JIME editorship

The second of my 'what does Martin do every day?' posts.

I've recently taken over editorship of JIME - this was a highly innovative journal when it was first started up by Simon in KMi over ten years ago. It was open access before anyone talked about open access and had an open peer review model. But as with so many academic journals, particularly when there isn't a big publisher behind them, it operates on the margins of everyone's time, and it's kind of stuttered over the past few years.

So we're planning a relaunch next year. We are currently working through a backlog of papers, so no new submissions are required yet. We've got the open source journal system OJS operating now, and that seems to work well. It's fairly conventional now in its review model, but it is still open access. One of the issues we face is rather akin to the conference conservatism cycle I suggested a while back. People won't publish in a journal that doesn't have an impact factor. In order to have an impact factor you need to conform to certain processes eg have a set number of issues per year, operate a pre-publication peer review system, etc.

But I would like to use the journal as a form of research. What is possible with a journal? What review models are acceptable? Can we move away from just text articles to multi-media submissions? What metrics can we apply? How will a journal that operates a different model be viewed? Does it still constitute a journal if you make too many changes?

So, here's where you can help. I've set up a quick survey to guage opinion about the longer term direction of JIME (in the short term it'll be open but with the standard review model). I'd really appreciate it if you took 2 minutes to complete it. 

 

Comments

[Stephen Downes]

> People won't publish in a journal that doesn't have an impact factor.

Which people? Do you really want them publishing in your journal? I would seek out a better class of contributor. Just saying...

[Philosopher1978]

I share Stephen's concerns... perhaps it's easier to be innovative with a journal that is already well established/prestigious.

Being open to multi-media content seems like a great idea to me... but I wonder how many researchers would take the time to put it together...