Webb’s Media

The conversation about academic publishing and an online journal concept, with transparent peer review has disappeared from our blog conversations for a few weeks. For a recap:
Nate explores idea of wiki platform for journal
Johannes was mentioning how the post-publication review might look

And someone was supposed to talk to David Wiley about why his efforts to create a similar online journal fell by the wayside (assuming they have).

I think we should revive this discussion just as finals are finishing up and we all have time to come up for air again.
I have been emailing with Johannes aka John DoE about this and am integrating many of his comments into this post. I’m sure Nate has some sage advice to add about the technical side of what kind of platform would best support this endeavor.

Johannes referred me to Journal of Interactive Media in Education which supposedly uses this concept…but I don’t know if it’s just me…but the frame that seems like it should have comments is blank. There are some similarities with what we have been talking about and we should have a clear reason and purpose that differentiates what we want to do from what they’re doing.

We also talked about the review process. Would it be double-blind in order to maintain prestige of the process…or would it be double-blind until a “final” publication level, whereby the comment-givers as well as the author would be identified? Is this whole idea about the product or the process? Certainly the author of the publication will have to be traceable back to an individual, though whether or not the reviewers have to know who the person is unclear to me.

Who will be reviewers? How will they be selected?

Who will be involved? How do we get buy-in to the concept and enough sustained involvement to make it a successful venue for publication & discussion?

What content would be covered? I would think given the suggestion of a radical break from traditional models of publishing, I would hope that the concept is to also introduce innovative concepts and research methods and discussion of cutting edge educational technology and learning theory research.

Finally, I am going to cut & paste here some guidelines, Johannes has brainstormed about how this might work conceptually:

1. Everybody can submit papers to this space. There is some screening for spam but otherwise no restrictions.
2. The journal chief-editors are asking people from the review board and outside editors to give feedback on the paper in a constructive and open process. The critique is visible on the web-site and similarly done as by reviews of other journals: Reviews are due at certain times and recommendations for further change are given.
3. The readership of the journal is also invited to provide comments and feedback and are engaged in the discourse.
4. The journal suggests to the authors to publish their work under the Open Publication licence http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/ that gives credit to the original author even when used partially in other publication.
5. The authors are invited to submit advanced versions of their papers after the ‘official’ review by the journal is finished
6. The journal is considered to be a teaching and discourse journal, where the process of creating a publication with the review of peers is open and transparent.
6. The content direction of the journal is:
“Participatory design/Learning design by learners”: It’s all about where learners become designers of their own learning spaces, has additionally a different twist on empowerment.
7. The journal is committed to methodologies that support the understanding of learning as a phenomenon that happens in naturalistic settings.

So—let’s start talking again. If you want me to trackback to something you wrote about this journal idea previously in your blog—whoever has written about it, I’m happy to add it. Please give comments, feedback, and logistical suggestions of what it would take to start the ball rolling with this…