Focus and Scope

The Journal of Information Policy is published by the Institute for Information Policy at the Pennsylvania State University, and is made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Experienced researchers and new voices from academia, industry, government, and civil society are welcome.

The journal is published online on a rolling basis, and submitted articles will be made available at www.jip-online.org as soon as possible after reviewing and editing is complete. Issues are assembled and paginated on an annual basis. All materials published in the Journal of Information Policy can be viewed and downloaded for free at the journal’s website.

The Journal of Information Policy is a refereed scholarly journal that is multidisciplinary and international in scope. The Journal publishes articles, comments, book reviews, literature reviews, and invited commentary in an electronic, online format. The Journal is designed to bring contemporary scholarly research and analysis of significant information policy issues to the attention of policymakers in a timely fashion.

The primary audience for the Journal includes policymakers; leaders in government, industry, and academia; legislators and their staffs; regulators; attorneys; standards bodies; and other participants in American and international policy discourse on information, communication, media, telecommunications, and the information society.

Topic Areas: We interpret the term information policy broadly, with the understanding that its meaning and parameters may evolve in a rapidly changing society. The term embraces the full range of information and communications users, institutions, technologies, applications, businesses, and cultures. Methodological approaches may include (but are not limited to) scientific, technological, economic, legal, social scientific, policy analysis, case studies, or comparative studies. Articles should provide insights and/or recommendations into issues that are timely and useful for decision makers.

The Journal invites contributions that address significant current or near-future information policy and regulatory issues. Topic areas of interest for the Journal of Information Policy include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Telecommunications (e.g. regulatory models and structures, universal service, digital divide, network neutrality, access charges, competition, etc.)
* Information society (e.g. knowledge production and distribution, e-readiness, quality of life metrics, e-government, e-commerce, etc.)
* Regulation and governance (e.g. statutes and amendments, regulatory issues, structure of regulatory agencies, etc.)
* Informatization (e.g. integrated views of information technology from an overall perspective)
* Access to government-held information
* National broadband plans
* Privacy
* Security
* Ethical issues of new technologies
* Intellectual property
* Gender and information technologies
* Community
* Electronic media industries
* Internet applications and services
* Unserved and underserved audiences
* Standards
* Mobile technologies

Proposal of other appropriate topics is invited.

Please note that Journal of Information Policy does not publish theses and dissertations.

Book Reviews: Interested persons are welcome to submit reviews of new books in the journal’s subject area. Book reviews will not be peer reviewed. The journal also welcomes books from publishers who wish for their new releases to be reviewed. Contact the Managing Editor at editor@jip-online.org.

Section Policies

Articles

Article submissions are welcome from anyone in the research community.

Editors

• Benjamin Cramer, The Pennsylvania State University

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Essays

This category is for special items that are not original research articles - such as expert commentaries, literature reviews, historical reviews, and the like. Essays may or may not be peer reviewed depending on the nature of the item. Each will be managed appropriately on a case-by-case basis.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: Papers from the 2012 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference

Use this section for papers that were accepted at TPRC in September 2012. TPRC papers have been invited for submission to Journal of Information Policy.

Editors

• Benjamin Cramer, The Pennsylvania State University

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: Is It Working? Evaluating and Assessing Broadband Policy

Use this section for papers that were accepted at the workshop of the same name at New America Foundation, September 2012. Workshop papers have been invited for submission to Journal of Information Policy.

Editors

• Benjamin Cramer, The Pennsylvania State University

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: Spectrum for Democracy

Editors

• Benjamin Cramer, The Pennsylvania State University

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book Reviews

Reviews by anyone in the research community are invited. Book publishers may also request that a book be reviewed by contacting editor@jip-online.org.

Editors

• Benjamin Cramer, The Pennsylvania State University

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: The End of the Phone System

Editors

• Benjamin Cramer, The Pennsylvania State University

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All original articles are initially reviewed by the Journal’s editors, who will assign two to three peer reviewers unless the manuscript is inappropriate in topic or quality, outside the scope of the Journal, or not sufficiently timely or original. All submitted articles must be the author’s unique work and must not have been previously published elsewhere or under review at other journals.

If the article is accepted for peer review, a blind review process will be used in which the identity of the author(s) is unknown to the reviewers. Two to three reviewers will be selected from an international pool of academic experts. The reviewers assigned to the article will comment on the following items:

* The importance, originality, and timeliness of the policy question
* Strengths and weaknesses of the study design and data analysis (for research papers) or the policy analysis and commentary (for policy papers)
* Writing, organization, and presentation
* The degree to which the findings justify the conclusion
* The relevance, usefulness, and comprehensibility of the article for the Journal’s target audience in government, industry, and academia

The Journal’s editors will decide whether to accept or reject an article for review within five (5) business days of submission and will notify the author(s) of their initial decision. The peer review process will be completed in three (3) weeks. The comments and recommendations of the peer reviewers will be consolidated by the editors, who will announce the decision of “accept as is,” “accept with minor revision,” “revise and resubmit,” or “reject.”

Authors will receive the results of the peer review process and the final decision from the editors. In the event of a recommendation to “revise and resubmit,” the author will be allowed two (2) weeks to deliver an updated version of the article, which will receive a further review by the journal editors before publication.

Publication Frequency

Rolling, with articles published online as they are completed. Each volume corresponds to the year of publication, with all items paginated sequentially.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Editors

Amit M. Schejter, Pennsylvania State University

Richard D. Taylor, Pennsylvania State University

Managing Editor

Benjamin W. Cramer, Pennsylvania State University

Advisory Board

Johannes Bauer, Michigan State University

Erik Bohlin, Chalmers University of Technology

Sandra Braman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law School

Rob Frieden, Pennsylvania State University

Neil Gandal, Tel Aviv University

Heather Hudson, University of Alaska

Peter Humphreys, University of Manchester

Nancy Kranich, Rutgers University/American Library Association

Milton Mueller, Syracuse University

Monroe Price, University of Pennsylvania

Harmeet Sawhney, Indiana University

Jorge Reina Schement, Rutgers University

Sharon Strover, University of Texas-Austin

Bin Zhang, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Editorial Board

Patricia Aufderheide, American University

Steven Bauer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paul de Bijl, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (The Hague)

Niva Elkin-Koren, University of Haifa

Martha Garcia-Murillo, Syracuse University

Carolyn Gideon, Tufts University

Ellen Goodman, Rutgers University-Camden

Natali Helberger, University of Amsterdam

Steven Jackson, Cornell University

Krishna Jayakar, Pennsylvania State University

Stephen McDowell, Florida State University

Maria Michalis, University of Westminster

Catherine Middleton, Ryerson University

Kathryn Montgomery, American University

Philip Napoli, Fordham University

Manuel Puppis, University of Zurich

Leslie Regan Shade, University of Toronto

Christian Sandvig, University of Michigan

Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University

Laura Stein, University of Texas-Austin

Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia

Peggy Valcke, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Kevin Werbach, University of Pennsylvania