Overview

Knowledge Organization (KO) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to advancing research on the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations of knowledge organization, as well as their transformation in contemporary socio-digital environments. The journal provides a scholarly forum for examining how knowledge is analyzed, structured, synthesized, and represented across universal and domain-specific contexts, addressing both intellectual traditions and automated, data-driven, and AI-mediated approaches. KO emphasizes the critical study of knowledge organization systems—such as classification schemes, thesauri, ontologies, metadata frameworks, and knowledge graphs—understood as epistemic, cultural, and sociotechnical infrastructures.

KO welcomes qualitative and quantitative research that critically engages with emerging technologies while remaining firmly grounded in concept theory, classification research, and the philosophy of knowledge organization.

The journal publishes original research articles, reviews, book reviews, editorials, and conference reports. It serves a broad scholarly community, including researchers, educators, and practitioners, and encourages interdisciplinary work on the systematic organization of knowledge.

ISSN Numbers

Print ISSN: 0943-7444

Electronic ISSN: 2942-3309

Impact Factor

Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year

Current Impact Factor: 0.5 (2024)

Scopus CiteScore: 1.0

JCR Category Rank: Q3 in INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE

Journal History

1973         Knowledge Organization established by Dr. Ingetraut Dahlberg, the first President of International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO).

1974         Knowledge Organization released the inaugural issue with the title International Classification.

1989         Knowledge Organization became the official organ of International Society for Knowledge Organization.

1993         The title was officially changed to Knowledge Organization.

1974-1980         Knowledge Organization was published by K. G. Saur Verlag of München.

1981-1997         Knowledge Organization was published by Indeks Verlag of Frankfurt.

1997         Knowledge Organization has been indexed by Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and received its first Impact Factor 0.121.

1998-2024         Knowledge Organization was published by Ergon Verlag of Würzburg (merged in Nomos Verlag in 2017).

2025         IMR Press started to publish Knowledge Organization (from Volume 52 Issue 1) which will continue to be available as open access under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

Benefits of Open Access Publishing

All articles published by Knowledge Organization (KO) are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. This means:

• Everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in Knowledge Organization (KO).
• Free for readers, with a comparatively low Article Processing Charges (APC) paid by authors or their funding bodies or institutions.

Copyright & Permissions

IMR Press grants any third party the right to use the article freely, so long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.

All articles published in KO are under the terms and conditions of the CC BY license. KO is not authorized to grant permission for material published under either license, as the authors retain copyright. However, depending on the intended use, permission may not be required at all. For details, see: Copyright & License.

IMR Press will insert the following note on the first page of the published text:

© Year The Author(s). Published by IMR Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Association, Institution, or Society Communications

As the official journal of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO), KO actively supports the dissemination of the Society’s significant scientific and clinical research. 

If you are an association, institution, or society and wish to benefit from the opportunities offered by an official journal, please contact the Editorial Office at KO@imrpress.com for further information.