Dear Julienne,
I believe that the 64,000 dollar question is whether or not this
community (or members of) are interested in assuming a position of
control upon what is being published. In most communities, I believe,
there is a couple of journals that are 'references' in the field that
serve to create a terminology, point interesting lines of research. In
resume, they serve bring people together to *generate* research.
And any field or idea can only survive if it generates research.
The list you mentioned shows how scattered is the publication of
'syntax-like' papers. As a newcomer, I even asked to my supervisors,
more than once, if there was a place to publish my research.
The answer is Environment and Planning B? No way. It publishes 100
thousand different things - most of them uninteresting, not to say
useless, for Architects.
As you saw half of the list is of Brazilian Journals in Portuguese.
Believe you or not the main journal subscription system (portal de
periodicos CAPES), which serve ALL public universities in Brazil does
not have EPB. People there does not read EPB and represent a big chunk
of the numbers you listed.
The numbers you presented (the mailbase, depthmap's distribution and
symposia) cannot ensure a demand because most people involved with
space syntax are practitioners or students interested in a 'ready'
solution for practical problems.
To complicate more, the most active people in this field is now more
interested in questions outside architectural morphology or space and
society. For some reason (that as a student I cannot understand),
rather than build a field, they prefer to migrate to be an appendix of
bigger communities, notably the spatial cognition one. Maybe for lack
of a place to publish (or lack of space to breath at all).
Journals are a political and strategical matter, that cross far way
from proper 'scientific research'. They mostly serve for academic
promotion.
In this context, the real question is that there is interest in
*generate* a demand?
How to do this is a secondary question. There no-printed (online ones)
and cheaper options for a journal and only the material of the
symposium could fill at least an annual edition.
Best Regards,
Lucas
On 11/03/2008, Julienne Hanson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Thank you to the 10 people who replied to my email of 06.02.08, seeking your
> thoughts and opinions about the value of an on line journal for the space
> syntax community and its academic 'friends and neighbours'. I am
> particularly grateful to the 5 people who either sent me a finished paper,
> or sent me an abstract or expressed interest in submitting a paper in the
> near future.
>
> Thank you also to the 10 people (not identical with the same 10 as before)
> who replied to my 22.02.08 enquiry about journals in which members of the
> space syntax community have published. Between them, they listed 25
> journals. Regrettably the list, below, is likely to be far from complete.
>
> Architectural Research Quarterly
> Area
> Built Environment
> Cadernos de Arqitetura e Urbanismo
> Cadernos Metropole
> Cities
> Docomomo
> Ediciones ARQ Chile
> Environment and Behavior
> Environment and Planning A
> Environment and Planning B
> Facilities
> Geography Compass
> Global Built Environment Review
> Humanidades
> Journal of Urban Design
> Journal of Urban Morphology
> Oculum Ensaios
> Physica A
> Progress in Planning
> Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais
> RUA
> Traffic Technology International
> Urban Design International
> Urban Studies
>
> Currently 483 people are registered on the Space Syntax mail base. The
> point at issue is unlikely to be whether there is a demand for the Journal
> of Space Syntax. Most people I have spoken to think there is.
>
> The 64,000 dollar question is whether the space syntax community is yet in a
> position to supply enough original material, in addition to the papers that
> we already collectively produce for the biennial symposium, to warrant a
> journal of our own. For comparative purposes, a leading journal in our field
> attracts about 200 submissions each year in order to print 60 per year.
> About half of the papers received get redirected elsewhere. Pro rata,
> assuming that nothing is turned away the space syntax community and its
> allies will need to produce an additional 34 papers (14 full academic papers
> and 20 short papers on research methods and applications, split over two
> issues per year) per year, in order to print 20 (8 full plus 12 short) each
> year. I thought we were ready for a journal, but now I am not so sure.
>
> --
>
>
> Julienne Hanson
> Professor of House Form and Culture
>
> Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
> UCL (University College London)
> 1-19 Torrington Place
> Gower Street
> London WC1E 6BT
>
> Tel: 020 7679 1740
> Fax: 020 7916 1887
> Email: [log in to unmask]
--
Lucas Figueiredo
|