Ted M Coopman wrote:
All,
1. Take the money out of it. Get rid of the publishers and associations that make bank off our writing and editorial work. Go online and make it free and accessible to everyone. Then maybe someone will read it!
This can work in some instances, provided that the infrastructure (including labor and systems) is underwritten by an institution or institutions (and doing so actually ends up both less expensive than many journal subscriptions being paid for by the library...as well as providing social capital to the institutions providing the support). That's the model that the journal I work with uses (Kairos: Rhetoric Technology, Pedagogy -- kairos.technorhetoric.net), and it has served us well for the past 10 years. We've been an open access journal from the start, and our current readership (as measured by server log analysis) is around 45,000 people per month. So people are reading it (but not yet citing it is much as I would like...is that because it is open access and perceived to be not as influential as print journals? I think it's a possibility).
2. Adopt a (mostly) open review system, although I think it should be restricted to editorial board members and ad hoc reviewers with expertise in that area and be blind. Lay out the process as it develops. I like the idea of a signed review, and often you can tell who the writer is, but personalities and politics are a reality.
Interestingly enough, we do this too. The first-tier review in our review process (after the editors evaluate the submission for fit and degree of development) presents the work in question to our editorial board (which is made up of about 50 of the top scholars in the field of computers and writing, which includes both faculty and graduate students); the edboard debates the merits of the piece on our listserv (the editors observe but do not intervene in this process unless something goes seriously awry -- which has not happened since I joined the editorial staff in 1997). The old-boy network problem doesn't surface here because if someone is disgruntled about their theory or method being critiqued, the other edboard members won't let them sabotage the work. The edboard decides to provisionally accept, request revision and resubmission, or reject. In all cases the author(s) receives a detailed summary of the discussion along with suggestions for either revision or other venues that might be better for his or her work. The works that are "accepted" then go through a process where the author(s) works directly with the editorial staff (and sometimes some of the editorial board members) to revise the work to make it the best that it can be (our process is also complicated by the fact that both textual content and design are considered scholarly, so the reviewers and the authors have to pay attention to both).
3. Allows readers who register to add comments along side an article to stimulate interactivity and allow authors to add new insights or data as it becomes available. You might also allow a rating system on usefulness, innovation, or other criteria.
This we don't do -- not because it wouldn't be useful, but because in the past when we've tried to build in interactivity, it has failed. We looked at other online journals and found that most had the same experience, and we theorize that it is due to the fact that scholarly journals (even cutting edge online ones) evoke a specific genre that doesn't have the space for such interaction; the kind of interaction we were looking for works well on listservs (like this one) and, increasingly, in social networking environments...and we may be approaching the time when appropriating the social networking practices of these other space may become acceptable for journals because the exigency and use of the journals is changes (and we are currently working on a redesign that will make these options available, but that's not ready yet). So I certainly think there are interesting and useful ways to experiment with peer-review, and pre- and post-publication assessment (and perhaps revision). Kairos is working on one possible model, but I think that there are certainly others that are worth developing as well. Doug Douglas Eyman Senior Editor Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/