Proposal for the evolution of jopp
Hi all Recently members of the jopp editorial board have been debating on jopp-editorial how best to continue the work of the journal. It is now time to move this discussion to jopp-public. There are two main points to resolve. First, jopp needs to move away from the WordPress CMS, which is becoming unmanageable, to a html site. The most logical move would be to include only PDFs of articles so that the only publishing work to be done for an issue would to (a) upload the PDFs, and (b) build an index page. Peter who has done a great job managing the CMS and protecting it from hostile intrusions for quite a few years now (thanks Peter for all your work!) will assist in the transition to a new format, time permitting, and will then hand over the day-to-day management to new people, including - but not limited to - Steve. I will create a separate thread to discuss options. Please use it to discuss website-related issues. Second, the “themed issue” format is also onerous and needs to be revisited. Before detailing my proposal for how jopp could evolve into the future, I am reproducing relevant parts of the jopp-editorial list discussion. Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics. Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now. I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it. So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public. Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it. On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so. Maurizio said: I was also inspired by ACM Interactions - in particular in the way they have engaged in rethinking the format of submissions to adjust to current times. My feeling is that Mathieu suggestion is solid, and a transition or post issue discussed with the public mailing list feels like necessary. [end jopp-editorial discussion] I now expand on the proposal outlined above for the possible evolution of the Journal of Peer Production. My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council. In the most general terms, peer producers are people who create and manage common-pool resources together. It sometimes seems as if “peer production” and “digital commons” can be used interchangeably. Digital commons are non-rivalrous (they can be reproduced at little or no cost) and non-excludable (no-one can prevent others from using them, through property rights for example). Practically speaking, proprietary objects could be produced by equal “peers,” however peer production has a normative dimension, so that what chiefly characterizes this mode of production is that “the output is orientated towards the further expansion of the commons; while the commons, recursively, is the chief resource in this mode of production” (Söderberg & O'Neil, 2014, p. 2). The Journal of Peer Production has tracked the evolution of peer production from open knowledge to open design and manufacturing. It approaches its ten-year anniversary in the time of the global pandemic, and of the continuing environmental crisis. The impacts of Covid-19 are profound, but will not last forever, though local infection pools may subsist in poorer countries for much longer than in the Global North. In contrast, the environmental crisis is here to stay. Significant social change is required to stave off climate destruction, and peer production principles such as cooperation and trust, transparency in production, collective democratic decision-making, etc., can usefully contribute to necessary processes of “relocalization” and “degrowth”.* I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created. I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc. In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals. The journal structure could be (random examples and ordering): jopp issue #... (1,2) or [to mark the evolution:] jopp Vol [1] or [2021] (1,2) Editorial notes Peer-reviewed section 1-peer-reviewed article 2- peer-reviewed article Policy section 3-Policy proposal: tax incentives for non-profits and cooperatives? 4-Policy proposal: pros and cons of Universal Basic Income vs free public services? How-to section 5-Guide: requirements for organising community beehives? 6-Guide: requirements for organising local mesh networks? Invited comments / art section 7-article 8-intervention For peer review, we already get the occasional unsolicited article subs + varia subs. We can send out generic CFPs for all sections. And, we can also have shorter themed sections if people still want to do them. Possibly each section could have a couple of editors who could oversee one or two sections each. I'd be happy to oversee peer-review and policy; there can be a rotation. The advantage of this model is that we only really need to have two (out of eight possible) items to release a small-size issue. So that’s why I think we can commit to two issues a year… maybe? As seen above, several members of the editorial board have expressed support for the outline of this new format. So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations? cheers, Mathieu PS. Once again – please use the parallel thread for technical website issues – thanks! *The following is an excerpt from the final chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Peer Production, “Be Your Own Peer! Principles and Policies for the Commons” (O’Neil, Toupin, Pentzold): The governance of peer produced projects, one of the central aspects of the studies of peer production, aspires to the self-regulation of participants in autonomous collectives. This governance raises the broader issue of political sovereignty. The appeal of self-governance for peer production participants can perhaps be explained by the amount of strategic control most citizens in liberal democracies have over their lives and environment. This control has been drastically reduced by unaccountable global actors – e.g. financial markets, extractive industrial interests, supranational trade agreements, and the list goes on – who influence and constrain the policy options of notionally democratic nation-states. In the early 2020s, racist nativism and authoritarianism are being embraced by some people in reaction to the failures of export-oriented, deregulated, and globalized neoliberalism. A way out of this political crisis is linked to a solution to the environmental crisis: we must head toward more democracy by relocalizing or deglobalizing, and towards more sustainability by degrowing, our economies. As engaged researchers, we believe the Handbook of Peer Production needs to offer a response, however modest, to these political and ecological challenges. Addressing the macro-economic aspects of “deglobalization” would lead us far away from peer production, towards issues which would probably require a Handbook of their own. Accordingly, we focus here on relocalization as it relates to degrowth (décroissance), the downscaling of over-production and over-consumption (Kiallis, 2019; Latouche, 2006). In a nutshell: unlimited growth and consumption are not sustainable, so we need more access to free public services, a shorter work week, and a turn towards climate-friendly industries. In this context, Stefania Barca (2019) suggests that the one question that matters is that posed by self-governing workers: “should surplus value be reinvested in production, or not”? Yet since only a handful of firms and industrial sectors are run following so-called “holacratic” (i.e., communal or participatory) principles, degrowth must – in a first stage at least – be deployed in a piecemeal, hybrid manner. In the context of discussing the cooperative sector, Gibson-Graham (2003) suggest that if we perceive economic relations as already plural, then the revolutionary “project of replacement” can be modified into one of “strengthening already existing non-capitalist economic processes and building new non-capitalist enterprises,” of establishing “communal subjects” (p. 157). Several chapters in the Handbook of Peer Production (see Braybrooke & Smith; O’Neil & Broca; Pazaitis & Drechsler, this volume) have discussed ways in which this “strengthening” has begun to occur at the municipal level. However, as noted by Adrian Smith (2014) in his account of London’s early-1980s Technology Networks (community-based workshops which provided open access to shared machine tools, technical advice, and prototyping services), a “key lesson from this history is that “radical aspirations invested in workshops, such as democratizing technology, will need to connect to wider social mobilizations capable of bringing about reinforcing political, economic and institutional change” (Smith, 2014, online). In other words, the ecology around peer production must be nurtured. Further, adopting strictly local settings leaves the public policy terrain open to neoliberal and/or reactionary perspectives. References Barca, S. (2019) The labor(s) of degrowth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2), 207–216. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class. Critical Sociology. 29(2): 123-164. Kallis, G. (2019) Socialism without growth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2): 189-206. Latouche, S. (2006) The globe downshifted. Le monde diplomatique. January. https://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth Smith, A. (2014) Technology Networks for socially useful production. Journal of Peer Production, 5: Shared Machine Shops. http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-... Söderberg, J., & O’Neil, M. (2014). Introduction. In: Söderberg, J., & Maxigas (Eds.), Book of Peer Production (pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press. http://peerproduction.net/projects/books/book-of-peer-production/
Hi all, On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:49 AM Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics.
Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now.
I agree, this is probably the main disadvantage of the rolling model compared to the themed issue format...
I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it.
So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public.
I am not really fond of turning JoPP into "a newsletter" with "political news about the commons" and "practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure". Whether we like it or not, the JoPP is not a website for people looking for *news* or *advice* (and I wouldn't like to turn it into such a website). Rather, its contribution is socially-engaged analysis and reflection, that is, food for thought, not news or practical advice. Besides, I don't think the JoPP has the capacity to provide practical legal or political advice, considering that most of us in the editorial group are theorists rather than practitioners...
Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it.
On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so.
I like some of the ideas they're experimenting with: for example, it would be interesting to organize *debates* around controversial topics (which is something we've actually done in the past: see Issue #1)...But apparently, they're not abandoning the "themed issue format" entirely (neither should we, in my opinion): two of the main content areas are the "forums" and "features", which are basically collections of articles on the same topic.
[...] My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council.
[...]
I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created.
I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc.
In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals.
That's an idea we could surely experiment with (and it's also something we've tried in the past, as in Issue #7): as you write below, the policy proposals could become one of the "new content areas" of JoPP.
[...] So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations?
Well, it could work, so I cannot see any reason why we shouldn't go ahead
and give it a try :-)
Hi George, all I agree that my first formulation in the jopp-ed discussion was not great (newsletter, etc) but I did not want to mess with what had been said. So yes its probably not our role to provide up-to-the minute updates on events and news. Re policy, interesting that your bring up jopp #7. I looked at some of these articles recently, for example the one you wrote with others on electricity microgrids. My impression was that this was a mix of a scientific article and a policy document, in other words it was perhaps too dense for a non-specialised audience. I've never worked for a think tank. I've co-authored a couple of submissions to parliamentary inquiries on digital literacy and misinformation. So, my impression of policy docs (I could be wrong) is that they should be relatively short and easy to understand. I'd like to get better at formulating policy proposals that make some economic sense and are progressive. I'm under no illusions about how large political bureaucracies operate but I think if we can produce some policy templates that can be used and improved in different contexts that could be quite useful. I like your conclusion: why not try? Yes - what's the worse that can happen? :-) cheers Mathieu ________________________________ From: JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of george dafermos <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 1:02 To: Journal of Peer Production's general and public list <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp Hi all, On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:49 AM Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: [...] Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics. Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now. I agree, this is probably the main disadvantage of the rolling model compared to the themed issue format... I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it. So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public. I am not really fond of turning JoPP into "a newsletter" with "political news about the commons" and "practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure". Whether we like it or not, the JoPP is not a website for people looking for *news* or *advice* (and I wouldn't like to turn it into such a website). Rather, its contribution is socially-engaged analysis and reflection, that is, food for thought, not news or practical advice. Besides, I don't think the JoPP has the capacity to provide practical legal or political advice, considering that most of us in the editorial group are theorists rather than practitioners... Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it. On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so. I like some of the ideas they're experimenting with: for example, it would be interesting to organize *debates* around controversial topics (which is something we've actually done in the past: see Issue #1)...But apparently, they're not abandoning the "themed issue format" entirely (neither should we, in my opinion): two of the main content areas are the "forums" and "features", which are basically collections of articles on the same topic. [...] My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council. [...] I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created. I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc. In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals. That's an idea we could surely experiment with (and it's also something we've tried in the past, as in Issue #7): as you write below, the policy proposals could become one of the "new content areas" of JoPP. [...] So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations? Well, it could work, so I cannot see any reason why we shouldn't go ahead and give it a try :-)
On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 2:39 AM Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi George, all
I agree that my first formulation in the jopp-ed discussion was not great (newsletter, etc) but I did not want to mess with what had been said. So yes its probably not our role to provide up-to-the minute updates on events and news.
Well, good, I'm glad we cleared that up :-)
Re policy, interesting that your bring up jopp #7. I looked at some of these articles recently, for example the one you wrote with others on electricity microgrids. My impression was that this was a mix of a scientific article and a policy document, in other words it was perhaps too dense for a non-specialised audience.
I've never worked for a think tank. I've co-authored a couple of submissions to parliamentary inquiries on digital literacy and misinformation. So, my impression of policy docs (I could be wrong) is that they should be relatively short and easy to understand. I'd like to get better at formulating policy proposals that make some economic sense and are progressive. I'm under no illusions about how large political bureaucracies operate but I think if we can produce some policy templates that can be used and improved in different contexts that could be quite useful.
I like your conclusion: why not try? Yes - what's the worse that can happen? :-)
OK then :-) In any case, I would be very interested to hear how other members of the editorial board feel about it... -G.
cheers Mathieu
------------------------------ *From:* JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of george dafermos <[email protected]> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 28, 2020 1:02 *To:* Journal of Peer Production's general and public list < [email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp
Hi all,
On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:49 AM Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics.
Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now.
I agree, this is probably the main disadvantage of the rolling model compared to the themed issue format...
I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it.
So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public.
I am not really fond of turning JoPP into "a newsletter" with "political news about the commons" and "practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure". Whether we like it or not, the JoPP is not a website for people looking for *news* or *advice* (and I wouldn't like to turn it into such a website). Rather, its contribution is socially-engaged analysis and reflection, that is, food for thought, not news or practical advice. Besides, I don't think the JoPP has the capacity to provide practical legal or political advice, considering that most of us in the editorial group are theorists rather than practitioners...
Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it.
On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so.
I like some of the ideas they're experimenting with: for example, it would be interesting to organize *debates* around controversial topics (which is something we've actually done in the past: see Issue #1)...But apparently, they're not abandoning the "themed issue format" entirely (neither should we, in my opinion): two of the main content areas are the "forums" and "features", which are basically collections of articles on the same topic.
[...] My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council.
[...]
I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created.
I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc.
In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals.
That's an idea we could surely experiment with (and it's also something we've tried in the past, as in Issue #7): as you write below, the policy proposals could become one of the "new content areas" of JoPP.
[...] So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations?
Well, it could work, so I cannot see any reason why we shouldn't go ahead and give it a try :-)
_______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
Hi George I would be interested to hear other people's opinions as well but I guess everyone is busy and worried at the moment...? We could invoke "lazy consensus" - if no-one objects by a certain time, then the proposal is adopted. However that does seem a bit hypocritical as it could be that no-one is interested. ;-] To sum up - we have had public support for the move to a new editorial format from you and Steve (on jopp-public) and from Kat, Maurizio and me (on jopp-ed); Peter has indicated he will help with the transition away from the Wordpress CMS (on jopp-ed). So, while it would be nice to have wider public support, it seems like we have a group of people who are willing to do something. Of course we should wait longer before deciding anything. cheers, Mathieu ________________________________ From: JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of george dafermos <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2020 22:15 To: Journal of Peer Production's general and public list <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 2:39 AM Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi George, all I agree that my first formulation in the jopp-ed discussion was not great (newsletter, etc) but I did not want to mess with what had been said. So yes its probably not our role to provide up-to-the minute updates on events and news. Well, good, I'm glad we cleared that up :-) Re policy, interesting that your bring up jopp #7. I looked at some of these articles recently, for example the one you wrote with others on electricity microgrids. My impression was that this was a mix of a scientific article and a policy document, in other words it was perhaps too dense for a non-specialised audience. I've never worked for a think tank. I've co-authored a couple of submissions to parliamentary inquiries on digital literacy and misinformation. So, my impression of policy docs (I could be wrong) is that they should be relatively short and easy to understand. I'd like to get better at formulating policy proposals that make some economic sense and are progressive. I'm under no illusions about how large political bureaucracies operate but I think if we can produce some policy templates that can be used and improved in different contexts that could be quite useful. I like your conclusion: why not try? Yes - what's the worse that can happen? :-) OK then :-) In any case, I would be very interested to hear how other members of the editorial board feel about it... -G. cheers Mathieu ________________________________ From: JoPP-Public <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of george dafermos <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 1:02 To: Journal of Peer Production's general and public list <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp Hi all, On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:49 AM Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: [...] Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics. Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now. I agree, this is probably the main disadvantage of the rolling model compared to the themed issue format... I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it. So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public. I am not really fond of turning JoPP into "a newsletter" with "political news about the commons" and "practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure". Whether we like it or not, the JoPP is not a website for people looking for *news* or *advice* (and I wouldn't like to turn it into such a website). Rather, its contribution is socially-engaged analysis and reflection, that is, food for thought, not news or practical advice. Besides, I don't think the JoPP has the capacity to provide practical legal or political advice, considering that most of us in the editorial group are theorists rather than practitioners... Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it. On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so. I like some of the ideas they're experimenting with: for example, it would be interesting to organize *debates* around controversial topics (which is something we've actually done in the past: see Issue #1)...But apparently, they're not abandoning the "themed issue format" entirely (neither should we, in my opinion): two of the main content areas are the "forums" and "features", which are basically collections of articles on the same topic. [...] My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council. [...] I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created. I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc. In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals. That's an idea we could surely experiment with (and it's also something we've tried in the past, as in Issue #7): as you write below, the policy proposals could become one of the "new content areas" of JoPP. [...] So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations? Well, it could work, so I cannot see any reason why we shouldn't go ahead and give it a try :-) _______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
Dear Mathieu, Thanks for all your efforts! Personally I would love to see JoPP becoming more experimental and more meaningful regarding the urgent challenges that lie ahead. In the two issues that I have helped to edit, CITY and ALTERNATIVE INTERNETS, we had a special "experimental" section where different types of formats were encouraged and I think there is a lot of potential in this direction. But still, I think that having the different formats "separate" (a section of peer-reviewed articles, a section on policy recommendations, etc)., as a juxtaposition, does not work very well. It would be nice to have a format that brings closer together more theoretical with more practical work. For example, publishing a theoretical paper and its "translation" to a policy recommendations document *together* by a theorist and a policy expert respectively, who would need to collaborate for this. It would be also nice to see more work that builds on the idea of "creative commons" where "content" is more important than "authorship". E.g., a paper where someone performs a creative collage of pieces written by different authors on the same topic. I am just brainstorming, in case it helps. I am sure there are many ideas. But no matter how good the idea it will not work if it is not supported by the "community". So, I would vote for a TRANSITION issue, before any decision, that encourages experimental formats and "meta-" pieces with elaborate arguments about how a progressive journal on peer production should look like. It could also include invited works by people that are not today part of the community but we believe that they would help to make the desired "opening". My 2 cents :-) Panos. On 27.04.20 10:45, Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
Hi all
Recently members of the jopp editorial board have been debating on jopp-editorial how best to continue the work of the journal. It is now time to move this discussion to jopp-public. There are two main points to resolve.
First, jopp needs to move away from the WordPress CMS, which is becoming unmanageable, to a html site. The most logical move would be to include only PDFs of articles so that the only publishing work to be done for an issue would to (a) upload the PDFs, and (b) build an index page. Peter who has done a great job managing the CMS and protecting it from hostile intrusions for quite a few years now (thanks Peter for all your work!) will assist in the transition to a new format, time permitting, and will then hand over the day-to-day management to new people, including - but not limited to - Steve. I will create a separate thread to discuss options. Please use it to discuss website-related issues.
Second, the “themed issue” format is also onerous and needs to be revisited. Before detailing my proposal for how jopp could evolve into the future, I am reproducing relevant parts of the jopp-editorial list discussion.
Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics.
Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now.
I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it.
So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public.
Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it.
On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so.
Maurizio said: I was also inspired by ACM Interactions - in particular in the way they have engaged in rethinking the format of submissions to adjust to current times. My feeling is that Mathieu suggestion is solid, and a transition or post issue discussed with the public mailing list feels like necessary.
[end jopp-editorial discussion]
I now expand on the proposal outlined above for the possible evolution of the Journal of Peer Production.
My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council.
In the most general terms, peer producers are people who create and manage common-pool resources together. It sometimes seems as if “peer production” and “digital commons” can be used interchangeably. Digital commons are non-rivalrous (they can be reproduced at little or no cost) and non-excludable (no-one can prevent others from using them, through property rights for example). Practically speaking, proprietary objects could be produced by equal “peers,” however peer production has a normative dimension, so that what chiefly characterizes this mode of production is that “the output is orientated towards the further expansion of the commons; while the commons, recursively, is the chief resource in this mode of production” (Söderberg & O'Neil, 2014, p. 2).
The Journal of Peer Production has tracked the evolution of peer production from open knowledge to open design and manufacturing. It approaches its ten-year anniversary in the time of the global pandemic, and of the continuing environmental crisis. The impacts of Covid-19 are profound, but will not last forever, though local infection pools may subsist in poorer countries for much longer than in the Global North. In contrast, the environmental crisis is here to stay. Significant social change is required to stave off climate destruction, and peer production principles such as cooperation and trust, transparency in production, collective democratic decision-making, etc., can usefully contribute to necessary processes of “relocalization” and “degrowth”.*
I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created.
I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc. In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals.
The journal structure could be (random examples and ordering):
jopp issue #... (1,2) or [to mark the evolution:] jopp Vol [1] or [2021] (1,2) Editorial notes Peer-reviewed section 1-peer-reviewed article 2- peer-reviewed article
Policy section 3-Policy proposal: tax incentives for non-profits and cooperatives? 4-Policy proposal: pros and cons of Universal Basic Income vs free public services?
How-to section 5-Guide: requirements for organising community beehives? 6-Guide: requirements for organising local mesh networks? Invited comments / art section 7-article 8-intervention For peer review, we already get the occasional unsolicited article subs + varia subs. We can send out generic CFPs for all sections. And, we can also have shorter themed sections if people still want to do them.
Possibly each section could have a couple of editors who could oversee one or two sections each. I'd be happy to oversee peer-review and policy; there can be a rotation.
The advantage of this model is that we only really need to have two (out of eight possible) items to release a small-size issue. So that’s why I think we can commit to two issues a year… maybe?
As seen above, several members of the editorial board have expressed support for the outline of this new format.
So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations?
cheers, Mathieu
PS. Once again – please use the parallel thread for technical website issues – thanks!
*The following is an excerpt from the final chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Peer Production, “Be Your Own Peer! Principles and Policies for the Commons” (O’Neil, Toupin, Pentzold):
The governance of peer produced projects, one of the central aspects of the studies of peer production, aspires to the self-regulation of participants in autonomous collectives. This governance raises the broader issue of political sovereignty. The appeal of self-governance for peer production participants can perhaps be explained by the amount of strategic control most citizens in liberal democracies have over their lives and environment. This control has been drastically reduced by unaccountable global actors – e.g. financial markets, extractive industrial interests, supranational trade agreements, and the list goes on – who influence and constrain the policy options of notionally democratic nation-states. In the early 2020s, racist nativism and authoritarianism are being embraced by some people in reaction to the failures of export-oriented, deregulated, and globalized neoliberalism. A way out of this political crisis is linked to a solution to the environmental crisis: we must head toward more democracy by relocalizing or deglobalizing, and towards more sustainability by degrowing, our economies.
As engaged researchers, we believe the Handbook of Peer Production needs to offer a response, however modest, to these political and ecological challenges. Addressing the macro-economic aspects of “deglobalization” would lead us far away from peer production, towards issues which would probably require a Handbook of their own. Accordingly, we focus here on relocalization as it relates to degrowth (décroissance), the downscaling of over-production and over-consumption (Kiallis, 2019; Latouche, 2006). In a nutshell: unlimited growth and consumption are not sustainable, so we need more access to free public services, a shorter work week, and a turn towards climate-friendly industries. In this context, Stefania Barca (2019) suggests that the one question that matters is that posed by self-governing workers: “should surplus value be reinvested in production, or not”? Yet since only a handful of firms and industrial sectors are run following so-called “holacratic” (i.e., communal or participatory) principles, degrowth must – in a first stage at least – be deployed in a piecemeal, hybrid manner.
In the context of discussing the cooperative sector, Gibson-Graham (2003) suggest that if we perceive economic relations as already plural, then the revolutionary “project of replacement” can be modified into one of “strengthening already existing non-capitalist economic processes and building new non-capitalist enterprises,” of establishing “communal subjects” (p. 157). Several chapters in the Handbook of Peer Production (see Braybrooke & Smith; O’Neil & Broca; Pazaitis & Drechsler, this volume) have discussed ways in which this “strengthening” has begun to occur at the municipal level. However, as noted by Adrian Smith (2014) in his account of London’s early-1980s Technology Networks (community-based workshops which provided open access to shared machine tools, technical advice, and prototyping services), a “key lesson from this history is that “radical aspirations invested in workshops, such as democratizing technology, will need to connect to wider social mobilizations capable of bringing about reinforcing political, economic and institutional change” (Smith, 2014, online). In other words, the ecology around peer production must be nurtured. Further, adopting strictly local settings leaves the public policy terrain open to neoliberal and/or reactionary perspectives.
References
Barca, S. (2019) The labor(s) of degrowth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2), 207–216.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class. Critical Sociology. 29(2): 123-164.
Kallis, G. (2019) Socialism without growth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2): 189-206.
Latouche, S. (2006) The globe downshifted. Le monde diplomatique. January. https://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth
Smith, A. (2014) Technology Networks for socially useful production. Journal of Peer Production, 5: Shared Machine Shops. http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-...
Söderberg, J., & O’Neil, M. (2014). Introduction. In: Söderberg, J., & Maxigas (Eds.), Book of Peer Production (pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press. http://peerproduction.net/projects/books/book-of-peer-production/
_______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
Hi Panos, all Thanks for this stimulating contribution to our debates! The proposal I put forward had a place for experimental formats. It also enables the kind of cross-fertilisation between scientific and policy-oriented authors that you call for (provided such individuals exist, and are amenable to working together ;-)). When thinking about it, perhaps it boils down to: why are we doing this? At this point in time I don't think there is anything more important than amplifying concrete change, so the policy aspect is central. Of course that's just me. So whilst I proposed and still support a "Transition" issue, I would not want it to overly delay the emergence of a new format. But I agree that it could be a nice way to signal our evolution and also bring new people in, if we can somehow work on that at the same time as prepare for the new format? cheers Mathieu ________________________________ From: JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of panayotis antoniadis <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 10:04 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp Dear Mathieu, Thanks for all your efforts! Personally I would love to see JoPP becoming more experimental and more meaningful regarding the urgent challenges that lie ahead. In the two issues that I have helped to edit, CITY and ALTERNATIVE INTERNETS, we had a special "experimental" section where different types of formats were encouraged and I think there is a lot of potential in this direction. But still, I think that having the different formats "separate" (a section of peer-reviewed articles, a section on policy recommendations, etc)., as a juxtaposition, does not work very well. It would be nice to have a format that brings closer together more theoretical with more practical work. For example, publishing a theoretical paper and its "translation" to a policy recommendations document *together* by a theorist and a policy expert respectively, who would need to collaborate for this. It would be also nice to see more work that builds on the idea of "creative commons" where "content" is more important than "authorship". E.g., a paper where someone performs a creative collage of pieces written by different authors on the same topic. I am just brainstorming, in case it helps. I am sure there are many ideas. But no matter how good the idea it will not work if it is not supported by the "community". So, I would vote for a TRANSITION issue, before any decision, that encourages experimental formats and "meta-" pieces with elaborate arguments about how a progressive journal on peer production should look like. It could also include invited works by people that are not today part of the community but we believe that they would help to make the desired "opening". My 2 cents :-) Panos. On 27.04.20 10:45, Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
Hi all
Recently members of the jopp editorial board have been debating on jopp-editorial how best to continue the work of the journal. It is now time to move this discussion to jopp-public. There are two main points to resolve.
First, jopp needs to move away from the WordPress CMS, which is becoming unmanageable, to a html site. The most logical move would be to include only PDFs of articles so that the only publishing work to be done for an issue would to (a) upload the PDFs, and (b) build an index page. Peter who has done a great job managing the CMS and protecting it from hostile intrusions for quite a few years now (thanks Peter for all your work!) will assist in the transition to a new format, time permitting, and will then hand over the day-to-day management to new people, including - but not limited to - Steve. I will create a separate thread to discuss options. Please use it to discuss website-related issues.
Second, the “themed issue” format is also onerous and needs to be revisited. Before detailing my proposal for how jopp could evolve into the future, I am reproducing relevant parts of the jopp-editorial list discussion.
Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics.
Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now.
I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it.
So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public.
Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it.
On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so.
Maurizio said: I was also inspired by ACM Interactions - in particular in the way they have engaged in rethinking the format of submissions to adjust to current times. My feeling is that Mathieu suggestion is solid, and a transition or post issue discussed with the public mailing list feels like necessary.
[end jopp-editorial discussion]
I now expand on the proposal outlined above for the possible evolution of the Journal of Peer Production.
My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council.
In the most general terms, peer producers are people who create and manage common-pool resources together. It sometimes seems as if “peer production” and “digital commons” can be used interchangeably. Digital commons are non-rivalrous (they can be reproduced at little or no cost) and non-excludable (no-one can prevent others from using them, through property rights for example). Practically speaking, proprietary objects could be produced by equal “peers,” however peer production has a normative dimension, so that what chiefly characterizes this mode of production is that “the output is orientated towards the further expansion of the commons; while the commons, recursively, is the chief resource in this mode of production” (Söderberg & O'Neil, 2014, p. 2).
The Journal of Peer Production has tracked the evolution of peer production from open knowledge to open design and manufacturing. It approaches its ten-year anniversary in the time of the global pandemic, and of the continuing environmental crisis. The impacts of Covid-19 are profound, but will not last forever, though local infection pools may subsist in poorer countries for much longer than in the Global North. In contrast, the environmental crisis is here to stay. Significant social change is required to stave off climate destruction, and peer production principles such as cooperation and trust, transparency in production, collective democratic decision-making, etc., can usefully contribute to necessary processes of “relocalization” and “degrowth”.*
I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created.
I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc.
In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals.
The journal structure could be (random examples and ordering):
jopp issue #... (1,2) or [to mark the evolution:] jopp Vol [1] or [2021] (1,2)
Editorial notes
Peer-reviewed section 1-peer-reviewed article 2- peer-reviewed article
Policy section 3-Policy proposal: tax incentives for non-profits and cooperatives? 4-Policy proposal: pros and cons of Universal Basic Income vs free public services?
How-to section 5-Guide: requirements for organising community beehives? 6-Guide: requirements for organising local mesh networks?
Invited comments / art section 7-article 8-intervention
For peer review, we already get the occasional unsolicited article subs + varia subs. We can send out generic CFPs for all sections. And, we can also have shorter themed sections if people still want to do them.
Possibly each section could have a couple of editors who could oversee one or two sections each. I'd be happy to oversee peer-review and policy; there can be a rotation.
The advantage of this model is that we only really need to have two (out of eight possible) items to release a small-size issue. So that’s why I think we can commit to two issues a year… maybe?
As seen above, several members of the editorial board have expressed support for the outline of this new format.
So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations?
cheers, Mathieu
PS. Once again – please use the parallel thread for technical website issues – thanks!
*The following is an excerpt from the final chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Peer Production, “Be Your Own Peer! Principles and Policies for the Commons” (O’Neil, Toupin, Pentzold):
The governance of peer produced projects, one of the central aspects of the studies of peer production, aspires to the self-regulation of participants in autonomous collectives. This governance raises the broader issue of political sovereignty. The appeal of self-governance for peer production participants can perhaps be explained by the amount of strategic control most citizens in liberal democracies have over their lives and environment. This control has been drastically reduced by unaccountable global actors – e.g. financial markets, extractive industrial interests, supranational trade agreements, and the list goes on – who influence and constrain the policy options of notionally democratic nation-states. In the early 2020s, racist nativism and authoritarianism are being embraced by some people in reaction to the failures of export-oriented, deregulated, and globalized neoliberalism. A way out of this political crisis is linked to a solution to the environmental crisis: we must head toward more democracy by relocalizing or deglobalizing, and towards more sustainability by degrowing, our economies.
As engaged researchers, we believe the Handbook of Peer Production needs to offer a response, however modest, to these political and ecological challenges. Addressing the macro-economic aspects of “deglobalization” would lead us far away from peer production, towards issues which would probably require a Handbook of their own. Accordingly, we focus here on relocalization as it relates to degrowth (décroissance), the downscaling of over-production and over-consumption (Kiallis, 2019; Latouche, 2006). In a nutshell: unlimited growth and consumption are not sustainable, so we need more access to free public services, a shorter work week, and a turn towards climate-friendly industries. In this context, Stefania Barca (2019) suggests that the one question that matters is that posed by self-governing workers: “should surplus value be reinvested in production, or not”? Yet since only a handful of firms and industrial sectors are run following so-called “holacratic” (i.e., communal or participatory) principles, degrowth must – in a first stage at least – be deployed in a piecemeal, hybrid manner.
In the context of discussing the cooperative sector, Gibson-Graham (2003) suggest that if we perceive economic relations as already plural, then the revolutionary “project of replacement” can be modified into one of “strengthening already existing non-capitalist economic processes and building new non-capitalist enterprises,” of establishing “communal subjects” (p. 157). Several chapters in the Handbook of Peer Production (see Braybrooke & Smith; O’Neil & Broca; Pazaitis & Drechsler, this volume) have discussed ways in which this “strengthening” has begun to occur at the municipal level. However, as noted by Adrian Smith (2014) in his account of London’s early-1980s Technology Networks (community-based workshops which provided open access to shared machine tools, technical advice, and prototyping services), a “key lesson from this history is that “radical aspirations invested in workshops, such as democratizing technology, will need to connect to wider social mobilizations capable of bringing about reinforcing political, economic and institutional change” (Smith, 2014, online). In other words, the ecology around peer production must be nurtured. Further, adopting strictly local settings leaves the public policy terrain open to neoliberal and/or reactionary perspectives.
References
Barca, S. (2019) The labor(s) of degrowth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2), 207–216.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class. Critical Sociology. 29(2): 123-164.
Kallis, G. (2019) Socialism without growth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2): 189-206.
Latouche, S. (2006) The globe downshifted. Le monde diplomatique. January. https://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth
Smith, A. (2014) Technology Networks for socially useful production. Journal of Peer Production, 5: Shared Machine Shops. http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-...
Söderberg, J., & O’Neil, M. (2014). Introduction. In: Söderberg, J., & Maxigas (Eds.), Book of Peer Production (pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press. http://peerproduction.net/projects/books/book-of-peer-production/
_______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
_______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
Hi Panos, all I'm afraid there hasn't been much activity on jopp-ed for the last couple of weeks. So we have not made any progress re evolution debate. There is however progress to report on the upcoming issue #14 which is coordinated by Maurizio and colleagues. Some tech difficulties were resolved with Peter's help (thanks Peter!) and my understanding is an announcement on the release is imminent. Perhaps we should seize the opportunity presented by this release, which reminds people that there is a jopp, to send out shortly after a CFP for jopp #15 TRANSITION? This would allow us to show that the journal is still moving forward and potentially connect with new people as suggested by Panos. We could also use it to hint at our upcoming evolution. I'm happy to co-ordinate this issue. But I can't do it alone. @Panos: would you care to join? :-) @everyone else: let me know if interested, either on this list or privately. cheers Mathieu ________________________________ From: JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 16:13 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp Hi Panos, all Thanks for this stimulating contribution to our debates! The proposal I put forward had a place for experimental formats. It also enables the kind of cross-fertilisation between scientific and policy-oriented authors that you call for (provided such individuals exist, and are amenable to working together ;-)). When thinking about it, perhaps it boils down to: why are we doing this? At this point in time I don't think there is anything more important than amplifying concrete change, so the policy aspect is central. Of course that's just me. So whilst I proposed and still support a "Transition" issue, I would not want it to overly delay the emergence of a new format. But I agree that it could be a nice way to signal our evolution and also bring new people in, if we can somehow work on that at the same time as prepare for the new format? cheers Mathieu ________________________________ From: JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of panayotis antoniadis <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 10:04 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp Dear Mathieu, Thanks for all your efforts! Personally I would love to see JoPP becoming more experimental and more meaningful regarding the urgent challenges that lie ahead. In the two issues that I have helped to edit, CITY and ALTERNATIVE INTERNETS, we had a special "experimental" section where different types of formats were encouraged and I think there is a lot of potential in this direction. But still, I think that having the different formats "separate" (a section of peer-reviewed articles, a section on policy recommendations, etc)., as a juxtaposition, does not work very well. It would be nice to have a format that brings closer together more theoretical with more practical work. For example, publishing a theoretical paper and its "translation" to a policy recommendations document *together* by a theorist and a policy expert respectively, who would need to collaborate for this. It would be also nice to see more work that builds on the idea of "creative commons" where "content" is more important than "authorship". E.g., a paper where someone performs a creative collage of pieces written by different authors on the same topic. I am just brainstorming, in case it helps. I am sure there are many ideas. But no matter how good the idea it will not work if it is not supported by the "community". So, I would vote for a TRANSITION issue, before any decision, that encourages experimental formats and "meta-" pieces with elaborate arguments about how a progressive journal on peer production should look like. It could also include invited works by people that are not today part of the community but we believe that they would help to make the desired "opening". My 2 cents :-) Panos. On 27.04.20 10:45, Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
Hi all
Recently members of the jopp editorial board have been debating on jopp-editorial how best to continue the work of the journal. It is now time to move this discussion to jopp-public. There are two main points to resolve.
First, jopp needs to move away from the WordPress CMS, which is becoming unmanageable, to a html site. The most logical move would be to include only PDFs of articles so that the only publishing work to be done for an issue would to (a) upload the PDFs, and (b) build an index page. Peter who has done a great job managing the CMS and protecting it from hostile intrusions for quite a few years now (thanks Peter for all your work!) will assist in the transition to a new format, time permitting, and will then hand over the day-to-day management to new people, including - but not limited to - Steve. I will create a separate thread to discuss options. Please use it to discuss website-related issues.
Second, the “themed issue” format is also onerous and needs to be revisited. Before detailing my proposal for how jopp could evolve into the future, I am reproducing relevant parts of the jopp-editorial list discussion.
Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics.
Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now.
I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it.
So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public.
Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it.
On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so.
Maurizio said: I was also inspired by ACM Interactions - in particular in the way they have engaged in rethinking the format of submissions to adjust to current times. My feeling is that Mathieu suggestion is solid, and a transition or post issue discussed with the public mailing list feels like necessary.
[end jopp-editorial discussion]
I now expand on the proposal outlined above for the possible evolution of the Journal of Peer Production.
My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council.
In the most general terms, peer producers are people who create and manage common-pool resources together. It sometimes seems as if “peer production” and “digital commons” can be used interchangeably. Digital commons are non-rivalrous (they can be reproduced at little or no cost) and non-excludable (no-one can prevent others from using them, through property rights for example). Practically speaking, proprietary objects could be produced by equal “peers,” however peer production has a normative dimension, so that what chiefly characterizes this mode of production is that “the output is orientated towards the further expansion of the commons; while the commons, recursively, is the chief resource in this mode of production” (Söderberg & O'Neil, 2014, p. 2).
The Journal of Peer Production has tracked the evolution of peer production from open knowledge to open design and manufacturing. It approaches its ten-year anniversary in the time of the global pandemic, and of the continuing environmental crisis. The impacts of Covid-19 are profound, but will not last forever, though local infection pools may subsist in poorer countries for much longer than in the Global North. In contrast, the environmental crisis is here to stay. Significant social change is required to stave off climate destruction, and peer production principles such as cooperation and trust, transparency in production, collective democratic decision-making, etc., can usefully contribute to necessary processes of “relocalization” and “degrowth”.*
I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created.
I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc.
In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals.
The journal structure could be (random examples and ordering):
jopp issue #... (1,2) or [to mark the evolution:] jopp Vol [1] or [2021] (1,2)
Editorial notes
Peer-reviewed section 1-peer-reviewed article 2- peer-reviewed article
Policy section 3-Policy proposal: tax incentives for non-profits and cooperatives? 4-Policy proposal: pros and cons of Universal Basic Income vs free public services?
How-to section 5-Guide: requirements for organising community beehives? 6-Guide: requirements for organising local mesh networks?
Invited comments / art section 7-article 8-intervention
For peer review, we already get the occasional unsolicited article subs + varia subs. We can send out generic CFPs for all sections. And, we can also have shorter themed sections if people still want to do them.
Possibly each section could have a couple of editors who could oversee one or two sections each. I'd be happy to oversee peer-review and policy; there can be a rotation.
The advantage of this model is that we only really need to have two (out of eight possible) items to release a small-size issue. So that’s why I think we can commit to two issues a year… maybe?
As seen above, several members of the editorial board have expressed support for the outline of this new format.
So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations?
cheers, Mathieu
PS. Once again – please use the parallel thread for technical website issues – thanks!
*The following is an excerpt from the final chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Peer Production, “Be Your Own Peer! Principles and Policies for the Commons” (O’Neil, Toupin, Pentzold):
The governance of peer produced projects, one of the central aspects of the studies of peer production, aspires to the self-regulation of participants in autonomous collectives. This governance raises the broader issue of political sovereignty. The appeal of self-governance for peer production participants can perhaps be explained by the amount of strategic control most citizens in liberal democracies have over their lives and environment. This control has been drastically reduced by unaccountable global actors – e.g. financial markets, extractive industrial interests, supranational trade agreements, and the list goes on – who influence and constrain the policy options of notionally democratic nation-states. In the early 2020s, racist nativism and authoritarianism are being embraced by some people in reaction to the failures of export-oriented, deregulated, and globalized neoliberalism. A way out of this political crisis is linked to a solution to the environmental crisis: we must head toward more democracy by relocalizing or deglobalizing, and towards more sustainability by degrowing, our economies.
As engaged researchers, we believe the Handbook of Peer Production needs to offer a response, however modest, to these political and ecological challenges. Addressing the macro-economic aspects of “deglobalization” would lead us far away from peer production, towards issues which would probably require a Handbook of their own. Accordingly, we focus here on relocalization as it relates to degrowth (décroissance), the downscaling of over-production and over-consumption (Kiallis, 2019; Latouche, 2006). In a nutshell: unlimited growth and consumption are not sustainable, so we need more access to free public services, a shorter work week, and a turn towards climate-friendly industries. In this context, Stefania Barca (2019) suggests that the one question that matters is that posed by self-governing workers: “should surplus value be reinvested in production, or not”? Yet since only a handful of firms and industrial sectors are run following so-called “holacratic” (i.e., communal or participatory) principles, degrowth must – in a first stage at least – be deployed in a piecemeal, hybrid manner.
In the context of discussing the cooperative sector, Gibson-Graham (2003) suggest that if we perceive economic relations as already plural, then the revolutionary “project of replacement” can be modified into one of “strengthening already existing non-capitalist economic processes and building new non-capitalist enterprises,” of establishing “communal subjects” (p. 157). Several chapters in the Handbook of Peer Production (see Braybrooke & Smith; O’Neil & Broca; Pazaitis & Drechsler, this volume) have discussed ways in which this “strengthening” has begun to occur at the municipal level. However, as noted by Adrian Smith (2014) in his account of London’s early-1980s Technology Networks (community-based workshops which provided open access to shared machine tools, technical advice, and prototyping services), a “key lesson from this history is that “radical aspirations invested in workshops, such as democratizing technology, will need to connect to wider social mobilizations capable of bringing about reinforcing political, economic and institutional change” (Smith, 2014, online). In other words, the ecology around peer production must be nurtured. Further, adopting strictly local settings leaves the public policy terrain open to neoliberal and/or reactionary perspectives.
References
Barca, S. (2019) The labor(s) of degrowth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2), 207–216.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class. Critical Sociology. 29(2): 123-164.
Kallis, G. (2019) Socialism without growth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2): 189-206.
Latouche, S. (2006) The globe downshifted. Le monde diplomatique. January. https://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth
Smith, A. (2014) Technology Networks for socially useful production. Journal of Peer Production, 5: Shared Machine Shops. http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-...
Söderberg, J., & O’Neil, M. (2014). Introduction. In: Söderberg, J., & Maxigas (Eds.), Book of Peer Production (pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press. http://peerproduction.net/projects/books/book-of-peer-production/
_______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
_______________________________________________ JoPP-Public mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public
Hi all, I'd like to second the excellent idea of a CfP for #15: Transition.
From Panos: "It would be nice to have a format that brings closer together more theoretical with more practical work. For example, publishing a theoretical paper and its "translation" to a policy recommendations document *together* by a theorist and a policy expert respectively, who would need to collaborate for this."
This is a really good suggestion. As you've said, Panos, we've experimented with alternative formats in a few different ways, for example in Issue #12 Shared Machine Shops (practitioner contributions) and in the City and Alternative Internets you mention - and there are other models like that of ACM Interactions that offer similarly interesting routes forward: https://interactions.acm.org/responding-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-an-invitati... I'd love to see this continue with the Journal. I'm not able to commit to helping edit the issue at this time, but I would like to offer to help in other ways, for example thinking through alternative formats, so please let me know where I can support. Best, Kat --------------------->>> ☾ Dr. Kat Braybrooke @codekat <https://twitter.com/codekat> Research Fellow, CreaTures <http://creatures-eu.org>, University of Sussex Visiting Researcher, DDH <https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh>, King's College London On Thu, 21 May 2020 at 02:48, Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Panos, all
I'm afraid there hasn't been much activity on jopp-ed for the last couple of weeks. So we have not made any progress re evolution debate.
There is however progress to report on the upcoming issue #14 which is coordinated by Maurizio and colleagues. Some tech difficulties were resolved with Peter's help (thanks Peter!) and my understanding is an announcement on the release is imminent.
Perhaps we should seize the opportunity presented by this release, which reminds people that there is a jopp, to send out shortly after a CFP for jopp #15 TRANSITION?
This would allow us to show that the journal is still moving forward and potentially connect with new people as suggested by Panos. We could also use it to hint at our upcoming evolution.
I'm happy to co-ordinate this issue. But I can't do it alone. @Panos: would you care to join? :-) @everyone else: let me know if interested, either on this list or privately.
cheers Mathieu
------------------------------ *From:* JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of Mathieu O'Neil <[email protected]> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 5, 2020 16:13 *To:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp
Hi Panos, all
Thanks for this stimulating contribution to our debates! The proposal I put forward had a place for experimental formats. It also enables the kind of cross-fertilisation between scientific and policy-oriented authors that you call for (provided such individuals exist, and are amenable to working together ;-)).
When thinking about it, perhaps it boils down to: why are we doing this?
At this point in time I don't think there is anything more important than amplifying concrete change, so the policy aspect is central. Of course that's just me. So whilst I proposed and still support a "Transition" issue, I would not want it to overly delay the emergence of a new format. But I agree that it could be a nice way to signal our evolution and also bring new people in, if we can somehow work on that at the same time as prepare for the new format?
cheers Mathieu
------------------------------ *From:* JoPP-Public <[email protected]> on behalf of panayotis antoniadis <[email protected]> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 5, 2020 10:04 *To:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [JoPP-Public] Proposal for the evolution of jopp
Dear Mathieu,
Thanks for all your efforts!
Personally I would love to see JoPP becoming more experimental and more meaningful regarding the urgent challenges that lie ahead.
In the two issues that I have helped to edit, CITY and ALTERNATIVE INTERNETS, we had a special "experimental" section where different types of formats were encouraged and I think there is a lot of potential in this direction.
But still, I think that having the different formats "separate" (a section of peer-reviewed articles, a section on policy recommendations, etc)., as a juxtaposition, does not work very well.
It would be nice to have a format that brings closer together more theoretical with more practical work. For example, publishing a theoretical paper and its "translation" to a policy recommendations document *together* by a theorist and a policy expert respectively, who would need to collaborate for this.
It would be also nice to see more work that builds on the idea of "creative commons" where "content" is more important than "authorship". E.g., a paper where someone performs a creative collage of pieces written by different authors on the same topic.
I am just brainstorming, in case it helps. I am sure there are many ideas. But no matter how good the idea it will not work if it is not supported by the "community".
So, I would vote for a TRANSITION issue, before any decision, that encourages experimental formats and "meta-" pieces with elaborate arguments about how a progressive journal on peer production should look like. It could also include invited works by people that are not today part of the community but we believe that they would help to make the desired "opening".
My 2 cents :-)
Panos.
On 27.04.20 10:45, Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
Hi all
Recently members of the jopp editorial board have been debating on jopp-editorial how best to continue the work of the journal. It is now time to move this discussion to jopp-public. There are two main points to resolve.
First, jopp needs to move away from the WordPress CMS, which is becoming unmanageable, to a html site. The most logical move would be to include only PDFs of articles so that the only publishing work to be done for an issue would to (a) upload the PDFs, and (b) build an index page. Peter who has done a great job managing the CMS and protecting it from hostile intrusions for quite a few years now (thanks Peter for all your work!) will assist in the transition to a new format, time permitting, and will then hand over the day-to-day management to new people, including - but not limited to - Steve. I will create a separate thread to discuss options. Please use it to discuss website-related issues.
Second, the “themed issue” format is also onerous and needs to be revisited. Before detailing my proposal for how jopp could evolve into the future, I am reproducing relevant parts of the jopp-editorial list discussion.
Peter said: I was wondering if building a “rolling issue” that would collect relevant work over a period of some months or even years with publication of individual articles when reviewed and ready could become an alternative model for jopp to publish contributions for certain topics.
Mathieu said: I've never really cared for the rolling article model that tripleC for example uses - too loose, no sense of a journal, of a structure. At the same time it is clear that the current model is not sustainable right now.
I have been thinking anyway: doing a purely academic/scientific journal is not what we need right now. Jopp was born at Oekonux and it has always had a political / activist aim as well as a scientific one. We have established a body of work, time to do something with it.
So I want to propose a move to "jopp Vol. 2" where we release 2 or 4 times a year a shorter issue, with a newsletter, political news about the commons, practical-legal-political advice on building commons infrastructure, etc as well as one or two peer-reviewed articles. This could either happen straight away or after a "POST" or "TRANSITION" issue. Interested to know your thoughts. This discussion will need to be moved to jopp-public.
Kat said: I think Mathieu's suggestion here is a solid one - one of the (many) reasons we've all been attracted to jopp, I think, is the politics attached to it - the sense that it, in its own small way, helps us all imagine a different way of doing things to that of the status quo. Given this, it makes a lot of sense to enable the journal format to evolve with the times and the shifting needs of those involved in it.
On this note, I found the reframing of the Interactions ACM magazine submissions very inspiring - as they have engaged in exactly this process. Take a look here if you've not seen it already: https://interactions.acm.org/submissions Perhaps jopp can think though a more informal submission structure like this, which while still allowing for and welcoming peer-reviewed pieces where applicable, also prioritises creative and/or practitioner submissions that are shorter-form, focused on pressing issues at hand, and flow freely between digital and print formats. This might need to involve a different website structure, which enables syndicated blog/short-form posts that can be easily distributed - but I'm sure that's doable too, if we all put our tech skills together to assist Peter in doing so.
Maurizio said: I was also inspired by ACM Interactions - in particular in the way they have engaged in rethinking the format of submissions to adjust to current times. My feeling is that Mathieu suggestion is solid, and a transition or post issue discussed with the public mailing list feels like necessary.
[end jopp-editorial discussion]
I now expand on the proposal outlined above for the possible evolution of the Journal of Peer Production.
My proposal involves (a) adopting a more frequent publication schedule of shorter issues divided into sections and (b) articulating the journal with a (yet to be created) Commons Policy Council.
In the most general terms, peer producers are people who create and manage common-pool resources together. It sometimes seems as if “peer production” and “digital commons” can be used interchangeably. Digital commons are non-rivalrous (they can be reproduced at little or no cost) and non-excludable (no-one can prevent others from using them, through property rights for example). Practically speaking, proprietary objects could be produced by equal “peers,” however peer production has a normative dimension, so that what chiefly characterizes this mode of production is that “the output is orientated towards the further expansion of the commons; while the commons, recursively, is the chief resource in this mode of production” (Söderberg & O'Neil, 2014, p. 2).
The Journal of Peer Production has tracked the evolution of peer production from open knowledge to open design and manufacturing. It approaches its ten-year anniversary in the time of the global pandemic, and of the continuing environmental crisis. The impacts of Covid-19 are profound, but will not last forever, though local infection pools may subsist in poorer countries for much longer than in the Global North. In contrast, the environmental crisis is here to stay. Significant social change is required to stave off climate destruction, and peer production principles such as cooperation and trust, transparency in production, collective democratic decision-making, etc., can usefully contribute to necessary processes of “relocalization” and “degrowth”.*
I believe the jopp has a role to play here, which necessitates that it expands its work beyond academic research into practical advice to develop commons and policy formulation to grow the ecology which supports the commons. However a journal is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing concrete proposals to entities in the public policy sphere such as political parties, governments, unions, and civil society, so another institution must be created.
I have some external research grant funding until the end of the year, part of which can’t be used because of Covid-19. I am proposing to repurpose some of this funding to assist in the creation (website design? publication design? what else?) of a “Commons Policy Council” website and organisation that would release White Papers and How-to Guides. It could also have a “policy tracker” system documenting where commons-oriented policy initiatives are being proposed, where they are at, what support they need, etc.
In this scenario jopp would acquire a new purpose, in addition to its role as instigator and disseminator of research into peer production and social change: operating as a development site for practical resources, and as a laboratory for policy proposals.
The journal structure could be (random examples and ordering):
jopp issue #... (1,2) or [to mark the evolution:] jopp Vol [1] or [2021] (1,2)
Editorial notes
Peer-reviewed section 1-peer-reviewed article 2- peer-reviewed article
Policy section 3-Policy proposal: tax incentives for non-profits and cooperatives? 4-Policy proposal: pros and cons of Universal Basic Income vs free public services?
How-to section 5-Guide: requirements for organising community beehives? 6-Guide: requirements for organising local mesh networks?
Invited comments / art section 7-article 8-intervention
For peer review, we already get the occasional unsolicited article subs + varia subs. We can send out generic CFPs for all sections. And, we can also have shorter themed sections if people still want to do them.
Possibly each section could have a couple of editors who could oversee one or two sections each. I'd be happy to oversee peer-review and policy; there can be a rotation.
The advantage of this model is that we only really need to have two (out of eight possible) items to release a small-size issue. So that’s why I think we can commit to two issues a year… maybe?
As seen above, several members of the editorial board have expressed support for the outline of this new format.
So, now seeking input from the broader jopp community: what do you think? Any suggestions, objections, observations?
cheers, Mathieu
PS. Once again – please use the parallel thread for technical website issues – thanks!
*The following is an excerpt from the final chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Peer Production, “Be Your Own Peer! Principles and Policies for the Commons” (O’Neil, Toupin, Pentzold):
The governance of peer produced projects, one of the central aspects of the studies of peer production, aspires to the self-regulation of participants in autonomous collectives. This governance raises the broader issue of political sovereignty. The appeal of self-governance for peer production participants can perhaps be explained by the amount of strategic control most citizens in liberal democracies have over their lives and environment. This control has been drastically reduced by unaccountable global actors – e.g. financial markets, extractive industrial interests, supranational trade agreements, and the list goes on – who influence and constrain the policy options of notionally democratic nation-states. In the early 2020s, racist nativism and authoritarianism are being embraced by some people in reaction to the failures of export-oriented, deregulated, and globalized neoliberalism. A way out of this political crisis is linked to a solution to the environmental crisis: we must head toward more democracy by relocalizing or deglobalizing, and towards more sustainability by degrowing, our economies.
As engaged researchers, we believe the Handbook of Peer Production needs to offer a response, however modest, to these political and ecological challenges. Addressing the macro-economic aspects of “deglobalization” would lead us far away from peer production, towards issues which would probably require a Handbook of their own. Accordingly, we focus here on relocalization as it relates to degrowth (décroissance), the downscaling of over-production and over-consumption (Kiallis, 2019; Latouche, 2006). In a nutshell: unlimited growth and consumption are not sustainable, so we need more access to free public services, a shorter work week, and a turn towards climate-friendly industries. In this context, Stefania Barca (2019) suggests that the one question that matters is that posed by self-governing workers: “should surplus value be reinvested in production, or not”? Yet since only a handful of firms and industrial sectors are run following so-called “holacratic” (i.e., communal or participatory) principles, degrowth must – in a first stage at least – be deployed in a piecemeal, hybrid manner.
In the context of discussing the cooperative sector, Gibson-Graham (2003) suggest that if we perceive economic relations as already plural, then the revolutionary “project of replacement” can be modified into one of “strengthening already existing non-capitalist economic processes and building new non-capitalist enterprises,” of establishing “communal subjects” (p. 157). Several chapters in the Handbook of Peer Production (see Braybrooke & Smith; O’Neil & Broca; Pazaitis & Drechsler, this volume) have discussed ways in which this “strengthening” has begun to occur at the municipal level. However, as noted by Adrian Smith (2014) in his account of London’s early-1980s Technology Networks (community-based workshops which provided open access to shared machine tools, technical advice, and prototyping services), a “key lesson from this history is that “radical aspirations invested in workshops, such as democratizing technology, will need to connect to wider social mobilizations capable of bringing about reinforcing political, economic and institutional change” (Smith, 2014, online). In other words, the ecology around peer production must be nurtured. Further, adopting strictly local settings leaves the public policy terrain open to neoliberal and/or reactionary perspectives.
References
Barca, S. (2019) The labor(s) of degrowth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2), 207–216.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class. Critical Sociology. 29(2): 123-164.
Kallis, G. (2019) Socialism without growth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2): 189-206.
Latouche, S. (2006) The globe downshifted. Le monde diplomatique. January. https://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth
Smith, A. (2014) Technology Networks for socially useful production. Journal of Peer Production, 5: Shared Machine Shops.
http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-...
Söderberg, J., & O’Neil, M. (2014). Introduction. In: Söderberg, J., & Maxigas (Eds.), Book of Peer Production (pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press. http://peerproduction.net/projects/books/book-of-peer-production/
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participants (4)
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george dafermos -
Kat Braybrooke -
Mathieu O'Neil -
panayotis antoniadis