April 2012 - JoPP-Public - lists.ourproject.org

Reader response
by Mathieu ONeil 18 Apr '12

18 Apr '12

Hi all rom the recent discussion with Johan it appears that incorporating a (registered?) reader signaling system is an important part of the journal. @Franco: is there any way we can incorporate this on the site? Thanks Mathieu

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Support Ourproject.org & Comunes.org / Apoya a Ourproject.org y a Comunes.org / Apoia a Ourproject.org
by donate＠ourproject.org 16 Apr '12

16 Apr '12

[ENGLISH BELOW] Queridos miembros de Ourproject.org: Nos dirigimos a vosotros/as para poneros al día de una nueva forma de colaborar en el crecimiento de nuestra comunidad. Como sabréis, Ourproject ha experimentado un gran crecimiento desde su nacimiento hace diez años, hasta alcanzar en la actualidad un total de 1.079 proyectos, que reciben un total de un millón de visitas mensuales. Sin publicidad y compartiendo su trabajo con licencias libres, siguiendo el espíritu de esta comunidad. El gran crecimiento experimentado requiere que ampliemos la capacidad de soporte de Ourproject y de otros proyectos bajo el paraguas de nuestra asociación sin ánimo de lucro Comunes.org . Por ello, hemos decidido montar junto con otros colectivos con fines similares un Centro de Datos: http://comunes.org/es/787/building-a-collective-data-centre/ en el que albergar una mayor cantidad de proyectos de una forma más efectiva, con recursos suficientes para todos. También ha llegado la hora de ofrecer nuevos y más avanzados servicios que llevamos desarrollando desde hace cinco años, como: http://kune.ourproject.org http://kune.cc Por desgracia, todo esto supone un cierto desgaste económico para el proyecto. Es más, nos ha llegado el momento de renovar equipos y comprar repuestos de nuestros servidores, que están empezando a dar problemas y muestras de fatiga: http://comunes.org/es/909/help-servers-hardware/ que habréis podido sufrir con caídas de los servicios más frecuentes en los últimos tiempos. Hay que tener también en cuenta que durante estos diez años hemos costeado los gastos a través de nuestras continuas aportaciones personales. Por esta razón, hemos decidido crear una nueva vía de participación y cofinanciación disponible para los miembros de Ourproject. Consiste en aportaciones económicas periódicas, variables y totalmente voluntarias (cada cual en la medida de sus posibilidades para así evitar las cuotas fijas) que nos permitan sufragar estos gastos, de forma que los miembros de Ourproject (y Comunes en general) puedan ayudar a la sostenibilidad del ecosistema común. Para ello hemos habilitado la siguiente página: http://comunes.org/donate/ en la que podréis, si es vuestro deseo, colaborar con cuotas periódicas mensuales. Las aportaciones estarán enteramente destinadas al mantenimiento de los servicios, y mantendremos el espíritu de Ourproject no buscando lucro de ningún tipo, ni introduciendo publicidad alguna. Todos los movimientos económicos hechos con estas aportaciones serán claramente expuestos a la comunidad, de forma transparente, en un lugar destacado de la página. Muchas gracias. Un cordial saludo, El equipo detrás de Ourproject.org y Comunes.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [ENGLISH]: Dear members of Ourproject.org: We are contacting you in order to update you on a new way of collaborating in the growth of our community. As you know, Ourproject has lived an extraordinary growth from its birth 10 years ago, as today we already have 1.079 projects which all together receive around a million visits per month. Everything with no ads and sharing their work with free licenses, following the spirit of this community. This growth has required to increase the capacity of the servers and infrastructure of Ourproject and the other projects under the umbrella of our non-profit Comunes.org. In this line, we joined other similar collectives to form a Collective Data Centre, with enough resources for all of us: http://comunes.org/787/building-a-collective-data-centre/ Besides, it’s time to offer new and more advanced services that we have been developing in the last five years, such as: http://kune.ourproject.org http://kune.cc However, this implies a continuous economic effort. Furthermore, the time has come to renew our servers, that have already shown serious signals and issues: http://comunes.org/909/help-servers-hardware/ that you may have suffered, with more frequent problems in the service. We should take into account that during these 10 years we have been assuming the efforts from our personal economic contributions. That is why we have decided to create a new method of participation and co-funding for the old and new members of Ourproject. It consists of regular, variable and fully optional economic contributions (each one to the extent of their capabilities, avoiding fixed quotas), that would allow us to sustain the expenses, so everyone in the community can help sustaining this common ecosystem. Thus, we have prepared a donation page: http://comunes.org/donate/ in which you could, if you want to, collaborate with regular monthly quotas. These contributions will be used just for the maintenance of the servers and infrastructure, and we’ll keep with the spirit of Ourproject and Comunes by not seeking profit in any way, and not placing ads anywhere. Every economic move done with these contributions will be clearly exposed to the community, transparently, in a highlighted part of our pages. Thanks a lot for your support, The team behind Ourproject.org and Comunes.org

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Re: [JoPP-Public] JoPP-Public Digest, Vol 3, Issue 6
by Mathieu ONeil 16 Apr '12

16 Apr '12

Hi Johan That is a good point (the risk of being flooded by shitty drafts assured of being peer-published) but in fact I forgot to say that since we now have an editorial committee there can and will be more upstream selection to weed out obviously unready papers... so only not completely shitty ones will be sent out for review in order to spare reviewer energy. So we wont be dealing with your bad scenario - no purchase to improve papers - as hopefully authors will be willing to improve their work in the name of science, truth, beauty etc. cheers (from sunny Roma) Mathieu On 04/16/12, Johan Söderberg <johan.soderberg(a)sts.gu.se> wrote: > > Hi Mathieu, all the rest, > > The ending of my mail got a bit strange, because I sent the mock-up and not the real one I had written. Oh well. I will only make one more brief response to your answer Mathieu, then I will leave it at that. > > >This does not mean that reviewers have no impact - in fact the radical openness (publish original subs, publish >reviews) ?may constitute a disincentive to publish as some authors may not wish to have it known how much their >original submissions needed revision let alone their low signals. > > My understanding was that we would be LESS restrictive in accepting articles than a traditional journal, not that we would LET GO of all criteria and then use the signals as the sole means of distinguishing good from bad. If we go down this route, we will be swimming right against the tide of academic career-making. Think about it, what happens when anyone with a draft they cannot get published discover that they can send it to JoPP and put a peer-reviewed publication on their CV. The signals will be bad, ok, but the signals do not go up on the CV. The scenario of us being spammed by bad drafts is perhaps a bit extreme (it will take time for the 9-to-5 academic to find out about our journal, after all), but more realistic is that editors will have less purchaise when asking authors to spend another month of perfecting their text, just to (maybe) win another point in the signaling system. > > I admit that I slept-in a bit during the earlier discussions about the peer review process on the mailinglist, so my sudden awakening to this discussion is a bit late in the day. > > Johan > > _______________________________________________ > JoPP-Public mailing list > JoPP-Public(a)lists.ourproject.org > https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public > > -- **** Dr Mathieu O'Neil Adjunct Research Fellow Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute College of Arts and Social Science The Australian National University email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php

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Re: [JoPP-Public] JoPP-Public Digest, Vol 3, Issue 6
by Johan Söderberg 16 Apr '12

16 Apr '12

Hi Mathieu, all the rest, The ending of my mail got a bit strange, because I sent the mock-up and not the real one I had written. Oh well. I will only make one more brief response to your answer Mathieu, then I will leave it at that. >This does not mean that reviewers have no impact - in fact the radical openness (publish original subs, publish >reviews) ?may constitute a disincentive to publish as some authors may not wish to have it known how much their >original submissions needed revision let alone their low signals. My understanding was that we would be LESS restrictive in accepting articles than a traditional journal, not that we would LET GO of all criteria and then use the signals as the sole means of distinguishing good from bad. If we go down this route, we will be swimming right against the tide of academic career-making. Think about it, what happens when anyone with a draft they cannot get published discover that they can send it to JoPP and put a peer-reviewed publication on their CV. The signals will be bad, ok, but the signals do not go up on the CV. The scenario of us being spammed by bad drafts is perhaps a bit extreme (it will take time for the 9-to-5 academic to find out about our journal, after all), but more realistic is that editors will have less purchaise when asking authors to spend another month of perfecting their text, just to (maybe) win another point in the signaling system. I admit that I slept-in a bit during the earlier discussions about the peer review process on the mailinglist, so my sudden awakening to this discussion is a bit late in the day. Johan

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Re: [JoPP-Public] JoPP-Public Digest, Vol 3, Issue 5
by Mathieu ONeil 15 Apr '12

15 Apr '12

Hi Johan, all On 04/15/12, Johan Söderberg <johan.soderberg(a)sts.gu.se> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > >Not clear to me what confusion? > > I had to ask you twice over email, Mathiue, before I figured out just what "3/3" as opposed to "0/3" stand for. The meaning of the numbers are not self-evident to anyone just looking at the site for the first time (and once knowing what the numbers stand for, there is the much larger didactic task of making the reader FEEL the importance of a high or a low signal). Granted, it is not rocket science, but the small amount of energy it takes, I only put into it because I have an "official" role in the journal. As a reader, I would not have bothered, and I wage on that most people would go straight to the article and read it as they are accustomed to from any other peer review process. Thus we will not save the reputation cost of the journal when posting crappy articles. > Well, we could work on making the meaning of signals more clear and prominent, sure. Getting rid of signals would imply a radical turnaround in both the philosophy and practice of the journal which aims to widen the scope of publishable articles. It really is a core part of the process, and once again is absolutely compatible with wider community - reader appreciation. > > > > > > in my opinion a great advantage of the signals is that they exist, whereas comments by readers are... > > I would say exactly the opposite. Comments and rating-systems posted by readers are tried and tested in many places, the reader encountering our website will know exactly what she sees. With the signaling system, we face the uphill battle of trying to educate our readers to read a new rating system while announcing to them that we are a peer review, academic journal (thus readers will expect what they are accustomed to, that the rating has been done for them at a previous stage, through an accept/reject decision by reviewers and editors). > What I meant was: the signals have been produced, they are there, we can use them straight away. In contrast reader comments may take months or years to materialise in which case we have no metric at all. This is a serious disadvantage of relying solely on reader comments in my view. > > > > >a) not yet technically implemented, and > > This is an issue. But then the question becomes if we should make it a priority to implement the system. If it cannot be done, we should then declare that the feature is being worked on, and will be up soon (the latter, however, looks worse than relasing the journal with the rating system up - taking the risk that there will be no/few comments by readers, as a response to your point "b)"). > OK > > > > >Having myself been "signaled" in CSPP 1 I can understand the trepidation but reviewers were supportive / fair > > That can happen. But part of the rationale behind the journal was a discontent with a defunct peer review process in traditional academic journals. In fact, if we succeed with educating the readers about the signaling system, then more power has been given to the two/three reviewers than they normally enjoy. > Not really, see below. > Firstly, because in a normal journal, reviewers' comments and their say on accept/reject are just recomendations, the final decision lies with the editor. > Any paper submitted to the journal will be published irrespective of the reviewers or editors opinion of it : the decision lies with the author. This does not mean that reviewers have no impact - in fact the radical openness (publish original subs, publish reviews) may constitute a disincentive to publish as some authors may not wish to have it known how much their original submissions needed revision let alone their low signals. > Secondly, the familiar critique against the Audit Society applies here too, what is lost when a qualitative text is boild down to a few numbers ("is the paper well argued: yes/no"). In the case of readers' comments à la Slashdot, it is assumed that such reduction to numbers (together with the autocracy and arbitrariness it fosters) is evened out by the vast number of participants (wisdom of the crowd, etc.). > Well, OK, but to compare our readership numbers to Slashdot is, ah, optimistic to say the least. Once again : why not have both (if reader comments are possible?) > > > A few months ago, I think it was Nath (?) who cautioned us against getting too experimental with the peer review process, as it will be a challenge anyway to win the confidence of academics and convince them to send their best texts to a tiny journal like ours. We can compensate for beling lightweight in terms of advancing academic careers by having a novel agenda, an activist outlook, a strong community, etc. But in any case, we shouldnt make things harder for ourselves. Experiments with the peer review procee > I think we will attract people because of the quality of review that we can provide and also because people want to support our process. Look, its not set in stone obviously but if we abandon signals and rely on (non existent for the moment) reader appreciation then who decides what is publsihed - do we revert to editors making the sole decision if a paper is still not great after reviews and revisions? Then if we publish it we have published a not-great article without being clear that this is understood - in the end signals do help to protect our reputation... cheers Matthieu > > > > > however, we must weight benefits against costs. > > > >

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Re: [JoPP-Public] JoPP-Public Digest, Vol 3, Issue 5
by Johan Söderberg 15 Apr '12

15 Apr '12

Hi everyone, >Not clear to me what confusion? I had to ask you twice over email, Mathiue, before I figured out just what "3/3" as opposed to "0/3" stand for. The meaning of the numbers are not self-evident to anyone just looking at the site for the first time (and once knowing what the numbers stand for, there is the much larger didactic task of making the reader FEEL the importance of a high or a low signal). Granted, it is not rocket science, but the small amount of energy it takes, I only put into it because I have an "official" role in the journal. As a reader, I would not have bothered, and I wage on that most people would go straight to the article and read it as they are accustomed to from any other peer review process. Thus we will not save the reputation cost of the journal when posting crappy articles. > in my opinion a great advantage of the signals is that they exist, whereas comments by readers are... I would say exactly the opposite. Comments and rating-systems posted by readers are tried and tested in many places, the reader encountering our website will know exactly what she sees. With the signaling system, we face the uphill battle of trying to educate our readers to read a new rating system while announcing to them that we are a peer review, academic journal (thus readers will expect what they are accustomed to, that the rating has been done for them at a previous stage, through an accept/reject decision by reviewers and editors). >a) not yet technically implemented, and This is an issue. But then the question becomes if we should make it a priority to implement the system. If it cannot be done, we should then declare that the feature is being worked on, and will be up soon (the latter, however, looks worse than relasing the journal with the rating system up - taking the risk that there will be no/few comments by readers, as a response to your point "b)"). >Having myself been "signaled" in CSPP 1 I can understand the trepidation but reviewers were supportive / fair That can happen. But part of the rationale behind the journal was a discontent with a defunct peer review process in traditional academic journals. In fact, if we succeed with educating the readers about the signaling system, then more power has been given to the two/three reviewers than they normally enjoy. Firstly, because in a normal journal, reviewers' comments and their say on accept/reject are just recomendations, the final decision lies with the editor. Secondly, the familiar critique against the Audit Society applies here too, what is lost when a qualitative text is boild down to a few numbers ("is the paper well argued: yes/no"). In the case of readers' comments à la Slashdot, it is assumed that such reduction to numbers (together with the autocracy and arbitrariness it fosters) is evened out by the vast number of participants (wisdom of the crowd, etc.). A few months ago, I think it was Nath (?) who cautioned us against getting too experimental with the peer review process, as it will be a challenge anyway to win the confidence of academics and convince them to send their best texts to a tiny journal like ours. We can compensate for beling lightweight in terms of advancing academic careers by having a novel agenda, an activist outlook, a strong community, etc. But in any case, we shouldnt make things harder for ourselves. Experiments with the peer review procee however, we must weight benefits against costs.

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Re: [JoPP-Public] JoPP-Public Digest, Vol 3, Issue 4
by Mathieu ONeil 13 Apr '12

13 Apr '12

Hi Johan, George, all Not clear to me what confusion? In any case I don't see why we can't have both; in my opinion a great advantage of the signals is that they exist, whereas comments by readers are a) not yet technically implemented, and b) if set up, at risk of staying empty for a while - not a good look. Having myself been "signaled" in CSPP 1 I can understand the trepidation but reviewers were supportive / fair and - re Johan's point that people won't bother to figure out what the hell signals mean - I reckon that's part of our job, to explore alternatives and maybe change the way such things work. Won't happen overnight but you have to start somewhere?.. cheers Mathieu On 04/13/12, george dafermos <georgedafermos(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Makes sense. Maybe it's a good idea to get rid of signals altogether > but, as johan says, give users/readers the ability to comment on the > articles. Doing so would still encourage open criticism/discussion of > articles while avoiding the confusion created by the signals system. > > g. > > > > On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Johan Söderberg > <johan.soderberg(a)sts.gu.se> wrote: > > Hi everyone! > > > > A quick note concerning the signaling system. > > > > I dont have any strong opinions on how we implement the signals, principally because, I believe that we are tricking ourselves in thinking that the signaling system will push reputation costs from the journal to the authors. This is for the same reason that we are now pondering over how to best present the signals at the front of the webpage. The learning curve for readers is too steep, given the amount of time and attention they are likely to spend on internalising the new system. They will encounter our journal as they have learned to encounter any other, not bothering too much about the signals (wherever they find them, at the top or the bottom of the page), and definitively not sit down to read the short policy text where we explain our rationale behind having signals. Thus they will put all the reputation cost on the journal if they encounter a crappy article. That is my five cents. A readers commentary seems much more warranted, as that is a tried and tested method from Slashdot and elsewhere, recognisable to the readers, and it is useful for breaking the autocracy/arbitrariness of the two/three reviewers commenting on the article (a power only reinforced by the signaling system). Sorry for making this observation so far down the road, but it has become really concrete to me in the process of curating the special issue on hardware/bio-hacking. > > > > all the best > > Johan Söderberg > > _______________________________________________ > > JoPP-Public mailing list > > JoPP-Public(a)lists.ourproject.org > > https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public > > _______________________________________________ > JoPP-Public mailing list > JoPP-Public(a)lists.ourproject.org > https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public > > -- **** Dr Mathieu O'Neil Adjunct Research Fellow Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute College of Arts and Social Science The Australian National University email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php

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Re: [JoPP-Public] JoPP-Public Digest, Vol 3, Issue 4
by Johan Söderberg 13 Apr '12

13 Apr '12

Hi everyone! A quick note concerning the signaling system. I dont have any strong opinions on how we implement the signals, principally because, I believe that we are tricking ourselves in thinking that the signaling system will push reputation costs from the journal to the authors. This is for the same reason that we are now pondering over how to best present the signals at the front of the webpage. The learning curve for readers is too steep, given the amount of time and attention they are likely to spend on internalising the new system. They will encounter our journal as they have learned to encounter any other, not bothering too much about the signals (wherever they find them, at the top or the bottom of the page), and definitively not sit down to read the short policy text where we explain our rationale behind having signals. Thus they will put all the reputation cost on the journal if they encounter a crappy article. That is my five cents. A readers commentary seems much more warranted, as that is a tried and tested method from Slashdot and elsewhere, recognisable to the readers, and it is useful for breaking the autocracy/arbitrariness of the two/three reviewers commenting on the article (a power only reinforced by the signaling system). Sorry for making this observation so far down the road, but it has become really concrete to me in the process of curating the special issue on hardware/bio-hacking. all the best Johan Söderberg

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new article on peer production out
by Athina Karatzogianni 13 Apr '12

13 Apr '12

hi all, there is a new article out Peer production caught in the Web of the commercial market <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.675347>Bingchun Meng<http://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&r…> & Fei Wu<http://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?action=runSearch&type=advanced&r…> in the new issue of *Information, Communication & Society* http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showAxaArticles?journalCode=rics20 perhaps of interest Cheers Athina -- <http://www.routledge.com/books/search/keywords/karatzogianni/> Dr Athina Karatzogianni<http://www2.hull.ac.uk/FASS/humanities/media,_culture_and_society/staff/kar…> Senior Lecturer in New Media and Political Communication Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Hull United Kingdom HU6 7RX T: ++44 (0) 1482 46 5790 F: ++44 (0) 1482 466107 E: a.karatzogianni(a)hull.ac.uk Download my work for free here: http://works.bepress.com/athina_karatzogianni/

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Meetings and decisions: release schedule / signals
by Mathieu ONeil 12 Apr '12

12 Apr '12

Hi all RELEASE SCHEDULE Last week Jakob Rigi gave a talk at my University on "Universal and Communal Labor: Working Class, Knowledge Capitalism and the Quest for Communism". Johan attended this presentation so we had a chance to catch up and discuss the situation of the journal.* He indicated that he and Alessandro were keen to release their issue on bio/hardware hacking which has five peer reviewed articles and one debate paper (@ Johan and Alessandro: you need at least one response) sooner rather than later as they would like to be the first to publish on this "hot" topic. I was concerned that we should be consistent and stick to the release schedule (releases in June and December). What we have come up with is this: we could release both issue 1 (dated June 2012) and issue 2 (dated December 2012) in June 2012. This will make a big splash on the Interwebs and compensate for the missed release in January 2012. We would integrate this content into the site over the next couple of months. We could issue some new CFPs after this release so if anyone has suggestions for special issues now is the time to propose an idea. I hope this solution suits everyone. SIGNALS FOR RESEARCH PAPERS We have to address the issue of the presentation of research papers on the new site which means revisiting the issue of signals. Nate suggested a while ago that in order to protect the research status of the journal we need to communicate right from the start the signal given to a research paper - say, by placing it next to the title and abstract. [If we have the possibility of enabling (registered?) readers to rate as well that would be great too but not sure what the possibilities for setting up such a "community rating" mechanism is for wordpress? Does anyone know? This is technically part of our process so we should either implement it or take it out of the process description.] So the suggestion is to select some of the signals criteria for an immediate summary of our assessment of the "quality" of the paper. Signals would be added up for an aggregate figure (yes: 1, no: 0). The full list of signals would appear in the annexes. Below is a first stab at this where I indicate which ones (KEEP) should be featured in the top summary. Those that have nothing to do with quality (for example whether an article is "activist" or not does not reflect on its quality are followed by DISCARD). If no-one objects to this I will have a go at implementing this for the research papers in JoPP 0 / CSPP 1 to see what it looks like. I will be travelling from April 14 to 21 so only able to respond sporadically if at all during that period. I could look at implementing in the week following i.e. April 22-28. cheers Mathieu * By coincidence all three of us (Johan, Jakob and me) will be presenting on various topics in the same session (on "The Media - Alternatives and Commons: Towards a New Communism?") at the Fourth ICTs and Society Conference organised by Christian Fuchs in Uppsala between May 2-4. Full program is at: http://www.icts-and-society.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/timeplan.pdf If anyone else in the project is attending please get in touch so we can arrange to catch up. =-=-=-=-=-=-= Following are suggestions for which categories to use for the top-level indicator of article quality. Once again all categories would be listed in the annexes. Objective categories Activist DISCARD Article proposes a critique of a policy or practice with specific action proposals or suggestions: yes / no Academic KEEP Article follows conventions of academic research article — e.g. position in literature, cited sources, and claimed contribution: yes / no Prospective DISCARD Article is based on developments that have not yet occurred: yes / no Formalised DISCARD Article is based on formal logic or mathematical technique: yes / no Language quality KEEP Standard of English expression in article is excellent: yes / no Subjective categories Scope of debate KEEP Article addresses an issue which is widely known and debated: yes / no Comprehensiveness KEEP Most related sources are mentioned in article [this is an invitation to careful selection rather than a demonstration of prowess in citation collection -- i.e. apt and representative choices made in source citations]: yes / no Logical flow KEEP Ideas are well organised in article: yes / no Originality DISCARD [relevant to quality but is arguably redundant with "scope of debate"] The argument presented in article is new: yes / no Review impact DISCARD The article has been significantly changed as a result of the review process: yes / no [end]

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