My answer is the fact that many of us are reading this mailing list, reading papers in various draft and final forms that people are writing, discussing the topic, etc. I see a community forming here. A journal would seem a natural evolution of that.
I dont think the editorial team has to be expert in everything in itself; it might need to be able to find reviewers in everything though.
Kerry
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From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brian Keegan Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 8:35 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wiki Research Journal? - Why?
I keep coming back to this same question Aaron's raised as well. Wiki is obviously the glue holding everything thematically as well as logistically together in the proposals I've seen here-to-for, but it seems nigh-impossible to assemble an editorial board that is simultaneously open and qualified to reviewing submissions that almost certainly cover the gamut from journalism and media studies, computer and information sciences, complex and network sciences, sociology and organizational behavior, business and economics, legal and policy studies, education and outreach. Any single issue risks incoherence including articles across all these fields and the possibility of having rotating special issues dedicated to any single domain for this Wiki-journal to ensure some coherence would seem to suggest simply organizing a special issue in pre-existing journals.
It comes down to this: someone needs to clearly articulate why active wiki-researchers like myself should take the risk of publishing our research in a new journal when we potentially have higher-impact journals and better-tailored special issues as alternative and ready outlets.
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 5:19 PM, Aaron Halfaker aaron.halfaker@gmail.com wrote:
So, if I can re-ignite and re-frame the original question I posed,
* Why do we need a "wiki journal" if there are already high impact journals that are receptive to high quality "wiki studies"?
-Aaron
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Manuel Palomo Duarte manuel.palomo@uca.es wrote:
Nice post, Kerry. Let me add that the citation rates are calculated using the cites in reputated journals already indexed ...
2012/11/8 Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com
Actually the reputation of journals is usually derived from its impact factor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor
which is all about citation rates rather than acceptance/rejection rates.
Acceptance rates are sometimes used for newer journals as citation rates arent available. But it doesnt follow that a new journal must reject reasonable papers in order to achieve some desired acceptance rate. A new journal (properly advertised) will probably attract a lot of papers that have been rejected elsewhere so you probably end up with plenty of worthy-of-rejection material.
There is no way to get an immediate great reputation for a new journal. But I think a clear focus on topic, a hard-working international editorial team, and a firm but fair reviewing process and reviewers will yield good-quality papers and will attract more good quality papers in response
Kerry
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From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Halfaker Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 1:51 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wiki Research Journal? - Why?
"Highly rated" is an interesting property. One of the ways that a publication venue becomes highly rated is by being highly restrictive. In fact, the primary measurement of the quality of a publication venue is the acceptance rate of that conference.
WikiSym is not considered highly rated because a high proportion of the submitted papers are accepted. Would a wiki journal be more restrictive in order to gain a "highly rated" status?
I think it's interesting to ask why WikiSym needs improvement and why attendance has been falling. If a WikiSym is a wiki conference that is struggling to maintain participation, how might a wiki journal surmount such trouble? Assuming that the answer to my question above is "yes, the wiki-journal would be more restrictive", how would such a journal gather more submissions than an established conference like WikiSym -- enough to both produce regular issues and maintain a high rejection rate?
-Aaron
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 9:12 AM, Joe Corneli holtzermann17@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Aaron Halfaker aaron.halfaker@gmail.com wrote:
To state it plainly, why do we need yet another publication venue specific
to wiki software?
I think people want a "highly rated" publication venue. Also,
«The reason why WikiSym is changing is for the same reason. People are not going to the conference! I think the attendance has been below 100 for some time now. That's not a sustainable number for the amount of work that goes into organizing a conference.»
But what you're saying suggests that maybe work should be done to improve existing venues rather than creating a new one.
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