[JoPP-Public] Meetings and decisions: release schedule / signals

Thu Apr 12 14:15:40 CEST 2012

Hi all

RELEASE SCHEDULE

Last week Jakob Rigi gave a talk at my University on "Universal and Communal Labor: Working Class, Knowledge Capitalism and the Quest for Communism".

Johan attended this presentation so we had a chance to catch up and discuss the situation of the journal.*

He indicated that he and Alessandro were keen to release their issue on bio/hardware hacking which has five peer reviewed articles and one debate paper (@ Johan and Alessandro: you need at least one response) sooner rather than later as they would like to be the first to publish on this "hot" topic.

I was concerned that we should be consistent and stick to the release schedule (releases in June and December). 

What we have come up with is this: we could release both issue 1 (dated June 2012) and issue 2 (dated December 2012) in June 2012. This will make a big splash on the Interwebs and compensate for the missed release in January 2012. We would integrate this content into the site over the next couple of months. 

We could issue some new CFPs after this release so if anyone has suggestions for special issues now is the time to propose an idea. 

I hope this solution suits everyone. 

SIGNALS FOR RESEARCH PAPERS

We have to address the issue of the presentation of research papers on the new site which means revisiting the issue of signals. Nate suggested a while ago that in order to protect the research status of the journal we need to communicate right from the start the signal given to a research paper - say, by placing it next to the title and abstract.

[If we have the possibility of enabling (registered?) readers to rate as well that would be great too but not sure what the possibilities for setting up such a "community rating" mechanism is for wordpress? Does anyone know? This is technically part of our process so we should either implement it or take it out of the process description.]

So the suggestion is to select some of the signals criteria for an immediate summary of our assessment of the "quality" of the paper. Signals would be added up for an aggregate figure (yes: 1, no: 0).

The full list of signals would appear in the annexes. Below is a first stab at this where I indicate which ones (KEEP) should be featured in the top summary. Those that have nothing to do with quality (for example whether an article is "activist" or not does not reflect on its quality are followed by DISCARD).

If no-one objects to this I will have a go at implementing this for the research papers in JoPP 0 / CSPP 1 to see what it looks like. I will be travelling from April 14 to 21 so only able to respond sporadically if at all during that period. I could look at implementing in the week following i.e. April 22-28.

cheers
Mathieu

* By coincidence all three of us (Johan, Jakob and me) will be presenting on various topics in the same session (on "The Media - Alternatives and Commons: Towards a New Communism?") at the Fourth ICTs and Society Conference organised by Christian Fuchs in Uppsala between May 2-4. 
Full program is at:
http://www.icts-and-society.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/timeplan.pdf

If anyone else in the project is attending please get in touch so we can arrange to catch up.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Following are suggestions for which categories to use for the top-level indicator of article quality. Once again all categories would be listed in the annexes.

Objective categories

Activist DISCARD
Article proposes a critique of a policy or practice with specific action proposals or suggestions: yes / no

Academic KEEP
Article follows conventions of academic research article — e.g. position in literature, cited sources, and claimed contribution: yes / no

Prospective DISCARD
Article is based on developments that have not yet occurred: yes / no

Formalised DISCARD
Article is based on formal logic or mathematical technique: yes / no

Language quality KEEP
Standard of English expression in article is excellent: yes / no

Subjective categories

Scope of debate KEEP
Article addresses an issue which is widely known and debated: yes / no

Comprehensiveness KEEP
Most related sources are mentioned in article [this is an invitation to careful selection rather than a demonstration of prowess in citation collection -- i.e. apt and representative choices made in source citations]: yes / no

Logical flow KEEP
Ideas are well organised in article: yes / no

Originality DISCARD [relevant to quality but is arguably redundant with "scope of debate"]
The argument presented in article is new: yes / no

Review impact DISCARD
The article has been significantly changed as a result of the review process: yes / no

[end]
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