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The UMass Amherst Libraries have announced a new journal, Counseling Scholarship and Practice in Educational Communities (CSPEC), which is being published in partnership with the Ronald H. Fredrickson Center for School Counseling Outcome Research and Evaluation (CSCORE) in the UMass Amherst College of Education.

The open-access, peer reviewed journal, established to promote scholarship related to counseling activities in pre-K-12 settings, had its first issue published in February 2025.

Matthew Lemberger-Truelove, CSCORE associate director at the University of North Texas, and Carey Dimmitt, CSCORE Director and professor in the UMass Amherst College of Education, will serve as the journal’s editor and managing editor, respectively. The journal’s editorial team and review board include more than 25 leaders in the field of school counseling from across the country.

The review board welcomes submissions from school counseling and other allied professions, such as school social work, school psychology and teaching. Those interested in submitting manuscripts should review the submission guidelines on the CSPEC website.

Dimmitt explains that Erin Jerome, library publishing and institutional repository librarian at UMass Amherst, played a significant role in the creation and publication of the journal.

“Erin Jerome of UMass Amherst Libraries has been instrumental in helping us launch CSPEC—we couldn't have done it without her,” Dimmitt says. “Her expertise, thoughtfulness and attention to detail made the process much more manageable.”

“The benefit of publishing open access journals through library publishing programs is that we can bring together library resources, expertise, and networks to support high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship that is freely and openly available to the world,” says Ryan Clement, associate dean for data, digital strategies and scholarly communications. “The CSPEC journal will bring this access, in particular, to the community of preK-12 counselors and educators, who sometimes struggle to obtain access to the latest scholarship because of the high costs of traditional journals.”

More information about the journal can be found at https://openpublishing.library.umass.edu/cspec.