[Journal] OSGEO journal
Dimitris Kotzinos
kotzino at gmail.com
Fri Nov 27 07:15:40 PST 2015
Hi Christian,
it is fine to be blunt but you complete missed the point because I did
not impose anything on anyone - at least I do not think so and I am
sorry you felt like this. And I am really curious how exactly did I
impose something on you or anyone else?
And please: I do not have a section in the Journal that is "mine" to
decide on what content I want to see in it or anywhere else. I am also
not interested in an OSGEO journal where people have their own agendas.
I think that OSGEO Journal is a community effort and should represent
what the community wants and should not be split into personal sections
where people serve their own agendas!
Other than that, as I said my personal feeling is that I do not see
enough justification for yet another academic journal in the area and I
also think that academia is a part of OSGEO not the whole; I even
suggested compromises for all that, which have the potential of creating
something reputable that will survive at the end of the day.
And I think we should discuss all opinions until we reach a consensus.
Best regards,
Dimitris
P.S.: You might have missed recent discussions but GeoForAll is actually
the education committee of OSGEO and the Journal is under the
newsletter/journal committee which is composed of the people in this
mailing list. Thanks.
On 27/11/15 2:51 μ.μ., Christian Willmes wrote:
> Dear Dimitris,
>
> It is perfectly fine, if you do not want to participate in editing
> academic content, because you think its not needed. But imposing on
> others to not do this if they want, is not. I already said, why I think
> an academic Journal would be good for OSGeo, your reasons for not having
> an academic Journal do not address the points I made.
>
> You can work on your agenda by acquiring content you want to see in the
> Journal (in your section). Others can work on their agendas to see the
> content they want to have in the Journal. We should now define a process
> that enables all this in an open inclusive way. In the end how this
> process will take gestalt is what defines what the Journal actually is
> and will be about.
>
> My proposal was just to facilitate and enable this heterogeneous
> approach for the Journal to first just get it reactivated and actually
> do things.
>
> And for me it is 100% clear, that the OSGeo Journal is under the
> umbrella of OSGeo and maybe its Education committee. Geo4All is of
> course invited to participate.
>
> (Sorry for maybe being blunt.) Thanks,
> Christian
>
> Am 27.11.2015 um 11:32 schrieb Dimitris Kotzinos:
>> 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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