[Air-l] Trouble with journals

[Douglas Eyman]

Ted M Coopman wrote:
> All,

> 1. Take the money out of it. Get rid of the publishers and
> associations that make bank off our writing and editorial work. Go
> online and make it free and accessible to everyone. Then maybe
> someone will read it!

This can work in some instances, provided that the infrastructure 
(including labor and systems) is underwritten by an institution or 
institutions (and doing so actually ends up both less expensive than 
many journal subscriptions being paid for by the library...as well as 
providing social capital to the institutions providing the support). 
That's the model that the journal I work with uses (Kairos: Rhetoric 
Technology, Pedagogy -- kairos.technorhetoric.net), and it has served us 
well for the past 10 years. We've been an open access journal from the 
start, and our current readership (as measured by server log analysis) 
is around 45,000 people per month. So people are reading it (but not yet 
citing it is much as I would like...is that because it is open access 
and perceived to be not as influential as print journals? I think it's a 
possibility).

> 2. Adopt a (mostly) open review system, although I think it should be
> restricted to editorial board members and ad hoc reviewers with
> expertise in that area and be blind. Lay out the process as it
> develops. I like the idea of a signed review, and often you can tell
> who the writer is, but personalities and politics are a reality.

Interestingly enough, we do this too. The first-tier review in our 
review process (after the editors evaluate the submission for fit and 
degree of development) presents the work in question to our editorial 
board (which is made up of about 50 of the top scholars in the field of 
computers and writing, which includes both faculty and graduate 
students); the edboard debates the merits of the piece on our listserv 
(the editors observe but do not intervene in this process unless 
something goes seriously awry -- which has not happened since I joined 
the editorial staff in 1997). The old-boy network problem doesn't 
surface here because if someone is disgruntled about their theory or 
method being critiqued, the other edboard members won't let them 
sabotage the work. The edboard decides to provisionally accept, request 
revision and resubmission, or reject. In all cases the author(s) 
receives a detailed summary of the discussion along with suggestions for 
either revision or other venues that might be better for his or her 
work. The works that are "accepted" then go through a process where the 
author(s) works directly with the editorial staff (and sometimes some of 
the editorial board members) to revise the work to make it the best that 
it can be (our process is also complicated by the fact that both textual 
content and design are considered scholarly, so the reviewers and the 
authors have to pay attention to both).



> 3. Allows readers who register to add comments along side an article
> to stimulate interactivity and allow authors to add new insights or
> data as it becomes available. You might also allow a rating system on
> usefulness, innovation, or other criteria.

This we don't do -- not because it wouldn't be useful, but because in 
the past when we've tried to build in interactivity, it has failed. We 
looked at other online journals and found that most had the same 
experience, and we theorize that it is due to the fact that scholarly 
journals (even cutting edge online ones) evoke a specific genre that 
doesn't have the space for such interaction; the kind of interaction we 
were looking for works well on listservs (like this one) and, 
increasingly, in social networking environments...and we may be 
approaching the time when appropriating the social networking practices 
of these other space may become acceptable for journals because the 
exigency and use of the journals is changes (and we are currently 
working on a redesign that will make these options available, but that's 
not ready yet).


So I certainly think there are interesting and useful ways to experiment 
with peer-review, and pre- and post-publication assessment (and perhaps 
revision). Kairos is working on one possible model, but I think that 
there are certainly others that are worth developing as well.

Doug

Douglas Eyman
Senior Editor
Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy
http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/