Hello everyone,
My impression of the discussion we had about monetary compensation to editors was a support for it, but even more so for having it not directly to editors-in-chiefs and EiC assistants, but rather to technical assistants, similarly to what was proposed in the earlier "hired editor?" conversation (as a follow-up of that, I haven't gotten any reply from Publons about how much their Reviewer Connect service would cost).
I think the most appropriate way to go is to hire a "technical editor" primarily among ourselves (boards and associate editors), but I think we should simultaneously look at MediaWiki-experienced freelancers such as at upwork.com. https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=mediawiki It will also be much easier to administer the compensation of one person (at least initially) than for multiple editor-in-chiefs and editors. I'm also thinking that person will begin editing with a limited budget, and the result will be evaluated to make a decision of whether to proceed in the same manner. Anyways, we should get the funding before making any decision about which particular person to hire, and I've made a draft of next budget grant application, including $1,500 for this purpose: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal_2019
I chose to make it a "rapid grant", because the Simple Annual Plan grants https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple program are currently not accepting new applications, and the next Project Grant application https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project will not give us the grant soon enough for next year. We can continue with rapid grants as long as the budget is under $2,000, and we can theoretically apply multiple times per year even. Still, if the budget grows we may want to switch to a Project Grant instead.
Best regards,
Mikael
On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 8:08 AM, Ian Alexander iany@scenarioplus.org.uk wrote:
Thomas
If we call them 'Technical Assistants (to the Board)' then we can still say that the Board is all-volunteer.
Ian
On Mon, August 13, 2018 3:38 am, Thomas Shafee wrote:
I think that here is minimal harm in a small compensation to the positions who do additional off-wiki work. The main risk is that it de-motivates volunteers if they feel that they are doing the same work that others are paid for.
Hence it would be important to clearly define what any paid work is, and that it is to reduce workload on others.
The official duties of the EiC are well defined, with additional responsibilities for e.g. paperwork for indexing services, managing web-addresses.
I'd actually be particularly interested in paying the assistant EiCs (or creating non-editorial position like 'technical assistant') and defining specific tasks for them e.g.:
- Contacting potential authors based on a list of topics and email
addresses <
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-2jGMgF-16AgMAWnDxPG01PWDwX01BTj
o_xfsHr-aAw/edit#gid=0> - Updating the tracking table <
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group/Potential_upcoming
_articles>
- Processing published articles (doi, add to page, etc)
- Formatting published PDFs
There is certainly precedent within WikiMedia projects for contributors with significant off-wiki responsibilities to be compensated. Even Wikimedia Australia chapter has a budget of 33k <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia_Aust
ralia/2018#Budget_and_resource_plan>. However we would no longer be able to use phrases like 'fully volunteer editorial board'.
All the best, Thomas
On Sun, 12 Aug 2018 at 21:57 Daniele Pugliesi daniele.pugliesi@wikimedia.it wrote:
Hi all,
Regarding the proposal to pay editor and reviewers, I would be happy to be paid because at the moment I have a lot of other job to do and not have so much time to dedicate to WIkiJournal of Science, but in case this activity becomes a job, I would be very happy to spend more time and efforts on it and less time on other jobs.
Daniele Pugliesi
Il 2018-08-11 22:45 Mikael Häggström ha scritto:
I have hence received one other disagreeing reply from a board member, but I assumed the result by agreeing by the points raised by ML. However, let's indeed wait for some further replies before concluding this.
Best regards,
Mikael
On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Jackie Koerner jackie.koerner@gmail.com wrote:
Mikael,
Only one member of the Boards has thus far disagreed in this email thread. Have there been others who have responded to you directly?
Best,
Jackie
--
Jackie Koerner, Ph.D. Researcher & Visiting Scholar jackiekoerner.com [1]
On Aug 11, 2018, at 2:36 PM, Mikael Häggström editor.in.chief@wikijmed.org wrote:
Very well, so it seems we won't add this to next year's grant proposal. I'm still keeping it in mind as a last resort if the administrative backlogs are further increasing, but I also hope that the alternative of having a hired associate editor will decrease the burden significantly anyways.
I also forward a response from Diptanshu on this matter.
Best regards,
Mikael
On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 4:49 PM, Dr. Diptanshu Das das.diptanshu@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Mikael
I strongly oppose your proposal of such a compensation. Thanks Michael for already having put the salient points prior to me. WikiJournal is not just another journal system the expenses of which are borne by Wikimedia Foundation. We are more. We are built on the principles of Wikipedia. Those who do not have any association with the free knowledge movement or who are not associated with such collaborative contribution would simply not understand this. Our objective should be to attract candidates who are not familiar with the free knowledge movement. So, I assume that being a volunteer is a pre-requisite. Michael is right in pointing out that if we cannot make the project run on volunteers, perhaps we need to reconsider the model.
I need to mention that over the last several years the sister project affiliation committee has not approved a single sister project (barring Wikidata which was approved entirely on different grounds) because the projects have not proved themselves fit to be run by volunteers alone and that granting Wikiversity the status of sister project has been considered one of the biggest blunders of the WMF.
Please forward this email to the respective boards of which I am not a member.
Regards Diptanshu
Please do not print this e-mail unless you really need to.
On Sat, 11 Aug 2018 at 13:22, Michaël Laurent michael.laurent@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I disagree. There are numerous projects within the Wikimedia foundation and most of them rely on volunteers. If we cannot expand it to a critical mass without throwing money at it perhaps we should first reconsider the model.
Again I propose to look at some of the Frontiers journals. They have a huge board of reviewers facilitating peer review. Perhaps we should invite more editors too.
BW ML
Op vr 10 aug. 2018 22:54 schreef Jackie Koerner jackie.koerner@gmail.com:
I think this is a very reasonable proposal. I do think this should be discussed annually in case we need to adjust to be a more appropriate amount. This would be, say as workload and demands increase, or as budget overall increases, the stipend might be adjusted.
Best,
Jackie
--
Jackie Koerner, Ph.D. Researcher & Visiting Scholar jackiekoerner.com [1]
On Aug 10, 2018, at 3:19 PM, Mikael Häggström editor.in.chief@wikijmed.org wrote:
Hello again,
I have informed the board at WikiJMed that I would prefer to see someone with more time than me to be the editor-in-chief when my term ends by New Year, and the Assistant editor-in-chief has expressed a similar attitude to it. Yet, the only other candidate to the editor-in-chief position has also expressed reluctance to it. For the long term survival of the journals I think we need to add a monetary compensation to editor-in-chiefs, and practically also to add an incentive to apply to this position.
I think an annual compensation of let's say $2000 for each editor-in-chief and $1000 for each assistant would be a humble start as part of the grant application for next year, especially considering that average salaries for editors-in-chief in the US are about $85.000 (link [2]) and $57.000 for assistants (link) [3]. Also, it is very humble comparing to the generally $100.000+ that many people make within Wikimedia Foundation (link [4]), and the income of $91 million that Wikimedia Foundation received in 2017 (link) [5]. Thus, we can definitely adjust this amount further in the future depending on the success of this grant application.
Best regards,
Mikael
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Links:
[1] http://jackiekoerner.com/ [2]
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/editor-in-chief-salary-SRCH_KO0,15.h tm
[3]
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/assistant-to-the-editor-in-chief-sal ary-SRCH_KO0,32.htm
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries [5] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2017/financials.html [6] https://groups.google.com/group/wjhboard [7]
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wjhboard/CACubOwiRUpiFW7qQmnhoyF8PzvM FOLWSeDuEjUNF3X1HrvcaGQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_sourc e=footer
[8] https://groups.google.com/d/optout [9] https://groups.google.com/group/wjmboard [10]
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[11] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikijournal-en [12]
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[13]
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