[Converted from multipart/alternative]
[1 text/plain]
Can we imagine a merging of the two processes ...
I.e. we start thematic issues, but make sure at least one is
officiallypublished every 6 months. At this date, the status of
the articles and the
journal issue move from 'beta' to alpha. Insiders are alerted
wheneber an
article is published, but the outside world is flooded with bi-annual
announcements of the finished issue.
Michel
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Stefan Meretz
<stefan meretz.de> wrote:
Hi Mathieu and all,
On 2009-07-15 08:08, Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
It's interesting that StefanMz referenced Debian when
talking about
periodicity - I also thought about it, as in "deadlines are
artificial constructs" - when we are happy with it, it's
ready to be
released. The only problem with that is that there has
sometimes been
so long between those releases that (as I understand it) the
process> > has become a bit of a running joke and in fact a
strong selling point
for Ubuntu which releases a new version like clockowork
every six
months.
As you know Debian changed its "old" policy, and some days ago
they made
an arrangement with Ubuntu to coordinate their releases. IMHO this
brings a lot of pressure and alienation to Debian, so that
seeking for
more professionalization will follow. This means more paid
developers,> higher hurdles for new developers to engage etc. I
think, that the new
policy is not good for Debian, but I wish I am wrong.
- when Debian release a new release, they number it and
_announce_ it
widely. If on tbe other hand we have only articles in
progress there
is nothing to announce other than "article X is (more or less)
finished". In my view that has a lot less impact than the
announcement of a themed issue. My interest is in having as
big an
impact for our perspective as possible. There are already
lots of
bits and pieces floating about the net - what is needed in
my view is
something more coherent.
With a topic oriented approach we can announce the new topic
to be
discussed in the next months and ask for contributions. Then
we can
publish the articles being ready step by step. This has the
advantage,> that we are bringing the given topic continuously
into the mind of
interested people. There are two main cannels to spread new
articles:> RSS feed and mail subscription. Then there is the
website, but websites
are only carrying passive content waiting to be found by
search engines.
You are right, a themed issue could have some more impact (I
am not sure
about that), but how do you spread the word? Online
subscriptions are
only useful if they are feeded continuously, one or two news about
released issues per year are too few. In the online world
these are dead
feeds.
- if we want to attract outside contributors and not just
members of
the [ox] network "traditional" aspects of a journal such as
date and
number which can be referenced for scholarly or other
purposes are
helpful. With the "process" approach this is not possible.
It's not a
huge deal or anything but once again to my mind it potentially
lessens the potential impact a bit.
That's true, a traditional issue with date and number fit more
into the
scientific field. Some online journals circumvent this by
using permanent
links including release informations (as in blogs) and by
putting a box
above the article expaining how to reference this article in a
correct> way.
At this point a new idea comes into my mind: We should
cooperate with
some OAI server, in order to feed our articles into scientific
databases> automatically. Maybe Herbert Hrachovec can help?
I'm not saying that I don't think the idea of peer
production of
article is interesting. We could integrate this idea to the
journal> > by having a stream of articles that are worked on
collectively etc in
parallel to the regular issues, and when they are deemed
ready they
can be formally published - a bit like the various versions
of code
that Debian has?
A combination of both approaches could work, if we have some
different> publishing stages: draft, web-ready, issue-ready.
Neither am I saying that I dont like the idea of responses to
articles as suggested by Michel - on the contrary! To stick
with the
example of Christian's peer economy it would be great to
have several
articles discussing it and then his response as an issue.
But once
again in my view publishing this as a single package would
have a lot
more impact than a staggered release over time.
We are making big plans, but my feeling is, that we will have to
struggle a lot to release articles at all. The process
approach to me
seems to lower the hurdles. But finally: I am not against the issue
approach!
Ciao,
Stefan
--
Start here: www.meretz.de
______________________________
http://www.oekonux.org/journal
--
Working at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
[2 text/html]
______________________________
http://www.oekonux.org/journal