[Journal] Volume 5 and beyond

[Rafal Wawer]

<So far the Journal was mainly a container for the annual report, while the papers appeared rather rarely.>
I was rather hasty with that statement, although it is true for the period of my interest in te Journal - beginning of 2008.
Year 2007 was very sucessfull for the Journal - 3 issues, inclusing FOSS4G2007 proceedings. Issue 4, containing the Annual Report is already published and  "cannot be undone" (-;
I propose the issue 5 and all the future issues to be released as a scientific/academic editions. No 5 should be publishable in 2009, as the papers are already after reviews. It would be very nice to achieve several issues a year, as in 2007. The current activity in the FOSS4G domain would certailny fill them up. I think a good way to increase the number of Journal issues to a level of 2007 would be to publish proceedings of the FOSS4G related conferences and workshops, not only those organized by OSGeo. The materials of those events often dwell on the webpages of the organizing bodies, hardly discoverable by readers. I think the organizers would be interested in publishing in OSGeoJournal, or its special editions. The Journal has no impact factor assigned, however it has potentially big thematic  community of readers.

Best regards:
Raf




-----Original Message-----
From: Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) [mailto:tmitchell at osgeo.org] 
Sent: 13 May 2009 17:19
To: Rafal Wawer
Cc: OSGeo Journal
Subject: Re: [Journal] Volume 5 and beyond


On 13-May-09, at 1:53 AM, Rafal Wawer wrote:
> I always wondered if the OSGeo annual reports could be kept "outside" 
> the Journal.
> So far the Journal was mainly a container for the annual report, while 
> the papers appeared rather rarely.
> As we already streamlined the admission/review process, wouldn't it be 
> nice to finally separate annual reports from the papers, placing the 
> reports not in the Journal but 4ex in annals, parallel to it?
> The numeration of the Journal would be then given only to scientific 
> editions.
> Now, it is quite confusing for the Journal's (potential) readers - 
> looking for papers they mostly find OSGeo annual reports. (-;

Definitely possible to move it outside, if I understand properly your concern.  We have had 3 'normal' issues, plus one annual report so far.  So if people cannot find the other 3 issues then we have a bigger problem.  I think we need a way to easily promote all these articles we've collected.

Here are some of the current ways:

1/ http://www.osgeo.org/ojs/index.php/journal  - lists all previous volumes so readers can find one to look at.  (I need to add the French ones into OSJ still).  With one click they see an article list for that volume.

2/ You can also use the "browse by..." options on lower right of that web page.  E.g. Browse by authors gives you a great list in alphabetical order.

3/ The search box also gives you great results from searching abstracts, authors, titles, etc.

What other ways can we make this clearer to potential readers?  Any ideas for a web page to help display things in a better way - let's try them!