Emijrp writes:
About the business model, perhaps the journal can't survive by donations but by
entities that receive donations. I'm talking about Wikimedia chapters. There are some
powerfull chapters out there that may want to support this journal project providing human
effort, resources and some money.
Certainly if the Wikimedia Foundation could support an online journal, this would be a
great outcome. As the basis of funding for the chapters appears to be changing from the
model of sharing the donations based on region donating the money to one of bidding for
project funding, I am not sure that the chapters will have "free funds" any more
but only funds committed to specific projects (which could include the journal, of
course). But as the journal is not inherently tied to any specific country, it's not
clear to me which chapter(s) would/should be interested. I don't know if there are
other ways to bid for WMF funding other than via chapters?
But, either way, if WMF (or its chapters) is to support this journal, it would need to fit
within the WMF strategic plan:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF
where I think this journal concept might fit under "Increase access to information to
drive community and Foundation decision making and action".
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF#Increase_…
and specifically to address the bullet point:
Foster a healthy community of researchers among community members and researchers
interested in analyzing Wikimedia; provide access to relevant data and highlight important
questions to be addressed
Note that to align with the WMF strategic plan might require the scope of the journal to
be constrained to matters of relevance to WMF, e.g. based on Wikpedia or other WMF
projects, using WMF data or trying to answer WMF questions or, at least, research relating
to non-WMF things for which some WMF implication/conclusion can be derived (e.g. it worked
here so it might also work for Wikipedia). As I mentioned previously, determining the
topic/scope of a journal is not easy and I don't know if everyone in this conversation
would accept a "relevance to WMF" criteria.
Kerry