On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 2:58 PM, jayvdb jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Wiki-research,
.... I'm also conscious that there are quite limited avenues for academics to be able to professionally-justify the time they might devote to improving Wikipedia
in
their relevant subject area. ...
Note that here in Australia, as of this year, academics will have difficulty justifying contributions to journals which are not on the list of journals approved by the Australian Research Council.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellence_in_Research_for_Australia
The list of approved journals for next year includes 19060 journals. The journal list has been the result of consultation with professional and academic bodies in each field.
As each journal will be ranked, researchers are rewarded for publishing in journals of a higher quality.
Ah ha! Thank you very much for this link. I knew there one some form of Journal ranking but didn't know that it was a government programme. I get in touch with the people I know at the Australian Research Council to ask them about what this ranking system means with regards to the Wikipedia Journal idea - how it might apply, what they would recommend etc... It would seem to me that getting a high ranking on that kind of listing (whether in Australia or in equivalent kinds of programmes elsewhere) would be key to getting the academic legitimacy crucial to the concept.
I honestly don't think that real scholars need another venue to publish there work, and expect that governments around the world are pushing the research industry to quality over quantity, which will result in a reduction in the number of viable journals.
Yes, possibly. 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. A lot of feedback has been given about this proposal with varying problems or pitfalls - which I am trying to work out way to mitigate. But, in any academic project there needs to be an element of intentional 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.
John Vandenberg
Liam [[witty lama]]
wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
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