[JoPP-Public] progress of the special issue on shared machine shops

[maxigas]

Dear joppers,

this is maxigas and Peter Troxler reporting on the progress of the special issue on shared machine shops.

numbers!
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* received 20 abstracts
* commissioned 10 papers

in a few cases we did not accept or reject abstracts but asked authors to gather 'more intellectual courage and look at how your data goes beyond “illustrating the theory”, because it is based on the contradictions that the theory can be strengthened and wherefrom it receives its political value'.  in the long run this gesture did not change much.

after the first round of peer reviews we have the following:

* 4 papers minor revisions
* 3 papers major revisions
* 3 papers papers for which we discourage publication because they are not relevant or would require too much effort to revise properly and fix all issues

the relevant papers are now being reworked by the authors.

we also plan a comments section with a more broad and engaged look at shared machine shops, concentrating on controvertial moments in their historical trajectory.  this is much more fluid yet but currently there are four texts in preparation for this although we are not sure we will receive the last:

* Troxler on "how fablabs ran out of control" of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms
* maxigas on relations to state (authorities) and capital (security industry) of hackerspaces
* bron (pseudonym) on their experience between fablabs, hacklabs and hackerspaces
* a senior organiser of an early fablab commenting on the contents of the issue

comments!
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three reviews were written for each paper:

1. senior reviewer with relevant expertise in the field
2. one of the issue editors
3. an author of another paper considered in the same process

the last point was quite experimental, giving a totally new meaning to the term "peer review"... and now we can say that the outcome of the experiment was very positive!  often the best quality and most thorough reviews came from these authors.  on the other hand we had mixed experience with senior reviewers.  of course in the jopp spirit all drafts and reviews will be published and in cases where the reviewers agreed their names will be included too.

all in all we are happy with the material, with critical and strategic points addressed in almost all papers, although the reflection on political economy is not very wide spread.  we are also learning a lot about what other researchers are doing, which is the literature on the topic, and what is happening in shared machine workshops around the world.

deadlines!
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finally, we are happy to say that we are more or less on time according to the schedule negotionated earlier when we embarked on this project:

* January 31 ― deadline for authors
* Febuary 10 ― papers sent to reviewers
* March 23 ― reviews due
* March 31 ― reviews sent to authors ← WE ARE HERE!
* April 30 ― revised papers due
* May 23 ― second review due
* June 1 ― decision on publication
* early July ― publication of special issue (online / print)

regarding the last point: we plan to release during the The 10th International Fab Lab Conference, Barcelona, 2-8 July 2014.

https://www.fab10.org/en/home

our research shows that physical fabrication tools are fashionable nowadays, so we plan to release limited edition hardcopies of JoPP!

interactive!
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please feel free to ask here or if you want then in private mail to fablabissue at peerproduction.net

happy hacking,

--
maxigas, kiberpunk
FA00 8129 13E9 2617 C614 0901 7879 63BC 287E D166
http://research.metatron.ai/

Computers are just carefully organised sand.