On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 4:24 AM, Lawrence Berg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In an effort to improve timeliness of publication, the ACME Editorial
> Collective is investigating systems of pre-print publication for articles
> accepted to ACME.
>
> As a result, I'm writing to see if any colleagues have experience with
> pre-print systems (e.g., Geoforum operates a pre-print system) and if people
> have any comments or concerns about such systems. We are especially
> interested to know how such publication processes are received by
> institutions (do they weaken promotion and tenure cases, for example), or
> how individual scholars feel they might improve journal
> publication/knowledge production processes in general.
I don't have any specific experience with pre-print systems, but on
the issues about tenure and promotion, my sense is those are unlikely
to be relevant here, since you mention restricting pre-prints to
already-accepted work. In the sciences, it seems from a quick search
that a lot of pre-print manuscripts are not (yet) peer-reviewed. So I
gather the issue is status of review, rather than of publication.
For ACME, I'm not exactly sure what you have in mind, but I could
imagine simply publishing articles as they are available, and then
(also) collecting them into the more regular issues. Of course, one
might wonder if we really need issues in a world of online publishing.
But if the systems is designed right, that's an editorial, rather than
technical, decision.
BTW, a somewhat-related aside:
I'd like to see ACME move away from the PDF-only download of articles,
towards prioritizing HTML, and with that, allowing public comments for
each articles, as well as publishing RSS/Atom feeds of new content to
make it easier to track newly-published work (rather than you just
posting emails when new stuff goes out).
I think those changes along with pre-printing would be a really nice
enhancement.
Bruce
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