Topic style and/or issue style (was: Re: [jox] Request for comments)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:18:19 +0200
Hi all!
BTW: This project feels very good to me :-) .
2 days ago Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
This argument goes deeper though - why limit a journal to a fixed format? Why not have a process,
where there would be a series of evolving articles as StefanMz suggested?
Well, there are some counter-arguments. Two that come to mind immediately are:
- 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.
I agree and particularly for this reason of impact.
- 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.
I agree with this also.
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?
I feel there is a misunderstanding here. I understood StefanMz that we
have a discussion *by* articles - not a *single* article evolving on
and on. That would mean that there are finished articles which (may)
relate to each other.
In fact I think this is the approach how a text based development is
done best. StefanMz' OpenTheory tried the approach to improve an
article by peer production but I think this doesn't work very well for
texts. Also as an author of texts I prefer that a text is finished at
some point. New thoughts {sh,c}ould be part of a new article.
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.
Yes.
2 days ago Stefan Meretz wrote:
A combination of both approaches could work, if we have some different
publishing stages: draft, web-ready, issue-ready.
May be it helps to think about the goals of the journal. I think among
the goals are these:
* create a coherent / focussed discussion space
* create impact in various communities
* gather a body of great articles
The main means for this is to gather great articles matching the
focussed space. How the impact is created then is a mere
organizational question. And the organizational question IMHO comes
down to the channels we provide.
I could easily imagine many channels merging topic and issue style
together:
* Have a website
The website would be the static backbone of the journal. A place
where you can go at any time and also a place where permanent URL's
point to.
I could imagine very well that the website is organized around
topics like "governance", "mode of production" or "practical
examples" - granularity needs to be discussed probably.
It can also be linked to blogs (though I'm certainly not an expert
on blogs...).
BTW: I agree with StefanMz here that the new Oekonux website would
be a good place for the journal. At the very least we are working on
the technical preconditions for this.
* Have regular issues
From the ever growing body of articles it is easy to create issues
which are then announced by different channels. An issue would then
be a special selection of articles selected either by a certain
topic or only the latest releases.
It would also be thinkable that if we want to set up a new topic
then we can call for articles which are then gathered in a special
issue of the regular journal.
A regular issue could also be limited in size so we would put the
real pearls in the regular issue and keep less brilliant articles
just on the website.
* Have email announcements
For those who are continously interested in the journal we could
have an announcement mailing list where finished articles are
announced independent of issues.
* Have backchannels
The easiest way for backchannels would be comments on the website
but I would not rule out other means.
Grüße
Stefan
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