[Journal] OSGEO journal

Mon Nov 23 10:29:45 PST 2015

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
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-- 
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
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