[Journal] OSGEO journal
Dimitris Kotzinos
kotzino at gmail.com
Fri Nov 27 02:32:50 PST 2015
Dear Christian, all,
thanks for the interesting discussion and my apologies for the slow
response.
I would like to start by saying that I am also in Academia, so
suggesting an academic journal would also be a natural thing for me. And
this was also a discussion some years ago when I originally created the
proposal I referred to last time.
So let me put my thoughts forward:
1/ do we need another academic journal in GI and should OSGEO be the
venue hosting it?
My answer is no, there are already enough that we can use to publish in
various formats (open access or not). Moreover why would someone publish
in a Journal? Because the publisher and the editorial team would provide
some guarantees of quality. But keep in mind that OSGEO is not an
academic only organization in principle. So why would someone choose it
over other publishing venues?
So my answer in both questions above is no.
2/ is there an academic issue not covered elsewhere?
Open Source GI per se is not in my view an academic issue, various
results obtain by OS software yes but not the software used in most cases!
3/ what is the difference from having only special issues?
The main difference is that it is organized by and through the review of
a conference and the criteria are defined by the conference. So the
journal is only providing a publishing venue in case people cannot find
anything more "academic" like a special issue in an established journal.
4/ do we need an OSGEO journal?
yes but in my view not in an academic sense. We need a dissemination
venue for various activities to be documented. Including academic
related activities but not only. We need an OSGEO community journal.
Maybe a journal where someone could find articles from industr, academia
or just users on the same subject. This is what I feel is missing and
not another academic journal.
Maybe I can also suggest a compromise:
OSGEO Journal for reporting OSGEO community actions (including academic
issues) and one independent academic journal that I will propose and
probably I can run with Christian and whoever else is interested under
the GeoForAll umbrella if we feel that something like this is missing
(which would have some meaning in order to help establishing the
GeoForAll community processes).
As I said I would be happy to help with whatever solution we agree on,
but we need to agree first on the character of the journal for the next
few years.
My 2c and sorry for the verbosity,
Dimitris
On 27/11/15 11:06 π.μ., Christian Willmes wrote:
> Thank you Helena and Landon for your encouragement.
>
> I don't want to take over the Journal and replace existing volunteers,
> but I would step up as a co-editor and take a defined set of
> responsibilities.
> I am working in academia, so I would like to work on the academic side
> of the Journal. Additionally I would also help on the infrastructure side.
> I could think of a team of co-editors, each co-editor responsible for a
> defined set of responsibilities and according section of the Journal.
>
> I think Landon and Dimitris have kind of similar interest in the
> newsletter and annual report like contents of the journal, so you could
> team up to edit this part of the journal?
>
> Barend has carried the academic track issues in the past and did a great
> job on this. I would appreciate if he would continue this excellent
> contribution?
>
> Eli does a lot of the work that is not so much valued by people who
> don't look behind the scenes, like copy editing or taking care of the
> web infrastructure and general issues. He should be recognized for this
> commitment and also be named co-editor.
>
> I would see the editor team right now like this:
>
> - Landon and Dimitris: Newsletter style content and annual reports
> - Barend (and maybe Franz-Josef): FOSS4G Academic Track
> - Eli: Production Editor and web infrastructure
> - Me (and maybe Helena and/or Venka and/or Charlie): Regular Academic
> Content
>
> I think if we would define the responsibilities and then share them on a
> team of many co-editors would be a good approach to lessen the workload
> on each co-editor and reactivate the OSGeo Journal.
>
> Best regards,
> Christian
>
> Am 23.11.2015 um 20:03 schrieb Helena Mitasova:
>> 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 <mailto: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
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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 <tel:%2B49%20%280%29221%20470%206234>
>> 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://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Ehmitaso/>
>> http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/
>>
>> email: hmitaso at ncsu.edu <mailto:hmitaso at ncsu.edu>
>> ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
>> fax 919 515-7802
>
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