Hi all WikiJournal (at Wikiversity) participants!
So, there's been a major discussion about whether we should merge our project with the one located at www.wikijournal.org, maintained by Philip https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User:Fokebox&action=edit&redlink=1 :
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group#Developing_WikiJ...
I've discussed this in the board of WikiJournal of Medicine https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Editors, and unfortunately it seems the aims of our project and that of Philip are too different. Mainly, he does not intend to implement peer review as a prerequisite for article publication. With merely editorial review, the project would essentially add nothing to the world, since there are already Wikipedia articles with protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Protection, which basically works the same way. Also, as seem at his grant proposal to Wikimedia Foundation, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Philip/WikiJournal.org/WikiJournal he has a vision of an "incorporated company", with huge monetary demands as compared to for example the Wiki.J.Med budget https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Financials.
Besides, as Thomas has pointed out:
"Although the domain wikijournal.org would be useful, there are plenty of other viable options. Being journal.wikimedia.org would be completely fine. So would wikipublish.org, or even wikijournal*s*.org. Searching "wikijournal" on google finds us before wikijournal.org, and I suspect that that will continue given googles algorithms. The WMF has a legal department better able to answer trademark issues. If we wanted to be more sure of our future position, we could ask the WMF to look into trademarking relevant terms etc."
So, unless you disagree, I will shortly decline a merger. Philip would still be welcome to join our project, with our mission https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group, "to publish scholarly works with no cost for the authors, apply quality checks on submissions by expert peer review, and make accepted works available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity." (Still, feel free to suggest changes in this wording.)
Best regards,
Mikael