[Journal] Journal about

[Christian Willmes]

Dear Journal Team,

Regarding this discussion [0], I was asking myself what the OSGeo 
Journal is, or aims to be? According to the wiki page [1], it is defined 
as follows:
"The OSGeo Journal is an open publication highlighting open source 
geospatial projects, software development, introductions to projects, 
news, event and other OSGeo Foundation updates."
About the Journals about page we discussed in above referenced thread 
already.

Anyhow, looking at the actual Journal contents [2] it is more or less 
the publication platform for the FOSS4G Academic track. Not much of 
other content. The last annual report is from 2010.

I think it is beyond discussion, that the Journal needs some care now, 
or it will die in the foreseeable future.

I would really like to see the Journal alive, and (re-)evolve into an 
asset of the OSGeo foundation.

For now, I have the following ideas to work on for improving the Journal:

1. Try to make clear (or promote) that the Journal is the basic 
publication for the academic track of (at least international) FOSS4Gs. 
(It is good to organize publication of FOSS4G academic track papers in a 
dedicated Academic Journal, like in past time in TGIS, or organize a 
Special Issue in a different dedicated Journal, but all the other 
papers, that don't get into those publications, should be published from 
OSGeo Journal by default).

2. Publish the annual reports as an own issue (every Year).

3. I additionally think, we should try to integrate with the Geo4All 
Newsletters. Geo4All publishes very nice monthly newsletters [3]. I 
think it would be really good to have one Journal issue a year 
collecting the (12) newsletter. Geo4All would name the editor(s) of this 
issue.

4. More ideas...?

This way we would have at least 3 issues per year.

What do you guys think? Let's gather some ideas and opinions on what we 
want to do with the Journal.

Best regards,
Christian

[0] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/newsletter/2015-October/001187.html
[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Journal
[2] https://journal.osgeo.org/index.php/journal
[3] http://www.geoforall.org/newsletters/

-- 
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
http://www.sfb806.de
http://crc806db.uni-koeln.de