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Many thanks Flaminio for your mail. However, I do not want to be misunderstood. I am thankful that JASSS rejected my paper: It allowed me to publish it for a much larger audience. My point is that the content of the paper shows that researchers in the Social Sciences in general are among the most isolated in academic terms, and that authors publishing in Multidisciplinary journals are the ones with most collaborations and citations. JASSS could have a very important role in overcoming the insularity or provincialism of the Social Sciences. Simulations are a very abstract way of thinking that allows to bridge different points of view. In the case of the paper in PLoS One, simulations build to understand dynamic problems in biology showed to be useful for understanding complex social dynamics among academics. As the multiple mails of colleagues in this list shows, we have people in our mids with very open and broad mental frames, and others with a very narrow focus of interests. Both views are necessary. It is the function of the Editors to balance the referees according to the content of the paper, so as to nudge authors to address their papers to a broader audience. I feel proud to be part of this very stimulating academic community. Klaus Jaffe atta.labb.usb.ve/Klaus/klaus.htm <http://atta.labb.usb.ve/Klaus/klaus.htm> El 12/2/2014 a las 12:57 PM, Flaminio Squazzoni escribió: > Dear Klaus, > > first of all, congrats for the publication in PLoS ONE. > > There are many reasons why a journal can reject a submission. Peer > review is often a pain for most of us. On the other hand, I had a look > at the situation of your original submission to JASSS and your paper > was not rejected by some social science-trained reviewers. The > colleagues who suggested to reject it were from physics. So, your case > (I mentioned it here as you made it a case for a more general > question) was not a case of a paper penalised by a group of > "imperialistic", narrow-minded sociologists. > > More generally, I also question whether JASSS is truly a > sociology-dominated journal. If you simply browse a typical issue, you > find a lot of different articles coming from authors from different > fields. You can also refer to this recent article where we tried > to measure the impact of the journal: > http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/1/10.html. JASSS includes mainly > articles from non-social scientists and has a higher impact outside > social science. This would indicate that something is wrong in your > statements. > > I don't see JASSS as dominated by a single specialty. Surely, not from > sociologists. You can count on the fingers of one of your hands the > number of sociologists publishing in JASSS. Consider that other > colleagues even complained sometimes about the fact that JASSS is too > much broad, publishes too diverse articles etc! > > More generally, I like PLoS ONE and I published some articles there. > But, PLoS ONE and JASSS are different. The future of JASSS is in its > unique identity. Its fortune will be to try to defend, promote, > improve this identity, which is based on publishing scholars who > try to understand some important social processes by using computer > simulation. > > Furthermore, mind that PLoS ONE has the same problem of IF > battle against Nature Scientific Reports, which is higher exactly > because, unlike PLoS ONE, does not publish behavioural science, > economics or social science articles, which typically gain less > citations than molecular biology or neuroscience papers, which are > published by SR. So, sometimes IF of a journal increases when it makes > restrictive decisions and concentrates on some areas, leaving others > less rewarding to others. I guess you are not suggesting this for JASSS. > > Finally, IF is not a mantra and depends on complex factors. When we > got 1.7 years ago, this was due to two articles (btw from a group > of social scientists, but this does not matter). The only secret, in > my opinion, is to increase the quality of the published articles, > independently from the fields or areas they come from. Nothing else. > And sometimes this means rejecting some papers trying to make less > mistakes possible. > > Anyway, we have a board meeting soon. We will discuss the strategy of > JASSS for the next year and reflect upon the journal identity. Surely, > we will go on with this kind of discussions. > > Best regards > Flaminio > > > 2014-12-01 12:10 GMT+01:00 Klaus Jaffe <[log in to unmask] > <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>: > > New times demand new ideas and ways of thinking. As JASSS has > evolved, it has followed the global trend of becoming more and > more centered around Sociology. A fact showing this trend was the > rejection of a paper by JASSS that has now been published in PLoS > One (see > http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0113901). > PLoS One is an open access journal with a much greater impact > factor than JASSS. I believe JASSS can transcend its aim at > serving mainly the sociology community and become a catalyst for a > truly concilient interdisciplinary social science. The findings > reported in the article in PLoS One suggest that JASSS could > publish more articles and broaden its scope in order to increase > its citation impact. One way of broadening the impact of JASSS > could be to publish papers where simulations support research on > fundamental questions of science. One example could be the chapter > on social simulations in the book "The Wealth of Nations: > Complexity Science for an Interdisciplinary Approach in > Economics"(see http://goo.gl/OUP1QD ). > > I hope that some of the readers of this list might share this vision. > > Cheers > Klaus Jaffe Carbonell > atta.labb.usb.ve/Klaus/klaus.htm > <http://atta.labb.usb.ve/Klaus/klaus.htm> > > > > > -- > __________________ > Flaminio Squazzoni > Associate Professor of Economic Sociology, University of Brescia > JASSS Editor <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ > President of ESSA-European Social Simulation Association > Head of GECS-Research Group on Experimental and Computational Sociology > <http://www.eco.unibs.it/gecs> > Chair of PEERE <www.peere.org <http://www.peere.org>> > Department of Economics and Management > University of Brescia > Via San Faustino 74/B > 25122 Brescia Italy > e-mail: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> > Phone: +39 030 2988892 > Fax: +39 030 2988893 > Home page: www.eco.unibs.it/gecs/squazzoni.html > <http://www.eco.unibs.it/gecs/squazzoni.html> > > Informativa sulla Privacy: http://www.unibs.it/node/8155