Hello all,
I have been following all these emails with care because I was the person who emailed Ken off-list to ask about CGP. I feel I should offer some insight as to what prompted these emails. I emailed Ken on Saturday night. I had been trying to send an email to the list about an unrelated topic. However, I kept getting messages that it had been rejected. Ken emailed me letting me know they got through. I started a conversation with him about CGP.
During my mid-tenure review a question was raised about my two articles published in two CGP journals and my book contract. The committee was uncertain of the legitimacy of CGP. Since the review back in April 2016, I have been researching and looking for answers.
I find myself in an uncomfortable position. Though these conversations offer great insight, advice, and resources thanks to Ken, I still need to make some decisions. Furthermore, I fear that my two articles well, may not be as respected as I had hoped?
That said, I should also offer some insight on the CGP process. My papers started out in conference presentations but were not automatically accepted. They had to be reviewed by two independent reviewers who were indeed very stringent and rigorous with my articles. In both cases I dealt with strong and objective feedback. The process requires you to submit reasons for not taking this or that feedback as well and to note all the revisions made due to that feedback. And if the article is rejected by both reviewers, it is not published. What the conference participation does is that the paper can be submitted sans fees.
I have met Luigi Ferrara, have colleagues who have published their articles with CGP, and it was not until my mid tenure review that I encountered issues. When I was introduced to the list back in the Fall because of the survey for my book, I started thinking about asking these questions again.
I had not asked publicly or on the “record”, I guess we can say, because I was afraid, to be honest, of the responses and what the asking itself could do to my tenure and future prospects. Asking Ken off-list allowed me to ask a question in a low key manner and he has been very generous with his time by providing many resources for me to look into. Now the cat is out of the bag sort of speak. :-)
After reading a few instances where Ken had to explain why he started off these threads, I felt I should say that it was for my benefit and of course others who may have similar questions. That these emails happened during the current CGP annual conference, it was accidental.
This is not an easy place to be, that is for sure. Investigation, writing, connecting unlikely points of reference, creating new frameworks or revising old ones, exploring avenues, creating meaning, studying alternative frameworks, etc., all of these are thing I pursue with passion. I hope that moving forward I can accomplish my goals.
Thank you,
Alma
Alma Hoffmann
Assistant Professor
VAB 348
501 North University Blvd
Department of Visual Arts
University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL 36688
p. 251-461-1437
> On Mar 2, 2017, at 10:38 AM, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Bill,
>
> Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful reply (below) to my notes on Common Ground. The issues you raise here require reflection. This deserves a careful and thoughtful reply. I hope that my response is objective rather than negative.
>
> First, I studied the new web site before posting my earlier note. Given the new information in your reply, I will study the new web site more carefully. This morning, I ordered a copy of the 2014 book you edited together with Angus Phillips, The Future of the Academic Journal.
>
> In my note, I also referred to an article that you published in the journal First Monday:
>
> Cope, William W., and Mary Kalantzis. 2009. “Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge system of the academic journal.” First Monday, Volume 14, Number 4, 6 April 2009. Accessible from URL:
>
> http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309
>
> We agree on many of the broad issues you discuss in this article, and based on the content of your book, I suspect we agree on still more.
>
> At the same time, I think there is room for debate on the practical application of these ideas as they took shape in Common Ground. It seems to me better to say that I raised serious questions in my notes on Common Ground rather than saying that my post was simply negative or forbidding.
>
> It is fair to distinguish between statements of opinion and straightforward reports of fact. In great part, what seems to be negative opinion is a simple statement of fact. I did not plan my post to coincide with the next conference in the Design Principles and Practices series, though. This started earlier this week as a series of posts on academic publishing. I started these in response to a couple of off-list notes. Altogether, I wrote seven posts — adding and repurposing some material from earlier notes to the list:
>
> 1) Where should you publish your book?
> 2) Turning your PhD Thesis into a Book
> 3) Lambert Academic Publishing and Verlag Dr. Mueller: Beware!
> 4) I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm -- article on Lambert Academic Publishing in Slate
> 5) Research Journals for Design Articles
> 6) Conferences -- a Pathway to Publishing
> 7) Common Ground Publishers
>
> As you’ll see in the notes, I provide a rich array of resources to help people find useful book publishers and journal venues, and I provide information on how to locate the web site of nearly every one of the 3,033 book publishers covered in the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers. These notes contained a great deal of “how to” information, a lot of “what to look for”, and some critique. Don Norman expanded the conversation with comments on trade publishing, and Deirdre Barron added some notes on how to select a journal.
>
> With respect to the practices described in my note on Common Ground, I reported facts.
>
> It is a fact that two editors serve as editors-in-chief of seven (7) journals. It is my opinion and the opinion of nearly every editor I know that this represents a problem. In the sense that this is a collection of journals, it is possible to argue that these are a linked, interdisciplinary cluster of journals. In that case, it would make sense to publish these seven titles as a single journal. Instead, Common Ground positions these journals as seven different journals in six fields plus a yearbook. One must ask how two architects can edit journals in all six fields. It’s a matter of expertise, as well as a matter of time.
>
> It seems to be the case that the journal model still functions as it did, with a conference paper moving easily to a journal article without significant revision or development. Because the web site is ambiguous on this issue, I cannot state that this is a fact. The marketing position of the web site links the conferences and the journals, giving substance to the “three ticks on your metrics” approach.
>
> It is a fact that ad hoc reviewers are credited as associate editors of the journals. As of this morning, the new web site continues to designate reviewers as associate editors, and it links this practice to building the resumé of those who do this work. Editing a journal builds a resumé. Reviewing for a journal or a conference also builds a resumé. These are different activities: to grant associate editor status to an ad hoc reviewer is a problem.
>
> This is more than a problem for the field. It can become a problem for the ad hoc reviewer. When someone claims inappropriate associate editor status at a journal, this is considered a form of resumé inflation. In today's academic world, those who apply for positions and those who seek promotion face increasingly difficult competition for fewer full-time jobs than in the past. Evaluation committees, department heads, and deans apply simple heuristics to sort viable candidates from those who are not qualified. The number of applications for any job is so great that many committee members will use any simple reason to remove names from the list of active applicants. It cuts down on the number of applications one must read in full. A false claim on a resumé or an inflated claim is one such reason. In this sense, claiming associate editor status for ad hoc reviewing may damage an applicant’s opportunities rather than helping it.
>
> Some past problems continue. For example, the advisory board of the Design Principles & Practices Research Network continues to include the names of people who long ago attempted to resign from the board. And it includes people with whom Common Ground cannot have had contact for many years, since it lists them at schools they left long ago. The advisory board is a distinguished group. If you were to poll this group on some of these issues, I imagine that you’d be getting advice similar to my critique.
>
> It is a fact that you sell books through the same online bookstore that sells articles. It is my opinion that this is not a helpful way to market books. The great challenge in book publishing is to create identity and visibility for new titles and for titles in series. To market these through the same system effectively buries books in a mass of irrelevant articles. I may be wrong about this. On the other hand, I’ve been involved in editorial work and consulting on academic titles and reference books since 1971. While I have neglected trade publishing in these notes, I have worked for trade publishers as well. It may be possible to retool the online bookstore to give your books a better chance — the current system seems unlikely. It’s a fact that the online bookstore treats all of the material the same way. It’s my opinion that this is not a good way to market books. Again, I could be wrong.
>
> You describe the new Common Ground Research Network as a “multimodal knowledge creation and sharing platform, Scholar, which we believe will serve disciplines such as design more effectively than legacy peer review and publication platforms.” There is some ambiguity in this, as you also position the journals as fully peer reviewed research journals for the purpose of university metrics and research evaluation exercises. I don’t have a clear opinion on this. I’d suggest that people have a look at Scholar, as I have done:
>
> http://cgscholar.com/
>
> What I do have an opinion about is that there are ways to determine whether any fields uses the articles and books published by Common Ground. While it is some time since I did a major study on these issues, the two studies that I did remain the largest such studies in the design field. For the largest of these, using scientifically valid principles, first author Prof. Gerda Gemser (RMIT), co-authors Prof. Cees de Bont (HKPU), and Prof. Paul Hekkert (TUDelft) and I built on an earlier study that I did with another team to survey the design field. At that time, neither the earlier version of the Design Principles and Practices journal collection or the current version attracted enough attention to warrant mention. You can read this for yourself:
>
> Gemser, Gerda, Cees de Bont, Paul Hekkert, and Ken Friedman. 2012. “Quality Perceptions of Design Journals: The Design Scholars’ Perspective.” Design Studies (2012), Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 4-23. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.09.001
>
> That study is now five years old, so it may be time for a new study. A serious bibliometric study of the situation today may show different results, especially given the fact that there are several new journals, while some journals existing in 2012 have also become more influential.
>
> Another approach would be that of using bibliometrics or scientometrics to examine the degree to which articles in the Design Principles and Practices Collection are put to use in the field, both within and across journals within the collection, and in journals of the field outside the collection.
>
> After reading your note, I’m not prepared to dispute your statement that the Design Principles and Practices Collection represents “thousands of authors who have published so many theoretically insightful and practically transformative articles and books” in design-related fields. At the same time, I’m not ready to accept a statement at such variance with a major global study. A proper bibliographic or scientometric study will demonstrate what the situation is.
>
> Such a study should reveal any major body of publications that advances theory while transforming practice. I can say with certainty that this was not the case five years ago. Fields move and change, and I’m not prepared to state the case today. I’d like to know.
>
> There is probably more to be said. Right now, I feel that I should stop while I wait to for your book, The Future of the Academic Journal. Everyone agrees that the old models of research, publishing, and scholarly or scientific communication are breaking down under the pressure of a new era. No one is really sure of the best way forward — and no one sensible has a clear opinion on whether our time calls for one model or many, whether we need a completely new model or a model that retains some features of the past that we can adjust to contemporary needs.
>
> Let me leave it at that for now. I’ll look forward to reading your book.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
>
> Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>
> —
>
> Bill Cope wrote:
>
> —snip—
>
> Dear Ken and Colleagues,
>
> As someone who has been closely involved in the development of Common Ground for over 30 years now, I must respond to Ken’s post. I don’t know whether the timing of this post is by accident or design, but tomorrow is the first day of our 11th annual Design Principles and Practices Conference at George Brown College in Toronto:
> http://designprinciplesandpractices.com/2017-conference
>
>
> First, Ken, a correction - though this error is no fault of yours, because it reflects a change we made last year. Common Ground never set out to be a for-profit publisher, nor has it been that in practice. Common Ground is more an epistemic design experiment (if I may put it this way) than a business. So in 2016, we changed our name from Common Ground Publishing to Common Ground Research Networks, and our official organizational status to a not-for-profit, public benefit corporation.
>
> By way of context and background, we have been publishing for 33 years, and 12 years in the design field. We founded the Design Principles and Practices conference and journal when Common Ground was in Melbourne, Australia, in association with colleagues at RMIT. We are now based in the Research Park at the University of Illinois, where I am a professor, having moved to the US in 2006. (My own scholarly work, incidentally, uses the concept of “design” for multimodal literacies learning:
>
> http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107578692
>
> The editors of our Design Principles and Practices collection of journals are Loredana Di Lucchio and Lorenzo Imbesi from Sapienza University in Rome, two intellectual leaders in the field. They are also our conference chairs, this year along with Luigi Ferrara, Dean of Centre for Arts, Design and Information Technology at George Brown College, Toronto. Plenary Speakers at the conference this year include:
>
> Katerina Cizek, Documentary Film-maker and Artistic Director, MIT Open Documentary Lab, Boston
>
> * Helen Kerr, Co-President of KerrSmith Design
> * Luisa Collina, Professor and Dean of the Design School, Politecnico di Milano and President of Cumulus, the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art
> * Péter Pozsár, Architect, Co-founder and curator of Hello Wood, Budapest
> * Aldo Cibic, Founder of Cibic & Partners and founder of Cibicworkshop.
>
> In this and previous years we have been privileged to have some of the world’s leading design thinkers and practitioners to join us.
>
> Over the past decade, the conference has been hosted by some of the world’s leading design schools including: Technical University, Berlin; Sapienza University of Rome, Chiba University, Japan; University of British Columbia, Vancouver; and PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro. Next year, the conference will be held at Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona:
>
> http://designprinciplesandpractices.com/2018-conference
>
> These conferences are simply wonderful events, where all credit should be afforded to the energy of our chairs and hosts and keynote speakers. With many parallel sessions (several hundred in the conference that starts tomorrow), the conferences are brimming with energy, arresting ideas and innovative practices. The journals have become some of the best in the field. Our book series is relatively new, but with some marvelous titles. (And by the way, our books are as different from the articles as any book and journal - even if they happen to be in the same online bookstore.)
>
> With the Common Ground project, we have two intellectual anchors—one is to develop interdisciplinary approaches that cross the methodological and thematic boundaries of traditional, methodologically constrained silos of practice. This is particularly important in an area like design. We have complementary research networks in the area of Arts in Society and The Image which also thrive for their interdisciplinarity. Another is to develop more rigorous knowledge ecologies, that both preserve and extending the best of current scholarly conferencing and publishing practices. See our thinking on this subject here:
>
> https://www.elsevier.com/books/the-future-of-the-academic-journal/cope/978-1-84334-783-5
>
> With the support of grants from the US Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Gates Foundation, we have also developed and recently released a multimodal knowledge creation and sharing platform, Scholar, which we believe will serve disciplines such as design more effectively than legacy peer review and publication platforms:
>
> http://cgscholar.com
>
> Finally, a piece of feedback for you, Ken. I admire your many energetic and thoughtful contributions in this discussion board - often they are very helpful to me, and I am certain also to others. But I am sure you would also agree that the tone is sometimes negative to the point of being forbidding. This long, negative post about Common Ground represents an instance of the negativity. You don’t only denigrate the editors, conference chairs, hosts and conference speakers with your comments - but the thousands of authors who have published so many theoretically insightful and practically transformative articles and books with us in design-related fields over the past 12 years. Judgments so sweeping are necessarily questionable.
>
> Apart from these reactions to your post, thank you for your ongoing contributions to the field, and to us all.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Bill
>
> Dr William Cope
> Professor
> Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership
> College of Education
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>
> http://wwcope.com
>
> Director
> Common Ground Research Networks
>
> http://cgnetworks.org
>
>
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