True, it's probably not in the interests of the traditional publishers, but equally
many of the OA journals are very new and may or may not have a sustainable business model.
There's not the same level of track record to show whether they attract good papers or
are a journal of last resort. The fact that the author pays in some OA journals smells a
little of "vanity publishing" (if the journal wants the money, won't they
say Yes to lots of papers regardless of merit). OA journals that draw heavily on
volunteers rather than paid staff may find the volunteers enthusiasm wanes over time and
the journal collapses. Senior academics whose research is published in traditional
journals, where they may serve on those editorial boards of those journals, and so on, are
often dubious about any new journal (OA or not), and those senior academics are the same
people who sit on the committees that decide the "quality" of a journal and sit
on selection/promotion committees. So there is a lot of "inertia" in the system
around anything new. This creates in turn its own problem, if the older traditional
journals are more valued for academic purposes, then they will inevitably attract the
better papers, leaving the papers going to the new journals to be more mediocre, which
then in turn may give the new journal a mediocre reputation.
I note that all of the above applies to universities too. New universities struggle to
attract the best students who tend to be attracted to the proven reputations of older
universities. Older universities have bequests and endowments from their early students
that newer universities don’t possess. Incumbency is a powerful factor in both
universities and in publishing.
But with Wikipedia, we saw incumbency overturned, because, despite the fear of low
quality, Wikipedia's availability and price (free!) overtook the old model of
encyclopedia. This is what we have to hope for with OA journals. That their availability
and price (free!) will make it easier for other researchers to read and then CITE them,
leading to a rise in their citation index, which is an important aspect of reputation.
But, yes, there's a lag before that happens, and so in that lag time, you need lots
researchers committed to OA to publish there or researchers compelled to publish there
(thinking of WMF grant conditions).
Kerry
-----Original Message-----
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Piotr Konieczny
Sent: Monday, 4 July 2016 12:41 PM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
<wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] A New Journal: Wiki Studies
Second everything, with a note that sadly, until it is in SSCI, I doubt I will be able to
contribute much :(
Frankly, I wonder if the near impossibility for most new and OA journals to get into the
high-end indices isn't some sort of conspiracy on the traditional parasites, I mean,
publishers part... :>
--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
On 7/1/2016 14:56, Andrew Krizhanovsky wrote:
Thank you for this good news about the journal!
But I (as a usual researcher from the usual research Institute) will
be more interested to submit a paper to your journal if you will
manage to index your journal in WebOfScience or Scopus. Is it
possible?
Best regards,
Andrew Krizhanovsky.
On 1 July 2016 at 07:09, Shani <shani.even(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Wonderful initiative! Much luck with it.
Shani.
On 1 Jul 2016 01:44, "Robert E. Cummings" <cummings(a)olemiss.edu> wrote:
Hi All:
Given the conversation about fees for publishing articles about
Wikipedia in OA journals, I wanted to call your attention to a new
journal we are starting, Wiki Studies
http://wikistudies.org/
Wiki Studies is an interdisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed
journal focusing on the intersection of Wikipedia and higher
education. We are interested in most all of the same topics hosted
on the research listserv and the newsletter, including articles
about pedagogical practices, epistemology, bias, mission, and
reliability. We will not charge for submission or publication, and
will offer open access to readers. We will host on Open Journal Systems.
We are just getting started. We are recruiting editors, and plan to
have a presence at the upcoming Wiki Conference North America in San
Diego 7-10 October 2016. We hope to publish our first volume in
March of 2017, consisting of submissions received by 31 December 2016.
Comments, queries, and suggestions all welcome at
cummings(a)olemiss.edu
Yours,
Bob Cummings
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