements of the reviews.

The Editor can decide that a second round of reviews is necessary after revision of the article, normally with a deadline of 14 days. (In the Referee Form the Referee has had the opportunity to indicate that he or she is willing to review the article again after revision upon request of the Editor).

When an article has finally been approved – or rejected – the Referees will receive a notification of this + a copy of all reviews of the article.

At the end of the year a list of referees that have contributed to the journal will be published here on the website.

Plagiarism screening
We do not screen articles for plagiarism. It is the responsibility of the authors to make sure they do not plagiate.

If you want to submit a review

We happily publish reviews – or proposals of books to review – if they are relevant for understanding working life conditions in a Nordic context. All reviews must be accepted by our Board of Editors to be published. All book reviews should be submitted to the Journal manager, Bo Carstens, bo.carstens@gmail.com

Reviews can apply to monographs as well as anthologies and other research contributions.

The purpose of the reviews should be that readers are able to stay informed about new books, acquire new knowledge and become acquainted with new views; librarians are able to obtain an overview of the offer for book purchases, and researchers are able to gain sufficient insight into a book to decide whether the book should be read in its entirety.

Book reviews should not be longer than 2.000 words

The start of the review must contain the following information:

• Author (s) / editors
• Title
• Publisher and place of printing, Year, Number of pages
• ISBN number

The ‘body’ of the review should be a predominantly descriptive review of the book. Describe the book's topic, content, method, structure, and format. The description should be based on the book's purposes and intentions. Be loyal to the author. In the case of anthologies, it may be a good idea to describe the overall structure and then select a few exemplary contributions.

The book should be compared with other works in the area in question to place its significance in the landscape.

Finally, reviewers can make a  more personal assessment of the book. It is important to indicate how accessible the book is - can "ordinary readers" understand the book, or is it only for the specially initiated; who is the readership? Here you can also comment on the book's length, price, illustrations, linguistic quality, register or lack thereof. In conclusion, the reviewer may reflect on the significance of the book. There is room for more critical and subjective observations.

The review ends with the reviewer(s)’ name, possible affiliation and e-mail address.

Publication Frequency

We publish a regular issue each quarter (March, June, September and December). But all accepted articles are published immediately after layout in our OnlineFirst list. The top 4-6 articles on the list will be included in the next regular issue, when the time of publishing arrives. The number of articles published then depends on the backlog of articles being processed. Readers can access the OnlineFirst list in exactly the same way as they access the regular issues, and the special issues. Each year 1-2 special issues may be published as well. 

In 2021 we published a total of 24 peer-reviewed articles in 4 separate issues and 4 articles in a special issue.  We also expect to publish 4 regular issues this year, and we have published 1 special issue in February.

Open Access Policy

NJWLS is indexed in these databases

Publication plan

There are no specific deadlines for submissions to our regular issues, since we publish those articles that are ready to be published at the time of publication. But expect a normal processing time of 32 weeks from the date of submission until the article has been approved and is ready for publication, cf. our Workflow chart below.

Special issues are published more randomly, normally once or twice a year. These issues always have a fixed deadline which is set in the Calls that are made for them, cf. the Announcements in the Navigation Bar. 

The table below describes the ideal workflow. The 32 weeks is an ideal, but longer time may pass, due to many circumstances.

Number of downloads

About 4-5.000 articles are downloaded each month. In 2020 68.238 were downloaded. You can see a list of all downloads as per 31. December 2020 of articles published by NJWLS here:

Table of Downloads from NJWLS

List of reviewers

This table present the reviewers that have contributed to the journal until ultimo 2023:

List of reviewers ultimo 2023

Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement

This journal follows DOAJ's  Principles of Transparancy and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

In case of suspected misconduct, we adhere to COPE's flowcharts in our response.

When a member of the Editorial Board is also author/co-author of an article submitted to the journal, an Editor from outside the Board will be appointed to the article in question.

Journal History

The Journal was launched in August 2011. From 2011 to 2014 it was hosted at CBS, Copenhagen  Business School, and from 2014 to 2016 at Roskilde University Library. From 2017 it is hosted by The Royal Danish Library.

Professor Anders Buch, VIA University College, is Editor-In-Chief.