Dear All,
I saw in our web traffic tool that some people were entering in our pages
from the URL provided in the post I copy below that was discussing for our
OPEN RESEARCH SOCIETY, http://www.open-knowledge-society.org, maybe as not
a very good example of publication outlet.
I want to thank Oguzhan, Karel, David, Chris, and All for the interesting
debate on "academic/scientific" publishing.
Having a key role in the OPEN RESEARCH SOCIETY I decided to type couple
paragraphs and let all the rest to the tough work we decided to put to our
selves for the next years.
We are sure that we will make our promise to launch the journals we are
developing the next couple years for a simple reason: Just because we have
in our side the beneficiaries of the scientific research: The research
communities.
We never invited people to submit at this period articles to our journals.
We set the 1/2009 as the day of the grand launch, since then we will
present to the research community more than 10.000 people worldwide that
formulate our editorial boards.
For the concerns on QUALITY, PROFIT FROM PUBLISHING, CONFERENCES=$$$$ FOR
THE ORGANIZERS ETC, we invite you to read further on our web site.
In simple words: IT IS STUPID IN OUR DAYS TO FOCUS ON ISI/IMPACT FACTORS
ETC. The better way is to try to increase the utility of the scientific
outcomes for the society and not to honor ourselves in closed publishing
clubs. We all know how several people manipulate citations, how they
manipulate impact factors, how "reviewers" force people to cite their
research works etc. it is also stupid to realize that a HIGH IMPACT FACTOR
has a simple formula. E.g. A prestigious journal with an impact factor of
2= 40citations/20published articles in 2 years. I dont think that anyone
can be happy if the TOP journals generated 4- citations in 2 years. Or
isnt it crazy that some editors/publishers publish 3-4max articles per
issue in order to manipulate the impact factor?
It is time to go beyond all these restrictions. Our initiative is just a
step. And it is very small in relevance to the potential of open access,
open research, and high quality standards.
It is crazy also to realize that publishers, established ones ask
2500-3000$ from authors to permit open access to their work. It is also
crazy to have to pay money to conferences for putting a merit in a CV.
I invite you to support our initiative. It is a risk for us to put our
"reputation/image" in critique from people they dont know us, from people
that imagine that is is done for the HUGE MONEY in academic publishing.
But sometimes, somethings happen just because there is faith.
Who knows:) I promise to make an update in the list in one year from now.
Best Regards
Dr. Miltiadis D. Lytras
OPEN RESEARCH SOCIETY, NGO
http://www.open-knowledge-society.org
Email: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 12:02:05 +0200
Reply-To: Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
From: Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A few last thoughts on publishing ....
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
Hi, Oguzhan, Karel, David, Chris, and All, A few last thoughts on
publishing and dissemination of work by doctoral students .... 1) US
universities requiring publication in ISI indexed journals The standards
at IIT are much like those I've seen everywhere. --snip-- Publication
Requirements Doctoral candidates are expected to identify the knowledge
that underpins their work (bibliography), to present a cogent review of
the existing literature and issues (research summary), to write a minimum
of two refereed articles in respected academic journals related to their
dissertation and to complete the dissertation prior to their oral
examination. The importance of codifying knowledge through writing,
publishing and presenting in appropriate venues cannot be overestimated.
Conference presentations are strongly recommended as a way to get external
feedback and validate the work. Articles submitted to journals and
conferences that relate to your dissertation research carry not only your
name but also that of your primary advisor. --snip-- IIT requires
publishing in respected journals. They state that their list is not
comprehensive and many respected journals are not indexed by ISI. Artifact
is the first journal on the IIT list. Many subscribers to PhD-Design work
with Artifact as editors, editorial board members, and reviewers. For
example, Susan Hagan and Erik Stolterman edited the current issue on the
relation between practice and theory. Artifact is not indexed by the ISI.
As I read the IIT requirements, the school requires publishing in
respected journals. While all ISI journals meet this standard, many
respected journals not indexed. By emphasizing respect as the criterion,
giving a journal outside the ISI index as the first example, the IIT
standard explicitly takes a position contrary to the Yildiz University
requirements. I'd still like to see a list of US universities that demand
ISI journals rather than respected journals. It's one thing to say that
Yildiz University sets this forth as a requirement. It's another to say
this is based on North American or European practices -- I find this hard
to accept without some clear cases. Even then, I'd want to know whether
this is an outlier or common practice. To my knowledge, the common
standards lie closer to standards at IIT and Middlesex University. 2)
European universities requiring publication in ISI indexed journals No
European universities I know of require publication in ISI indexed
journals. You've asked last year and again this year and so have I. Every
European university I know that requires publishing before completing the
PhD use a standard similar to the IIT standard -- or an even broader
standard such as the standard David Durling suggested. One of these two
standards are the norm at most of the universities I know in Norway,
Denmark, Sweden, Finland, or the UK. At many universities, however, this
is a recommendation and not a requirement. The failure to identify even
one example of a European university requiring publication in ISI indexed
journals suggests that this is not a general European standard. 3)
Creating an open access journal Karel van der Waarde's suggestion that we
establish journals for the purpose of meeting administrative requirements
irrelevant to research had me laughing. These administrative requirements
are irrelevant to the purposes for which most journals exists, however.
Karel wrote, "An enormous group of authors has to put pressure on
reviewers and editors because: I need this publication to start a PhD; I
need this publication to obtain a PhD; I need this publication to support
my PhD-viva; I need this publication for staff evaluations; Our department
needs this publication for an assessment/accreditation." While he offered
the example of launching a journal at Biomed Central, this won't help
doctoral students. The launching process is strict. Biomed Central has
high demands for senior level editorial experience and strong research
publishing credentials for those who want to launch a journal. Am
organization such as this would not welcome a journal created solely for
the purpose of administrative credentials. The credibility of open access
publishing at Biomed Central rests on the high scientific value of its
peer reviewed journals. Even if they were to permit such a journal, it
would not solve the problem of administrative processing fees. A visit to
the Biomed Central web site will demonstrate the challenge of launching a
serious journal: http://www.biomedcentral.com/independent/starting
Incidentally, David noted that several posts have discussed the difference
between serious journals and others. Nearly all of the 111 journals that I
noted are serious -- people do a reasonable good faith job at responsible
publishing of material they deem worthy on its own merits to become the
literature of the field. Some do it better than others, but it's real
work, and they all invest them time this requires. 4) Publishing to meet
administrative standards There are several examples of organizations that
exist for administrative markers rather than genuine research publishing.
This includes journal and conference firms that exist primarily to allow
people to meet administrative publishing requirements. Some conference
firms have gone so far in this direction that they hardly maintain a
pretense of scholarship other than a fancy but general conference title
that covers a vast spectrum of any field to maximize possible submissions
by people who are not accepted at the narrow specialist conferences or the
organization-sponsored general research conferences. These conferences
typically have no sponsor organization and no direct scientific or
scholarly community. What they do have is glorious venues, with events at
prime vacation destinations. These allow researchers to register, get a
certificate, present a paper, and enjoy a week at the beach on the
university research account. One engineering professor with a reasonable
scientific reputation in discovered that he could supplement his academic
income substantially in the conference business. Starting with one or two
profitable conferences a year at tourist destinations in the Balkans, he
expanded to the point that he was recently running 20 or more conferences
every year in exotic locations around the world. He used some of the
profit to hire well known scholars as keynote speakers, giving each
conference the semblance of legitimacy so that presenters could tell their
dean, "Nobel Laureate X is giving the keynote!" or something like that. I
estimated the profits once ... I wish that we could make a living like
that in ordinary teaching and research. The same thing takes place in
publishing. Just this week, I got an invitation to participate in a
publishing venture nicely suited to solving the problems that Karel lists
(start a PhD, obtain a PhD, support my PhD-viva, pass staff evaluation,
pass institutional assessment and accreditation). The Open Research
Society is now circulating an invitation in design research circles
seeking scholars to serve on its journal editorial boards. They are
sending these out with invitations to publish in their journals, including
invitations to submit to journals that do not yet have editors. I suggest
that colleagues ignore any such invitation, but I pass this on here
information value. The Open Research Society has all the earmarks of the
schemes that people cook up to provide journals and conferences for work
that cannot make an appearance elsewhere. One easily recognized
characteristic is launching an entire publishing company rather than a
specific journal. The web site is located at:
http://www.open-knowledge-society.org/ Launching a serious new journal is
typically a two or three year project. Organizing an editorial group,
preparing the first issues, getting systems in order all take time. So
does attracting solid submissions, establishing good review panels, and
creating comprehensive quality mechanisms. This outfit plans to launch 100
new journals now and 350 new journals over the next year. To launch 100
new journals is like saying, "We're going to build a journal division
bigger than the MIT Press journal division over the next few months -- at
an equally high quality standard." The idea of building 350 new journals
in a year is beyond credibility. It took Taylor and Francis two centuries
to become that big. A fine company like Berg has only 16 journals and some
of the 16 not yet launched. It takes Berg two or three years for every
launch. The Open Research Society cannot achieve the launch schedule they
have announced with any kind of quality. None of these journals has an
editorial board yet. They are inviting volunteers. Some of these journals
don't even have an editor! Anyone who has ever launched a successful
journal knows that a journal begins with an editor and an editorial team.
This team creates the vision and program that leads to high quality
content, impact, and success. This may involve deeper problems than poor
quality, though. In my experience, such schemes have one of two purposes,
sometimes both. Some serve as money mills for the publishing organization
and its controlling group. Even a supposedly non-profit organization such
as the Open Research Society can be quite lucrative for those who run it
when the managers of a non-profit organization pay themselves high
salaries and excellent benefits. Even if fraud is not involved here, the
journals may still serve as paper mills, churning out publications for
scholars desperate to increase their publishing metrics. These kinds of
ventures seem to tempt some early career researchers. They may also tempt
those who are desperate for publishing credits. They do not fool the
ministries that evaluate publications, though, and they rarely impress the
people who decide on tenure and promotion, so publishing in these venues
can have negative results. In my view it is better _not_ to publish an
article than to publish it in a journal from an outfit like the Open
Research Society. I do not state that the Open Research Society involves
fraud. I have no way to know. I do state that this cannot be a serious
publishing venture as it is now structured. The aspirations they state on
their web site are benevolent enough, but attempting to launch 100
journals at a go with all-volunteer editorial boards rather than teams of
experienced editors will not fulfill the stated aspirations. Launching 350
journals in a single year with all-volunteer boards is a recipe for poor
quality and low impact. Some universities and faculties specifically
exclude such publishers from publishing statistics. My faculty is one of
these. 5) Do we need more journals? And should ISI carry more design
journals? As it is, I don't think we need more journals. This was true a
decade ago, but not today. Current journal struggle to attract enough good
contributions. Should ISI index more design journals? Possibly. But that
is another issue. Nevertheless, there is a serious and relevant middle
ground between publishing only in ISI journals and publishing with outfits
like the Open Research Society. There are more than enough serious
research journals and book series from respected firms such as the MIT
Press, Taylor and Francis, Berg, Blackwell, Elsevier, University of
Chicago Press, University of California Press, Oxford University Press --
and more. There are also such independent research journals as the
International Journal of Design. 6) Doctoral students and dissemination
David noted many good venues for dissemination. Conferences remain among
the best, for many reasons. As Chris notes, "conferences provide an almost
perfect arena for students to learn their trade. They have a higher chance
of acceptance and tentative or interim findings are likely to be
acceptable, they get to meet their community, see their peers in action
and have real immediate feedback on their work and they have their first
foot on the publishing ladder with papers that are citable and accessible.
In some subject communities a paper in a leading conference may be as good
for your standing as a journal paper and journal editors will often attend
conferences to spot new talent." I'll echo those last two points. A
presentation at a pivotal conference can help to orient a field, and it
will attract real attention. Journal editors often locate potential
authors at conferences. I have done so often. This works for all of us,
not just doctoral students -- several of my conference papers have moved
on to an after-life in journal articles and book chapter following a well
received presentation. Even my extremely rigorous dog agrees that this is
a good way for professors to publish, much as it is for PhD students. It
doesn't work for dogs, though -- most conference hotels won't let them
register for meals, and a dog won't present if he can't eat. Yours, Ken --
Oguzhan Ozcan wrote: For instance Illinois Institute of Technology,
Institute of Design requires conference papers and high quality 2 journal
published article before submission of PhD. Of course There are no written
word for ISI journal. Unfortunately I know almost all articles in ISI. You
can see it their application form. page 17.
http://trex.id.iit.edu/grad/phd_handbook.pdf There are several more. But I
think It is not relevant to talk name based in the list I guess. I was
agree that this is hard. But my earliest argument is not proof this. My
question was which EU Schools using this rule ... My argument was (Because
it is hard THERE IS NO ENOUGH DESIGN RESEARCH JOURNAL IN ISI INDEX.) at
April 2007 -- Ken Friedman Professor Dean, Swinburne Design Swinburne
University of Technology Melbourne, Australia +61 3 92.14.68.69 Tlf
Swinburne +61 404 830 462 Mobile email: [log in to unmask] email:
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