Information Research

Vol. 29 No. 3 2024

First editorial as Editor in Chief

Welcome to Information Research! This is my first editorial as the new Editor in Chief of Information Research. I am honoured to take up this position - though I have large shoes to fill!

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Emeritus Tom D. Wilson who has retired from the position of Editor in Chief. Professor Wilson founded Information Research in 1995, assembling around the journal an international team of regional editors with subject expertise in various areas of information science. Additionally, the journal is supported by an international Editorial Board and Editorial Associates, our copy-editors.

Professor Wilson’s vision for the journal has seen the creation of an enduring publication, one of the first and still one of the few truly open access journals in scholarly literature. Information Research is the only fully open access journal in Information Science. Readers have always enjoyed free access to journal content. Even more uniquely in the current world of open scholarship, authors have always published through the journal without fees to offer their articles as open access. Section editors, reviewers, copy-editors, and the production team have long committed their time generously to the success of the journal.

The journal is published four times annually, covering a wide range of disciplines related to the study of information. Over the years, the journal has expanded in subject coverage alongside developments in the field of Information Science. The journal continues to hold prestige as a premier journal in our research community, with the publication of original research submissions, as well as conference proceedings from the Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) and the International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS) conferences, and as of this coming year, the iSchools’ conference papers. I look forward to working with our colleagues from these conferences.

For those unfamiliar with my background, I have long worked in the field of Information Science, as an information professional and as an academic researcher and instructor in the area of Information Behaviour. Although originally from Canada, for the last nearly twenty-six years I have been a member of the faculty at the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin, in Ireland. As the Editor in Chief of Information Research, I look forward to continuing our commitment to the many topical areas within Information Science, while forging new initiatives for this journal to ensure that Information Research continues to be a vital open resource for the scientific community around the world.

We are grateful for the ongoing support of the journal publication team at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås, Sweden. I am fortunate to work with Dr. Wout Dillen, our Deputy Editor, University of Borås, Sweden. Together, with the rest of our team, we invite you to join us as we embark on the next exciting thirty years of research publication in Information Science.

Professor Crystal Fulton
Editor in Chief