<div dir="ltr">Good discussion. If Christian can see a need for academic publishing related to OSGeo Projects, and he is willing to help with the effort to make that channel available to academics, I think we should support it. I wonder of what help members of the Education Committee might be?<div><br></div><div>I think we should talk more about:</div><div><br></div><div>1) How and when academic volumes get published.</div><div>2) If academic volumes are labeled or branded differently than "newsletter" volumes.</div><div>3) How we would govern the selection, review and publication of academic articles.</div><div><br></div><div>Landon</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Christian Willmes <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:c.willmes@uni-koeln.de" target="_blank">c.willmes@uni-koeln.de</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Dear Dimitris,<span class=""><br>
<br>
Am 27.11.2015 um 17:19 schrieb Dimitris Kotzinos:<br>
</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hi Christian,<br>
<br><span class="">
no offense taken and last point from my part because I start feeling<br>
that I bother everybody.<br>
I am sorry but I do not agree that expressing a personal opinion in a<br>
discussion on how to proceed is perceived as blocking something. I think<br>
that I would like to preserve my capacity and my right to express my<br>
opinions in a polite and non offensive way.<br>
</span></blockquote>
You are absolutely right, no discussion about this.<span class=""><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
We do not need all to agree,<br>
the community has processes on how it reaches decisions that are<br>
respected by all (at least by me).<br>
</blockquote></span>
I am not sure if I understand this. To what process are you referring? Was this process disregarded, and if so, how?<span class=""><br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
For you question:<br>
About the journal team/committee you can see here:<br>
<a href="https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Journal" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Journal</a><br>
About the education committee you can see here:<br>
<a href="https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Education_and_Curriculum_Committee" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Education_and_Curriculum_Committee</a><br>
and the discussion going on is summarized here:<br>
<a href="https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_OSGeo_Relationship" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_OSGeo_Relationship</a><br>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
By just looking briefly at this links I still don't get it. Anyway the OSGeo Education committee is formally independent of the OSGeo Journal, although there should be clearly a lot of overlap. We should not get into the Geo4All discussion here and now I think.<br>
<br>
We should find a way of rebooting the Journal.<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
Christian<div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
A nice weekend to all,<br>
Dimitris<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 27/11/15 5:00 μ.μ., Christian Willmes wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Dear Dimitris,<br>
<br>
thank you for your opinions, answers inline.<br>
<br>
Am 27.11.2015 um 16:15 schrieb Dimitris Kotzinos:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hi Christian,<br>
<br>
it is fine to be blunt<br>
</blockquote>
great, no personal offence just talking straight. :)<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
but you complete missed the point because I did<br>
not impose anything on anyone<br>
</blockquote>
By advocating we should have an OSGeo Journal without academic content,<br>
you impose at least on me not to be able to realize my goal of having<br>
academic content in the Journal, like it has been for the last years.<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
- at least I do not think so and I am<br>
sorry you felt like this. And I am really curious how exactly did I<br>
impose something on you or anyone else?<br>
</blockquote>
see argument above.<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
And please: I do not have a section in the Journal that is "mine" to<br>
decide on what content I want to see in it or anywhere else. I am also<br>
not interested in an OSGEO journal where people have their own agendas.<br>
</blockquote>
That is the difference, I am in favour of having a heterogeneous Journal<br>
with many 'own agendas'. For example yours and also mine.<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I think that OSGEO Journal is a community effort and should represent<br>
what the community wants and should not be split into personal sections<br>
where people serve their own agendas!<br>
</blockquote>
Having multiple sections and agendas would actually facilitate to better<br>
represent a heterogeneous community (that has even more agendas).<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Other than that, as I said my personal feeling is that I do not see<br>
enough justification for yet another academic journal in the area and I<br>
also think that academia is a part of OSGEO not the whole; I even<br>
suggested compromises for all that, which have the potential of creating<br>
something reputable that will survive at the end of the day.<br>
And I think we should discuss all opinions until we reach a consensus.<br>
</blockquote>
I described why I think an academic part is justified. We need a<br>
platform to academically introduce OSGeo projects and a platform for<br>
project developers who want to describe their implementations on the<br>
basis of OSGeo software to the academic community. Why don't you let<br>
me/us just do it?<br>
If disallowing academic content in the OSGeo Journal is an option you<br>
bring to the table, I clearly oppose that. On the other side, including<br>
further ideas and more content realms and options is absolutely welcome<br>
to me.<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Best regards,<br>
Dimitris<br>
<br>
P.S.: You might have missed recent discussions but GeoForAll is actually<br>
the education committee of OSGEO and the Journal is under the<br>
newsletter/journal committee which is composed of the people in this<br>
mailing list. Thanks.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
This one I certainly missed, can you point me to that decision,<br>
assertion, or how this was established? I don't get why they changed the<br>
name of the Edu Committee? Was there an official proposal or anything?<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
Christian<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
On 27/11/15 2:51 μ.μ., Christian Willmes wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Dear Dimitris,<br>
<br>
It is perfectly fine, if you do not want to participate in editing<br>
academic content, because you think its not needed. But imposing on<br>
others to not do this if they want, is not. I already said, why I think<br>
an academic Journal would be good for OSGeo, your reasons for not having<br>
an academic Journal do not address the points I made.<br>
<br>
You can work on your agenda by acquiring content you want to see in the<br>
Journal (in your section). Others can work on their agendas to see the<br>
content they want to have in the Journal. We should now define a process<br>
that enables all this in an open inclusive way. In the end how this<br>
process will take gestalt is what defines what the Journal actually is<br>
and will be about.<br>
<br>
My proposal was just to facilitate and enable this heterogeneous<br>
approach for the Journal to first just get it reactivated and actually<br>
do things.<br>
<br>
And for me it is 100% clear, that the OSGeo Journal is under the<br>
umbrella of OSGeo and maybe its Education committee. Geo4All is of<br>
course invited to participate.<br>
<br>
(Sorry for maybe being blunt.) Thanks,<br>
Christian<br>
<br>
Am 27.11.2015 um 11:32 schrieb Dimitris Kotzinos:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Dear Christian, all,<br>
<br>
thanks for the interesting discussion and my apologies for the slow<br>
response.<br>
I would like to start by saying that I am also in Academia, so<br>
suggesting an academic journal would also be a natural thing for me.<br>
And<br>
this was also a discussion some years ago when I originally created the<br>
proposal I referred to last time.<br>
So let me put my thoughts forward:<br>
<br>
1/ do we need another academic journal in GI and should OSGEO be the<br>
venue hosting it?<br>
My answer is no, there are already enough that we can use to publish in<br>
various formats (open access or not). Moreover why would someone<br>
publish<br>
in a Journal? Because the publisher and the editorial team would<br>
provide<br>
some guarantees of quality. But keep in mind that OSGEO is not an<br>
academic only organization in principle. So why would someone choose it<br>
over other publishing venues?<br>
So my answer in both questions above is no.<br>
2/ is there an academic issue not covered elsewhere?<br>
Open Source GI per se is not in my view an academic issue, various<br>
results obtain by OS software yes but not the software used in most<br>
cases!<br>
3/ what is the difference from having only special issues?<br>
The main difference is that it is organized by and through the<br>
review of<br>
a conference and the criteria are defined by the conference. So the<br>
journal is only providing a publishing venue in case people cannot find<br>
anything more "academic" like a special issue in an established<br>
journal.<br>
4/ do we need an OSGEO journal?<br>
yes but in my view not in an academic sense. We need a dissemination<br>
venue for various activities to be documented. Including academic<br>
related activities but not only. We need an OSGEO community journal.<br>
Maybe a journal where someone could find articles from industr,<br>
academia<br>
or just users on the same subject. This is what I feel is missing and<br>
not another academic journal.<br>
<br>
Maybe I can also suggest a compromise:<br>
OSGEO Journal for reporting OSGEO community actions (including academic<br>
issues) and one independent academic journal that I will propose and<br>
probably I can run with Christian and whoever else is interested under<br>
the GeoForAll umbrella if we feel that something like this is missing<br>
(which would have some meaning in order to help establishing the<br>
GeoForAll community processes).<br>
As I said I would be happy to help with whatever solution we agree on,<br>
but we need to agree first on the character of the journal for the next<br>
few years.<br>
<br>
My 2c and sorry for the verbosity,<br>
Dimitris<br>
<br>
<br>
On 27/11/15 11:06 π.μ., Christian Willmes wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Thank you Helena and Landon for your encouragement.<br>
<br>
I don't want to take over the Journal and replace existing volunteers,<br>
but I would step up as a co-editor and take a defined set of<br>
responsibilities.<br>
I am working in academia, so I would like to work on the academic side<br>
of the Journal. Additionally I would also help on the infrastructure<br>
side.<br>
I could think of a team of co-editors, each co-editor responsible<br>
for a<br>
defined set of responsibilities and according section of the Journal.<br>
<br>
I think Landon and Dimitris have kind of similar interest in the<br>
newsletter and annual report like contents of the journal, so you<br>
could<br>
team up to edit this part of the journal?<br>
<br>
Barend has carried the academic track issues in the past and did a<br>
great<br>
job on this. I would appreciate if he would continue this excellent<br>
contribution?<br>
<br>
Eli does a lot of the work that is not so much valued by people who<br>
don't look behind the scenes, like copy editing or taking care of the<br>
web infrastructure and general issues. He should be recognized for<br>
this<br>
commitment and also be named co-editor.<br>
<br>
I would see the editor team right now like this:<br>
<br>
- Landon and Dimitris: Newsletter style content and annual reports<br>
- Barend (and maybe Franz-Josef): FOSS4G Academic Track<br>
- Eli: Production Editor and web infrastructure<br>
- Me (and maybe Helena and/or Venka and/or Charlie): Regular Academic<br>
Content<br>
<br>
I think if we would define the responsibilities and then share them<br>
on a<br>
team of many co-editors would be a good approach to lessen the<br>
workload<br>
on each co-editor and reactivate the OSGeo Journal.<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
Christian<br>
<br>
Am 23.11.2015 um 20:03 schrieb Helena Mitasova:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Christian<br>
<br>
- I am very much in support of your ideas. It may be useful to post<br>
this vision on the geo4all and osgeo discuss list. I am sure there<br>
will be volunteers willing to help out or at least encourage<br>
contributions and reviews. This would also help to coordinate with<br>
other publishing ideas such as the one proposed by Charlie<br>
focusing on<br>
peer reviewed educational material (which would be interesting niche<br>
that nobody has done so far - we could have one of the issues focused<br>
on that topic).<br>
<br>
Helena<br>
<br>
On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Christian Willmes<br>
<<a href="mailto:c.willmes@uni-koeln.de" target="_blank">c.willmes@uni-koeln.de</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:c.willmes@uni-koeln.de" target="_blank">c.willmes@uni-koeln.de</a>>> wrote:<br>
<br>
Dear Dimitris,<br>
<br>
its great to hear, that you are also interested in working<br>
on the<br>
OSGeo Journal.<br>
<br>
Regarding your proposal and ideas, I see the OSGeo Journal<br>
more as<br>
an academic journal, just look at the history of published<br>
issues<br>
[1]. Five academic tracks proceedings, I did not counted the<br>
single academic papers, but it will amount to 30-40 papers I<br>
think.<br>
I am in favour to also have community reports, if they are<br>
provided (what was not abundantly the case in the past either).<br>
<br>
But here is my analysis of and vision for the Journal.<br>
<br>
First, the Journal has failed to build enough academic<br>
merit, that<br>
researchers seriously consider to submit their work to the<br>
Journal.<br>
Second, the articles about community activities need to be<br>
published and circulated within short time spans after that<br>
activity/event, thus a longer editing and publication<br>
process as<br>
inevitable for a peer-reviewed Journal is not suitable. Thus,<br>
these posts are ending up on blogs and also on the wiki. And I<br>
actually think, that this is the better forum for this kind of<br>
content, including lots of photos, web links and also videos,<br>
etc..<br>
<br>
So, I would suggest to keep the journal more in an academic<br>
direction, and try to build merit, so that researchers start to<br>
reconsider submitting to the OSGeo journal. One big point in<br>
this<br>
is, that the Journal should be the default publication for<br>
FOSS4G<br>
academic track contributions. Of course, attracting<br>
academics with<br>
the possibility of publications in a higher ranking journal<br>
like<br>
Transactions in GIS in the past, for some few best submissions<br>
each year should be also the case in the future as a major<br>
attractor for academics. This practice would also yield more<br>
submissions to be published in the OSGeo Journal.<br>
<br>
I think the OSGeo Journal can and should take a niche, that<br>
is not<br>
really occupied in the Journal landscape yet. That is, articles<br>
presenting OSGeo Projects, including software architecture,<br>
licensing model, road maps, overview of dev community, etc.<br>
and of<br>
course case studies that focus on the application of OSGeo<br>
projects in education, in public sector, for development<br>
work, in<br>
industry etc.. These papers do not have to meet the highest<br>
academic standards, they primarily have the function to<br>
highlight<br>
OSGeo projects and to provide citable works on these OSGeo<br>
Projects. The submission of papers should be generally open to<br>
everyone, no prerequisites (like acad. degrees or something)<br>
whatsoever.<br>
<br>
Of course, a section on reposts from events etc. can and should<br>
also be maintained. I would suggest that we have at first one<br>
Issue per year (additionally to the FOSS4G academic track)<br>
that is<br>
open from the beginning of a year to the end, and adds<br>
submissions, as soon as they are reviewed and edited to this<br>
issue. Its no problem if there are at first very few papers<br>
in an<br>
issue, it is more important, that we start to publish again. We<br>
should keep it as simple as possible, not overarching criteria,<br>
such as themes etc.. The only important criteria should be,<br>
that<br>
it has something to do with OSGeo. Quality and validity is<br>
checked<br>
and if needed improved during the review process.<br>
<br>
So, I would like to volunteer for a Journal in that direction.<br>
I am open to other directions, but prefer the above depicted<br>
agenda.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Christian<br>
<br>
[1] <a href="https://journal.osgeo.org/index.php/journal" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://journal.osgeo.org/index.php/journal</a><br>
<br>
Am 21.11.2015 um 10:08 schrieb Dimitris Kotzinos:<br>
<br>
Dear all,<br>
<br>
I was involved in the past in the OSGEO Journal and even<br>
worked as<br>
section editor at times.<br>
One problem that the journal has and will keep having is<br>
that<br>
it is<br>
based strictly in volunteer time which is in many cases<br>
unpredictable<br>
and usually not constant. The only solution I have seen<br>
in any<br>
open<br>
source project around this, is to build a team of<br>
volunteers<br>
so that the<br>
work is shared and to be flexible around the deadlines.<br>
So if we are some I would also offer to be involved into<br>
the<br>
process. I<br>
think that for me it would be better to be involved in<br>
organizing the<br>
process, making the calls and do less on the technical work<br>
(which I see<br>
that Christian and Eli might like more). But of course 3<br>
people are not<br>
enough to make sure that we can sustain the Journal<br>
publication in a<br>
timely manner.<br>
<br>
Given that I am also reiterating a proposal submitted<br>
back in<br>
2012 [1]<br>
but did not receive much attention or reaction at that<br>
moment.<br>
There I<br>
share some ideas of how to share responsibilities and<br>
how to<br>
structure<br>
the journal. If you want we can use this as a starting<br>
point<br>
for the<br>
discussion and feel free to edit along!<br>
<br>
Note also that this would be kept as a foundation<br>
Journal and<br>
not a<br>
scientific journal where we focus on activities within the<br>
foundation,<br>
the local/regional chapters and the various kinds of events<br>
and their<br>
results. We can further discuss if we would like to<br>
create an<br>
additional<br>
Academic/Scientific Journal with the colleagues who are<br>
involved in the<br>
Geo4All activity.<br>
<br>
Finally, thanks to Landon for pushing the carriage for many<br>
years; the<br>
editor's job is quite lonely and sometimes also<br>
frustrating! :)<br>
<br>
My 2c,<br>
<br>
Dimitris<br>
<br>
[1]<br>
<a href="https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/A_proposal_for_the_OSGeo_Journal" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/A_proposal_for_the_OSGeo_Journal</a><br>
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AG GIS & Fernerkundung | GIS & RS Group<br>
Geographisches Institut | Institute of Geography<br>
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AG GIS & Fernerkundung | GIS & RS Group<br>
Geographisches Institut | Institute of Geography<br>
Universität zu Köln | University of Cologne<br>
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