[open-science] Request for advice: setting up an open access journal

Tue Dec 16 17:57:04 UTC 2014

Hi all,

I've been invited to co-edit a journal. I rather not specify which, but it
is an existing journal which is already open access. I would like to
suggest some innovations in the editorial process, and I would appriciate
any advice on this:

1. Technically - we need a solid, open source, simple to use journal
management system, so that we can streamline the peer review process. Any
recomendations?

2. Conceptually, I would like to introduce a two-tier system: crowd-review
and peer-review. The idea I have is as follows.
- Anyone will be able to self-publish a paper in the crowd review system.
You would submit your paper, make it public, and call for reviews. Anyone
will be entitled to review, and you will be able to upload revisions and
respond to your reviewers. Reviewers will confirm if you have addressed
your concerns or not. You will be assigned a doi and a bibilographic
reference for each version of your paper, and awarded badges that signify
the level of maturity (e.g. how many reviews recieved / resolved).
- The peer-review tier will operate more like a regular journal, with
scheduled issues, except that it will give preference to papers previously
published in the crowd-review tier.

The rationalle behind this is to try and combine the advantages of two
modes of publishing, so that authors can get their work out early and
recieve open reviews on one hand, but still end up with a publication that
counts for their academic record.

My questions are:
- does this model hold water?
- are there any examples of similar models / journals?
- where are the holes in this model, and how do I fix them?
- how do I handle identification, i.e. does it make any sense to have any
level of "blindness" in the review process? If not, does this compromise
academic integrity?
- would this work from an "institutional" point of view? e.g. will I be
able to get an imact factor for such a journal?

thanks!

Yishay

________________________________
learning; design; technology; research

   http://www.yishaymor.org
  +44 7891 456690 (mobile)
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