[Converted from multipart/alternative]
[1 text/plain]
I have no objection between this looser connection between the
journal and
ox, as mathieu suggests ...
I was not aware thought that I was pushing for an open review
process ... I
don't recall interventing on that issue,
Michel
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Mathieu O'Neil
<mathieu.oneil anu.edu.au>wrote:
[Converted from multipart/alternative]
[1 text/plain]
Hi Stefan and all-
I don't really understand what is meant by "a discussion by
articles"?>
In any case your message has helped to focus some thoughts
about this
project (which I'm also very happy with btw! and thanks to all
those who
have pitched in so far and / or offered to help).
First, what would be gained by an open review process (which
Michel seems
to be pushing for but you declare to not work so well with
texts) in
relation to a traditional peer review model? This is a genuine
question. The
good thing about a traditional review process is that it is a
focused> exercise: the reviewers know they have to produce a
review by a certain
date; otherwise they get hassled by somebody. In an open
review process I
can't imagine the editor / maintainer / whoever having any
grounds to
"pressure" anyone to "improve" or "critique" a contribution.
And, if no-one
is interested, it just won't happen... and things could drag
on forever. I'm
all for experimenting with new forms but I also want to make
the project as
good as possible. So there needs to be a rationale. I'm also
thinking of how
to present the project to possible other scientific committee
members: how
to define any other process of dealing with submissions other
than peer
review? Perhaps the fact that we will be discussing (as much
as possible)
reviews and any other issue on this list is in and of itself
quite an
innovation and a step towards peer production of research?
My second point is the relationship beween Oekonux and the journal.
Obviously both these projects are interested in the same
things (researching
and extending peer production) and equally obviously Oekonux
is in a sense
the "patron" or "publisher" of the journal as it will be
hosting the journal
website. But, I think we should be careful about making them
too integrated
in terms of content - or rather I don't agree with how you
formulate the
direction of this integration. What I'm trying to say is that
what in my
view would be the best is a space where people in the Oekonux
network can
communicate and exchange with other people including academic
researchers in
an equal way.
If however there is a perception that the journal and [ox] are
one and the
same (so that for example anything that is published on an
[ox] website can
automatically translate to the journal) I fear that this may
harm the
scientific credibility of the journal, by giving the
impression that it is
an extension of the [ox] project rather than a scientific or
strictly> merit-based endeavour - and this in turn would harm
our chances of
attracting contributions from academic researchers. I wouldn't
want us to
have a boring journal with only academic stuff but neither
would I want us
to scare away potentially useful contributions from academics.
So in brief what I would say is that the peer-reviewed
"pearls" in the
journal could happily be featured on the [ox] website, rather
than the other
way around.
Hope this makes sense,
cheers,
mathieu
----- Original Message -----
From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
Date: Saturday, July 18, 2009 4:41 am
Subject: Topic style and/or issue style (was: Re: [jox]
Request for
comments)
To: journal oekonux.org
Cc: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
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
______________________________
http://www.oekonux.org/journal
****
Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University
E-mail: mathieu.oneil anu.edu.au
Tel.: (61 02) 61 25 38 00
Web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php
Mail: Coombs Building, 9
Canberra, ACT 0200 - AUSTRALIA
[2 text/html]
______________________________
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