Following on from Mathieu and Athina's comments:
This is all getting rather binary: high prestige model non-transparent
blind reviews versus transparency and potential flame wars and spam.
We aren't the first to be creating a kind of parallel universe
to the
academic journals; it's something the old left have done for
years, the
newer left are doing now, and we're not the only ones
concentrating on
the commons one way or another. Clearly the old left approach is not
relevant (review consists of deciding if the party line is being
followed). So I thought I'd have a look at some of the newer
ones. It's
suprisingly hard to see what the process is:
commoner.org.uk (Massimo de Angelis and friends) - can't find
how to
submit an article.
multitudes.samizdat.net
http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Submission-and-evaluation
process modelled on academic one
freesoftwaremagazine.com (more of a magazine than a journal)
Individual editor reviews
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/write_for_us
www.metamute.org/content/magazine (IMO very mixed quality of articles)
can't find review process
www.posseweb.net (negri and friends)
can't find how to submit an article
http://turbulence.org.uk
Current CFP: http://turbulence.org.uk/2009/06/turbulence-call-
for-art/
Can't find review process
[Nearly all these have a print version; given how easy it is to
do POD I
think we should consider this fairly early on (maybe talk to openmute
www.openmute.org and using their pod setup?)]
So the review processes seem to split into two: academic style, and
informal non-transparent 'an editor does it'. I haven't found anyone
deliberately doing a transparent version.
So how about we be the ones to do it, but as an experiment? We offer
blind review as the default route, but authors willing to be
part of the
experiment submit their article for open commenting and feedback
instead. The final version of each article is flagged as to
which review
process was used, and after a period (three issues?) we wrap up with
some conclusions on the merits of each system and assessment of the
quality they generate.
The big downside to this is it's likely to involve double the
work for
us :-(
Graham
PS. Another thought: anyone have experience of spip
(http://www.spip.net) ? It was originally created to manage web
journals..
Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
2- For this we need good reviewers and good comments. There
could be a
system where open discussion on a list leads to editorial
comments being
appended to papers. Not sure. I don’t think we should rely on
"anyone can
comment" to do this job - no-one may comment or comments may
be mediocre.
3- There needs to be some clear guidelins for an open comment
process:> -- closed editorial list / closed registration process?
-- deadlines for comments to be made?
4- It is clear that different review processes could be
useful. We need to
define precisely the different review processes: blind or not,
open or not,
etc.
5- The second part of the paper cited above may have some
interesting> leads...
6- In conclusion: we eventually need to get some more people
on the
editorial board to help advance how the review process works.
We will need
some input from the people we will be approaching to work with
us. So we
need to progress the rest of the "charter" so we can start
approaching> people.
Cheers,
Mathieu
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-journal oekonux.org [owner-
journal oekonux.org] On Behalf
Of Stefan Merten
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 6:42 PM
To: journal oekonux.org
Cc: Stefan Merten
Subject: Review process (was: [jox] New Draft CFP)
Hi Mathieu, Athina, all!
Last week (11 days ago) Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
d) Regarding peer review
I suggested the following: for research papers, authors can
request a
traditional double blind review. But following this process,
research papers
(as all other submissions) will be collectively discussed on
the list.
I think it is an interesting idea to have different processes.
However, I'm not sure about the consequences. What do others think?
For those not too deep into the traditional process: Could you
please> explain what are the features of the traditional double
blind review?
Last week (10 days ago) Athina Karatzogianni wrote:
About d, I think it would be prudent to think about the
implications of
discussing papers openly on a list. perhaps people will be
much less
critical of a work once it is openly discussed.
That was a concern mentioned before. If this point is
important then
it would indeed impact the quality of the journal. This would
be bad.
Who would be able to see
this discussion?
It depends. Oekonux lists are usually published on the site
but we can
also have a non-archived list. On such a mailing list a discussion
would be open among the editorial board but closed to the public.
Also there can be exchange based on personal e-mail. However,
I'd find
it bad for transparency if regular personal e-mail exchange would
occur unless it is between persons who are working closely
together on
a particular task - such as reviewing a contribution. To
prevent this
I'd rather suggest a second, non-archived mailing list.
what if one of us wanted to publish a paper, would we look
at the reviewers comments while they were formulating them?
What's wrong with this?
I think some
thought should be paid there. The tradition is to have 2-3
blind reviewers
for a paper.
See above. Can you please explain what "blind" means exactly?
I dont see and please explain to me how when ten people have a
long discussion over an email list, quality and speed
improve. I think it
will be quite the opposite.
IMHO this depends much on the culture of such a list. I know
most of
the persons on this list personally and most for quite some
time now
and I don't think that there will be unnecessary discussion.
Anyway I understood that there will be explicitly assigned reviewers
for each contribution - 2-3 sounds good to me. They are
responsible to
review the particular contribution and alone for reasons of
lack of
time people will probably trust the judgement of the reviewers.
Blind reviewing most of the time works in favor
of the author. Discussing between us endlessly a paper
[unless it is
highly
controversial and only after it has been blindly reviewed] I
think will be
a
waste of time and effort.
Endless is discussion is not very probable IMHO. If a
contribution is
too controversial it simply will not be included. That would
at least
mean an orientation in consensus in the editorial board (where
consensus means that nobody *has to* object).
Grüße
Stefan
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