[Journal] Volume 5 and beyond
Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)
tmitchell at osgeo.org
Thu May 14 11:47:24 EDT 2009
Thanks Rafal and Landon, your support in these ways will really help!
Landon - I've spent a lot of time in OJS learning about how to best
use its workflow - having someone else who is also intimate with it
would be very useful. As you've seen, I made a few videos to
highlight potential issues - creating more of these or improving them
might really help, generally speaking.
Re: latex - it's actually not that bad and the section editors have
accepted DOC and ODF files and done the conversion themselves. We've
tried to make it a non-issue for the authors by being flexible at our
end.
However, when we pull together the full publication, the benefit of
using latex cannot be overstated. Especially when you consider that
anyone with a working latex installation can download the branch from
SVN and run "make"... and out comes a PDF.
Then also, when Yves and the Francophone team come to translate it to
French, the copy the text files, edit them, then run "make" :) No
special GUI programs are needed and all the text files can be kept
separate from one another. It runs quick too - like 10 seconds for a
50+ page high quality PDF.
I've used Scribus a fair bit and appreciate it for sure, but until
they support linking to external text files for input into the text
frames I think it would be a lot of work. Also, I can't help but
wonder how my computer will handle opening 50+ pages in it with
linked text frames. Did you have something particular in mind that
Scribus would be best at? It'd be great for making the cover page or
laying out more graphical items though.
All this to say, I can't see it getting much easier, but I think we
could improve in some areas. But at the end of the day, we should
still accept a variety of source document formats and we are using
pretty elementary latex options so it shouldn't be a barrier for
section editors to convert. We've done well in the previous
volumes. I could be wrong though and maybe it's a huge concern for
section editors, but they haven't told me yet :-)
Thanks again for the feedback and commitment. I'm open to whatever
works best, so please just take this as my opinion and keep the
discussion going if I've missed the point.
Tyler
p.s. If you want to see how simple latex can be then look at one of
the article latex files, not the "master document" though since it
can be a bit more intimidating but doesn't change much. For the most
part there isn't much to do in a typical document:
http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/journal/volume_5/en-us/annual_report/
executive/editorial.tex
On 14-May-09, at 7:53 AM, Sunburned Surveyor wrote:
> I'd like to offer help in two (2) areas:
>
> - Tyler mentioned "one or two others interested in helping oversee
> the process". I would be able to devote a couple hours a week to
> helping move the ball forward on each issue. I'm thinking about
> contacting authors and editors with friendly reminders about deadlines
> and helping them work through any road blocks they may have run into.
> I could help maintain a calendar or spreadsheet for this purpose.
> (Perhaps this tracking functionality is built into OJS?)
>
> - Tyler mentioned "latex experts to help improve look and feel of
> journal, plus help convert contributed content". I've discovered that
> I'm not a huge fan of latex. :] I'm not sure if we have contributors
> to the journal that feel strongly about its continued use, but I would
> be willing to work up a layout for the Journal in Scribus. This would
> allow authors to submit articles in DOC or ODF format, and would give
> us some more exact control over the layout of the journal. This might
> be worth at least a try? If there were another Scribus fan among us
> that was willing to help me, we might relieve Tyler of the actual
> layout and graphical production duties.
>
> Landon
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 7:22 AM, Rafal Wawer
> <Rafal.Wawer at sadl.kuleuven.be> wrote:
>> Tyler,
>> I think I can devote most of my overhead (1-2 days/month) to the
>> work for the Journal.
>> Not much, but within this timeframe I would be happy to help.
>>
>> Best regards:
>> Raf
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) [mailto:tmitchell at osgeo.org]
>> Sent: 14 May 2009 16:11
>> To: Rafal Wawer
>> Cc: OSGeo Journal
>> Subject: Re: [Journal] Volume 5 and beyond
>>
>> Hi Rafal,
>> I share your enthusiasm and direction for the Journal. Once I've
>> got this report off my plate, then we will have to test the waters
>> to see if we can truly handle this direction. It is a lot of work
>> and to make it a success there will need to be more volunteers who
>> can help with some of the day-to-day management of the journal
>> processes, since I'm the main bottleneck at the moment :-) In
>> 2007 we had a couple additional editors who were able to help at
>> all levels, but some of them are unavailable now, and some section
>> editors are too busy now too.
>>
>> It seems we have lots of great reviewers. I think we have enough
>> section editors, and I think there are lots of authors waiting to
>> contribute too. But further than that we need:
>> * one or two others interested in helping oversee the process,
>> e.g. a senior editor
>> * technical assistant (could be same as above) to help manage
>> various tasks in the online system/tools
>> * latex experts to help improve look and feel of journal, plus
>> help convert contributed content.
>> * peer review panel - some who are most familiar with issues of
>> peer review and who can help make sure we "do it right"
>> * promoters - to advertise and promote the journal to appropriate
>> places
>>
>> I'm sure there is more, but thought I'd mention these in case.
>>
>> Best wishes!
>> Tyler
>>
>>
>> On 14-May-09, at 1:22 AM, Rafal Wawer wrote:
>>
>>> <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!
>>>
>>>
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