wikijournal.org - WikiJournal-en

17 Mar 2017

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_Wiki…

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