[OSGeo-Discuss] [Journal] OSGEO journal

Thu Nov 26 22:19:44 PST 2015

Christian wrote: "First, the Journal has failed to build enough academic
merit, that researchers seriously consider to submit their work to the
Journal.
Second, the articles about community activities need to be published and
circulated within short time spans after that activity/event, thus a longer
editing and publication process as inevitable for a peer-reviewed Journal
is not suitable. Thus, these posts are ending up on blogs and also on the
wiki. And I actually think, that this is the better forum for this kind of
content, including lots of photos, web links and also videos, etc."

Great observation. Seems like the journal suffers from trying to be two (2)
things at once: an academic journal and a newsletter for OSGeo. Perhaps the
journal would do better if we separated these two (2) functions.

Landon

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Helena Mitasova <hmitaso at ncsu.edu> wrote:

> Christian
>
> - I am very much in support of your ideas. It may be useful to post this
> vision on the geo4all and osgeo discuss list. I am sure there will be
> volunteers willing to help out or at least encourage contributions and
> reviews. This would also help to coordinate with other publishing ideas
> such as the one proposed by Charlie focusing on peer reviewed educational
> material (which would be interesting niche that nobody has done so far - we
> could have one of the issues focused on that topic).
>
> Helena
>
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Christian Willmes <c.willmes at uni-koeln.de
> > wrote:
>
>> Dear Dimitris,
>>
>> its great to hear, that you are also interested in working on the OSGeo
>> Journal.
>>
>> Regarding your proposal and ideas, I see the OSGeo Journal more as an
>> academic journal, just look at the history of published issues [1]. Five
>> academic tracks proceedings, I did not counted the single academic papers,
>> but it will amount to 30-40 papers I think.
>> I am in favour to also have community reports, if they are provided (what
>> was not abundantly the case in the past either).
>>
>> But here is my analysis of and vision for the Journal.
>>
>> First, the Journal has failed to build enough academic merit, that
>> researchers seriously consider to submit their work to the Journal.
>> Second, the articles about community activities need to be published and
>> circulated within short time spans after that activity/event, thus a longer
>> editing and publication process as inevitable for a peer-reviewed Journal
>> is not suitable. Thus, these posts are ending up on blogs and also on the
>> wiki. And I actually think, that this is the better forum for this kind of
>> content, including lots of photos, web links and also videos, etc..
>>
>> So, I would suggest to keep the journal more in an academic direction,
>> and try to build merit, so that researchers start to reconsider submitting
>> to the OSGeo journal. One big point in this is, that the Journal should be
>> the default publication for FOSS4G academic track contributions. Of course,
>> attracting academics with the possibility of publications in a higher
>> ranking journal like Transactions in GIS in the past, for some few best
>> submissions each year should be also the case in the future as a major
>> attractor for academics. This practice would also yield more submissions to
>> be published in the OSGeo Journal.
>>
>> I think the OSGeo Journal can and should take a niche, that is not really
>> occupied in the Journal landscape yet. That is, articles presenting OSGeo
>> Projects, including software architecture, licensing model, road maps,
>> overview of dev community, etc. and of course case studies that focus on
>> the application of OSGeo projects in education, in public sector, for
>> development work, in industry etc.. These papers do not have to meet the
>> highest academic standards, they primarily have the function to highlight
>> OSGeo projects and to provide citable works on these OSGeo Projects. The
>> submission of papers should be generally open to everyone, no prerequisites
>> (like acad. degrees or something) whatsoever.
>>
>> Of course, a section on reposts from events etc. can and should also be
>> maintained. I would suggest that we have at first one Issue per year
>> (additionally to the FOSS4G academic track) that is open from the beginning
>> of a year to the end, and adds submissions, as soon as they are reviewed
>> and edited to this issue. Its no problem if there are at first very few
>> papers in an issue, it is more important, that we start to publish again.
>> We should keep it as simple as possible, not overarching criteria, such as
>> themes etc.. The only important criteria should be, that it has something
>> to do with OSGeo. Quality and validity is checked and if needed improved
>> during the review process.
>>
>> So, I would like to volunteer for a Journal in that direction.
>> I am open to other directions, but prefer the above depicted agenda.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Christian
>>
>> [1] https://journal.osgeo.org/index.php/journal
>>
>> Am 21.11.2015 um 10:08 schrieb Dimitris Kotzinos:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I was involved in the past in the OSGEO Journal and even worked as
>>> section editor at times.
>>> One problem that the journal has and will keep having is that it is
>>> based strictly in volunteer time which is in many cases unpredictable
>>> and usually not constant. The only solution I have seen in any open
>>> source project around this, is to build a team of volunteers so that the
>>> work is shared and to be flexible around the deadlines.
>>> So if we are some I would also offer to be involved into the process. I
>>> think that for me it would be better to be involved in organizing the
>>> process, making the calls and do less on the technical work (which I see
>>> that Christian and Eli might like more). But of course 3 people are not
>>> enough to make sure that we can sustain the Journal publication in a
>>> timely manner.
>>>
>>> Given that I am also reiterating a proposal submitted back in 2012 [1]
>>> but did not receive much attention or reaction at that moment. There I
>>> share some ideas of how to share responsibilities and how to structure
>>> the journal. If you want we can use this as a starting point for the
>>> discussion and feel free to edit along!
>>>
>>> Note also that this would be kept as a foundation Journal and not a
>>> scientific journal where we focus on activities within the foundation,
>>> the local/regional chapters and the various kinds of events and their
>>> results. We can further discuss if we would like to create an additional
>>> Academic/Scientific Journal with the colleagues who are involved in the
>>> Geo4All activity.
>>>
>>> Finally, thanks to Landon for pushing the carriage for many years; the
>>> editor's job is quite lonely and sometimes also frustrating! :)
>>>
>>> My 2c,
>>>
>>> Dimitris
>>>
>>> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/A_proposal_for_the_OSGeo_Journal
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> newsletter mailing list
>>> newsletter at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/newsletter
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Christian Willmes
>> AG GIS & Fernerkundung      | GIS & RS Group
>> Geographisches Institut     | Institute of Geography
>> Universität zu Köln         | University of Cologne
>> Tel.: +49 (0)221 470 6234
>> http://www.geographie.uni-koeln.de/willmes-christian.695.en.html
>> http://www.sfb806.de
>> http://crc806db.uni-koeln.de
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Helena Mitasova
> Professor
> Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
> North Carolina State University
> 1125 Jordan Hall
> NCSU Box 8208
> Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
> http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hmitaso/
> http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/
>
> email: hmitaso at ncsu.edu
> ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
> fax 919 515-7802
>
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>
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