As Reid and James point out, the idea of collecting notable wiki-related research in one place is a very good one.
Just to give my 2 cents, at WikiSym 2008 we had a workshop in which this issue raised as a proposal. Then, it was clear that you need *real effort* (apart from some of your time, that was all I could offer) to make this real. I mean a semi-permanent staff of reviewers and writers, so that the site keeps lively action.
I myself liked the idea very much, but then the dissertation run over me, literally spending all my time and brain resources.
Indeed, for Math and Physics (I think) it works pretty well.
Best, Felipe --
--- El vie, 25/9/09, James Howison james@howison.name escribió:
De: James Howison james@howison.name Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia Journal? Para: "Research into Wikimedia content and communities" wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: viernes, 25 septiembre, 2009 5:26
On Sep 25, 2009, at 10:56, Reid Priedhorsky wrote:
On 09/25/09 06:59, Liam Wyatt wrote:
But I think that this issue (that of "but would
academics * actually*
write for this Journal?") is the one piece of the
proposal that is
the genuine and acceptable risk. [...] The risk of
the Journal
failing because of a lack of interest from
academics is indeed a
possibility. But, I think that is the thing that
needs to be tested.
Academics have never yet been given academically
legitimate reasons
to participate and I would like to give them the
option. If the
Journal were to fail for lack of interest from
Academics, then that
is a very important lesson and worth the effort of
learning it.
Sorry to be a party pooper. But, I think that lack of
interest from
academics is not a risk, it's a near-certainty. There
are already
plenty of journals and conferences out there, and I can tell
you now that we
would not be submitting anything.
Now, if the goal is to bring the whole of
Wikipedia-related research
into one place -- which is a good one, though I would
extend it to all
wiki research since Wikipedia is just one example and
(IMO) over-
studied to the exclusion of other systems -- then a
(preferably online)
publication which put out summaries/reviews of wiki
research wherever
it's published (think the page on Wikipedia, but
better) would be
highly desirable. Math does this sort of thing to great
success, I think.
I've considered this for research on free and open source software too. One of the troubles of forming one's "own journal" is that you are essentially ghettoizing the research, ensuring that it will not be read as widely in one's "home/reference discipline".
Reid's suggestion is a good one, if I understand it right (and possibly even if I've gotten it wrong ;), I'd imagine it as a frequent 'best papers' award, a meta-journal, which on a regular basis reviews the peer-reviewed literature and provides pointers and commentary about the Wikipedia-related articles there. Obviously, for copyright reasons, one cannot re-publish the articles, but there's no reason that an editorial board couldn't review submitted, already published papers, and build consensus on the best and most important Wikipedia related papers, perhaps on a bi-monthly basis. Perhaps authors nominating their papers could provide 2 page "contextualization" pieces explaining to the interdisciplinary community something about the venue and why they published there...
Is the Math reference you make something vaguely similar to that?
--J
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