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How about using your own wiki if you have technical knowledge. Or, perhaps even Wikipedia. There are a great number of people who are perhaps not academics, but would welcome a searchable database on the broad subject of "cycling and society" and it's context within sustainable transport and transportation generally.
Kevin.
I think with people with access to online university databases, searching for articles about anything is fairly straightforward (if you are at a university that pays to receive the major journals on line). So an aggregator site does little extra for university people, except if they receive automated bulletins about new articles posted on a site or list. (I am on a listserv that does that , and that only, for something else - and it works well)
For the rest of the reading audience, which includes practitioners, policymakers, poor universities, politicians, worldwide citizens.... they need the actual article, not an alert or a listing on a webpage. They have no access to anything behind a firewall, so an aggregator site of key articles does not advance things much for them unless
a) you automate the aggregator site, so clicking on the article gets a pdf emailed to you by the author - this is possible in wordpress but really quite complicated) or
b) preprints or legal copies are posted up or linked.
The Big Four publishers, and several others, will not allow final copies of articles to be posted outwith their journals unless you are very lucky.
I do not think "existing highly cited journals" are reaching anybody outside the university system unless they are disseminated by the authors themselves, or somehow available online to be seen and read.
As for high impact being the most important publishing decision, that's another story but the more people do that, the more concentrated the publishing sector gets. Rather like, in Australia, our huge choice for supermarket shopping - "Coles or Woolworths". Remember though that in many parts of the world, the 'high impact journals' situation is very different and not quite so constraining.
Personally I think you could alert academics of new paper via this listserv, and have a journal.
-----Original Message-----
From: Cycling and Society Research Group discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Wood
Sent: Tuesday, 11 February 2014 5:28 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Inventory of senior cycling scholars>journal
If we do decide to make a journal, put me on the list for helping out.
But personally I think that making the long-planned Cycling and Society aggregator website should be a first priority. There are plenty of papers already written that people don't know about. I assume that it would probably better justify cycling as a valid, fundable research topic if cycling papers in existing journals were highly cited, rather than by having our own journal. In these "wonderful" days of impact based funding, is it not more use to get highly cited papers in existing highly cited journals, backed up by an archive of quality practical applied reports and a vibrant online community (inc discussion forum/'zines/magazines, podcasts, tv etc).
Might this be the kind of thing that the British Academy Research Projects are set up to fund? I will help with and do the legwork (post-thesis) this if someone attached to a university were to help and host an application.
(Need to sign into e-gap for full details, http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/guide/index.cfm)
Pete
----
Department of Geography
The Open University
United Kingdom
http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/about-the-faculty/departments/geography/postgraduate/profiles/peter_wood.php