Publication analysis
About the publication
Title: The ALAN Review
ISSN: 0882-2840 (Print) and 1547-741X (Online)
Website: http://www.alan-ya.org/publications/the-alan-review/
Purpose, objective, or mission: The ALAN Review, sponsored by the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN), a special-interest group of the National Council of Teachers of English, specializes on articles and reviews of literature for adolescents and those teaching literature to adolescents.
Target audience: Mostly K-12 teachers who use the Review to research titles appropriate for young adults, and librarians, authors, and publishers focusing in the YA area.
Publisher: Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Peer reviewed? Yes
Type: LIS scholarly/professional publication focusing on news and reviews of young adult (YA)/adolescent literature. Not affiliated with a specific LIS resource, other than NCTE – but provides information to librarians on how to instruct adolescents in reading literature, and provides book reviews that librarians will find helpful in the workplace.
Medium: ALAN members get a print copy of each Review with membership. Back issues through 2017 can be found on the DLA website, free of charge. (Virginia Tech’s Digital Library and Archives (DLA) project provides many scholarly journals in a digital format to get around the high cost of producing print journals.)
Content: Reviews of young adult/adolescent literature, and articles on the same, as well as articles on the teaching of literature. This can consist of research papers and studies, literature surveys and critiques, author profiles, comp lit studies, and articles on ways to teach literature to YA/adolescents.
Frequency of publication: Published three times per year: Fall, Winter, and Spring.
About the publication’s submission guidelines
Location of submission guidelines: Submission guidelines can be found on ALAN Review’s website. They are also located in the journal itself. You can check the DLA for back issues. Calls for manuscripts can be found on the ALAN Review home page.
Types of contributions accepted: Author reviews and interviews, book reviews, articles on adolescent literature and teaching adolescent literature. The ALAN Review has also begun accepting vignettes from librarians and teachers focusing on their experiences and interactions presenting YA material to other teachers, students, parents, etc.
From Vol. 38 No. 1 (Fall 2010) online: “A manuscript submitted for consideration should deal specifically with literature for adolescents and/or the teaching of that literature.”
Submission and review process: Manuscripts should be emailed to tar@utk.edu, with “ALAN manuscript submission” in the subject line, in MS Word, APA format. Authors should submit a manuscript without reference to the author(s), a title pages with names and biographies, and a brief statement of the originality of the article.
A blind review is done by the editor and at least three members of the editorial-review board. Authors can expect to hear the results in 8 weeks. Articles are judged on: the contribution to the field of adolescent lit; clarity and cohesiveness; and scholarly rigor.
Editorial tone: The articles are scholarly, and present a thesis, outline the study or observation methods, and present findings, often with charts and graphs and a lots of references. However, the tone is conversational, open, and friendly. The submission guidelines specifically note that research papers and studies should be treated as articles, not formal reports.
Style guide used: The ALAN Review prefers the use of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Conclusion: Evaluation of publication’s potential for LIS authors
Anyone who has read and enjoyed a YA book will most likely think of something that would be appropriate to publish in The ALAN Review. This is a respected, peer-reviewed publication geared towards the very community that LIS students seek to work with. Authors write to their like-minded peers. They are passionate about sharing their experiences in hopes that others can learn from them. The Review is a wonderful outlet for interesting, involved, scholarly articles, reviews or interviews, or for just sharing a story about getting YA novels out to the public-a library event, book club, new way of teaching an old title, a study on readers of YA novels or focus on the reading patterns of a specific subculture (minority students, girls, boys, rural readers, LGBTQ youth)-this is the place for these types of submissions.
Audience analysis
About the publication’s readers
Publication circulation: The Review is distributed to all members of the ALAN group, part of the NCTE. Ulrich’s currently lists its circulation at around 2,500. In 2015, the online catalog received over 133,652 unique visitors.
Audience location and language or cultural considerations: The Review is part of the National Council of Teachers of English, out of Campbell, OH. English is the primary language; however, ALAN has members in all 50 states and internationally, and covers reviews of all sorts of books for adolescents. From the submission guidelines: “Stereotyping on the basis of sex, race, age, etc., should be avoided, as should gender-specific terms such as ‘chairman.'”
Reader characteristics: Members of the ALAN are highly interested in youth and young adult literature. Most people receiving this journal through ALAN or NCTE are classroom English teachers in middle or high school, or librarians, researches, authors, publishers specializing in YA literature.
Knowledge of LIS subject matter: Readers are not expected to be familiar with LIS terminology, although most likely they will as some subscribers are librarians and most are educators. Subscribers to the journal are primarily part of NCTE, teachers in middle and high school as this is a journal for adolescent literature.
Conclusion: Analysis of reader characteristics and their potential impact on authors
This is the place to send your manuscript, article, review or story if you’re an LIS student with any interest in the YA world. The Alan Review readers are a highly specialized group of professionals teaching and providing reference services to young adults. Sharing your manuscript could potentially influence classrooms around the country—new books to read, new teaching methods, studies and conclusions – this is the place to publish to get your name and ideas out, and to connect with other teaching and library professionals.
Last updated: February 27, 2020
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