History

Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap (TfL) is a Swedish quarterly journal that, since its founding in 1971, has been published by Föreningen för utgivande av Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap. From the outset, the journal’s editorial office has rotated between literary studies departments across the country on a two-year basis. This way of organizing editorial work is unique within the Swedish field of literary studies and has historically served several important functions. It has ensured both breadth and topical relevance in the journal’s output and that the overall publication record has been representative of research produced within the discipline as a whole. The regular transfer of editorial responsibility has also guaranteed the continual introduction of new perspectives. It has also limited the scope for ideological control of the journal.

The underlying reason for the journal’s founding was the perception that cultural journals in Sweden were becoming increasingly uninterested in literature and literary scholarship. At the same time, existing specialized scholarly outlets in literary studies were not considered to fully meet prevailing needs.

In 2020, TfL’s publishing association decided that, from 2021 onward, the journal would transition to an exclusively digital format meeting the requirements for full open access (diamond, i.e. without any fees). This transition has been completed, and all material from issue 2021:1–2 onward is published under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For earlier issues, copyright remains with the respective authors, and permission from the author is required for reuse. In connection with this transition, the journal entered into a collaboration with the National Library of Sweden, through which it has been integrated into their publishing platform for scholarly open access journals, Publicera (publicera.kb.se). All volumes from 1993 onward have been digitized and are available via the journal’s website.