[Air-l] E-Journals

[Michael Gurstein]

I edit and "publish" JoCI an on-line fully open access journal (Journal
of
Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net) and tend to agree with most
of what has been said about the opportunities (and risks) of on-line
journals.

Just a few points to add:

We are a "global" journal which means that most of our editorial board
(I
think highly distinguished within the context of Community Informatics)
is
from outside of the US, and I'm based in Canada but with strong links to
South Africa and Australia as well as the US.  What that means is that
the
specific nature of the relationship to the P&T & other academic
incentive
processes are somewhat different from most of those discussed here.

The fact that RESEARCH funding as well at P&T in South Africa (and parts
of Asia as well as Australia and the UK) is directly tied to
publications
with ranking in the Thomson ISI index is a problem -- and dare I say a
problem not just for us, or for our potential authors. The fact is that
the "A" ranked journals in the ISI index are overwhelmingly skewed to
the
issue areas and recognition structures of developed countries even in
those research topic areas of direct and immediate significance to the
developing countries themselves such as for example enablng communities
with Information and Communications technologies. (Dare I say that these
issues are of broader significance than simply academic.)

The on-line journal structure and including open access is of course,
ideal for an emerging discipline such as Community Informatics where it
gives CI and its exponents an opportunity to get wide exposure both
academically and among those non-academics with an interest in the area,
where other and more traditional routes (and media) would be much slower
and more problematic.  The issue of academic acknowledgement is of
course,
an issue but that would be an issue for those identifying with CI in any
case, and a journal gives CI a means for legitimation and exposure in
the
short run which would can only accelerate the broader processes of
academic acceptance.

Cash funding for the journal is much less of a problem given that we are
using very workflow smart software (OJS v.2) but some regular cash is
still required for exceptional or highly specialized activities. As well
of course, a continuing stream of volunteer labour is required and it
helps a lot if one has access to some kind of "incentives" (graduate
stipends, control over internal staff resources etc.etc.) to ensure a
continuing stream and particularly the timely execution of the various
activities otherwise committed to by volunteers.

It very much helps if the journal is not simply another P&T publishing
venue otherwise whatever the initial spurt of energy (or money) that
created it will very quickly fade (or some other opportunity will
beckon)
and there will be little energy or will to replace this. The reason, I
suspect, for the short lifespan of many on-line journals.

The opportunity for reach and thus readership and potential influence is
vastly greater than the relatively small one of traditional journals.
This
is both an advantage and a risk in that it rather puts some additional
pressure on the core academic mission of the enterprise and forces a
contininuing reflection on the precise nature of the research publishing
(and thus peer reviewed journal) enterprise.  This isn't a bad thing,
and
re-thinking the rather stale and unwieldy model of traditional academic
journal publishing is a very good thing but figuring out how to locate
oneself in the almost infinite space of e-publishing opportunity is a
continuing challenge.

To sum up I guess, the shift to on-line (and dare I say open access)
journals is probably unstoppable for a variety of reasons including cost
and the pressure for open knowledge which is coming from a variety of
directions and not incidentally increasingly from research funders.  The
new model at the moment is very much an entrepreneurial as opposed to an
institutional one i.e. it depends on the energy and creative enterprise
of
an individual or individuals rather than the continuity of academic or
commercial or other institutional structures.

My sense though is, as several have suggested in a somewhat tentative
way,
(and was suggested explicitly in the context of JoCI by Tony Salvador of
Intel), that the future is in translating the emerging power and
modalities of knowledge networks into e-publishing form. This is one
where
the "journal" is the publishing expression not of a
commercial/institutionally structured
discipline/sub-discipline/sub-sub-discipline, nor that of a knowledge
community as articulated by its leadership, but is in fact the way that
an
extended network of knowledge collaborators give a public voice (and
public access) to the considered products of their collaborative
knowledge
creations.

Collaborative blogs and wikis are I think, something of a precursor to
this but figuring out how exactly this could fit into the broader
framework of academic and research structuring and funding is still in
the
somewhat distant future.  And this will have to wait I think, until the
current generation of grad students and junior academics i.e.
digital/electronic community natives, are in positions of authority. The
reality, as several here have already alluded to, is that the academic
structures haven't really caught up to web 1.0, let alone adapting
themselves to the opportunities and risks of shifting their intellectual
product into a web 2.0 (;-)) environment.

Best,

MG

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Editor in Chief: Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net

Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training,
Vancouver, BC CANADA
http://www.communityinformatics.net