Public Knowledge Project Research Articles

Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Revolutionary Reading, Evolutionary Toolmaking: (Re)development of Scholarly Reading and Annotation Tools in Response to an Ever Changing Scholarly Climate

As the online scholarly landscape changes, so too must the tools used to traverse it. The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Reading Tools provides readers a bridge from online scholarly content to a host of contextual information, to a number of discipline-specific search engines and databases, and to other tools. A lot has changed since it was originally released, such as the rise of Google Scholar as the de facto starting point for many novice (and not-so novice) researchers; the blurring line between desktop and web applications; and the increased professional use of social networking tools and websites. Recently, the University of Victoria's Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL), in cooperation with the PKP, undertook a study to determine the role and value of the existing Reading Tools, particularly in the context of Humanities Computing. The ETCL has also developed a prototype Professional Reading Environment which has been the basis for substantial analysis. Rick Kopak and Chia-Ning Chiang at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have undertaken a broad survey of the online annotation landscape, and have written a proposal for developing an annotation system for PKP software. This paper discusses how, using this research as a base and in cooperation with UBC and the PKP, the ETCL has begun a large-scale redevelopment of the PKP Reading Tools, extending the current toolset to include new social networking and research tools, as well as a robust personal annotation system, making social annotation possible between small groups and the public.

ABO entrou no Sistema ScholarOne

The editorial process of a scientific journal involves highly specialized skills and hard work of many con­ tributors, including editors and reviewers. These tasks require not only the intellectual competence of each but also hours of administrative work, evaluating manuscripts and maintaining the flow of publications in progress. The flow of the peer review process in ABO initiates through the editorial office to ensure that ma­ nuscripts have fulfilled all technical conditions before being sent for editorial review. It is up to the office to ensure that the limits of text and figures have been complied with in accordance with the different types of articles accepted, and confirm that the forms of potential conflicts of interest, authors’ participation and appro­ val by research ethics committees are adequate. Once these assumptions have been met, the manuscripts are forwarded to the chief editor who initially evaluates the manuscript to ensure that the text conforms to the scope of the journal, and suggests to the associate editor the strengths, weaknesses and the scientific questions that can be considered during peer review. The associate editor is responsible for overseeing the manuscript until its final decision, whether to be published or rejected. To make this decision, the associate editors rely on help from reviewers, who anonymously evaluate manuscripts, making suggestions as to con­ tent and form, with the goal of improving the final work. Reviewers are divided into members of the editorial board, listed by name in all publications and on the website of the ABO, and reviewers “ad hoc” that are cited in an annual thanks note published in the journal. After a few rounds of evaluation between authors and re­ viewers, under the coordination of associate editors, each accepted manuscript is forwarded to the technical teams of editors, layout and printing. Next year will begin the renovation of the national and international members of the ABO editorial board and, as recognition, many reviewers “ad hoc” will be listed in the editorial board of the journal. The goal is to keep as a member of the editorial board only persons who have helped to accelerate the peer review process with quality and timely revisions. The flow of peer review is managed in different ways in different scientific journals. From a physical process, mailing hard copied articles or the use of simplified electronic processes as electronic messaging or the use of automated systems with internet­based interfaces. The ABO, like all other scientific journals, has gone through all these stages over the past 15 years. Two years ago we started using the SciELO submissions system and have more than 360 manuscripts evaluated using this interface, from which about 50% have already been published. This system was created by SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) and is an initiative that has the support of FAPESP (Foundation for Research Support of the State of Sao Paulo), BIREME (Regional Library of Medicine) and CNPq (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development). This interface utilizes a system based on an open­code software called Open Systems Journal, developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). Although the platform has been built with options for several languages, the increase of its use has generated some difficulties for authors, especially international ones. With the advancement of global exposure of ABO, many authors who do not master the Portuguese lan­ guage have considered our journal for their publications. Over the past 24 months, among the manuscripts sent for review, about 45% were not in English and 15% not included Brazilian authors. This fact opens the door for the Brazilian ophthalmology to be internationally recognized and increases our responsibility. Maintaining its continuous support to Brazilian and Latin American scientific journals, SciELO decided to start a partnership with Thomson Reuters for the use of ScholarOne system of peer review. ABO was invited by SciELO recently, and we are one of the first journals to be part of this partnership. The possibility of being part of ScholarOne offers to authors the opportunity to use a submission system already known and used by renowned journals such as IOVS or the British Journal of Ophthalmology. We believe that this feature will further increase the exposure of, and demand for ABO worldwide.

Creating a Successful Online Graduate Journal: Mentoring was the Key

This article shares the establishment and journey of a Canadian student-driven academic journal. The publication is peer-reviewed and openly accessible, and is delivered online through the Open Journal Systems (OJS) developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). The article outlines the journal’s vision, history, processes, performance, challenges, and most important, mentoring practices. Created to connect and support new scholars in the field of education, the foundation of the journal was based entirely on mentoring by volunteer graduate students experienced at composing academic publications. It was thought that if students chose to pursue the onerous task of publishing, they would need support as graduate work by itself is challenging and time consuming; additionally, the publication process was considered daunting (Pasco, 2009).

International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (IJTMB): A Third-Year Retrospective Reflecting Google Analytics and Open Journal System Sources

International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (IJTMB): A Third-Year Retrospective Reflecting Google Analytics and Open Journal System Sources

CUAJ implements early releases

In January 2011, we launched CUAJ “early releases.” If you are reading this in print and have not seen our early releases, please take advantage of this and sign up at www.cuaj.ca or send an email to our Editorial Director at gro.auc@onitroics.enihpesoJ. (Early release refers to pre-publication posting online, not pre-mature ejaculation). We have a digital object identifier (DOI) number, which includes our unique CUAJ prefix (provided by CrossRef [www.crossref.org]) and a unique number for each article (online and print). The benefits of having DOIs for CUAJ articles include: Publication of online articles ahead of print, as well as print publication in due time. Articles that are published first online and later in print will be linked via PubMed. Publishing online ahead of print will allow us publish articles that have been in the queue, and avoid delays. This is an important step for CUAJ and will further increase our visibility and credibility among our readers, authors, and advertisers. DOIs are assigned to articles forever and easy to link to. Articles can be located with a DOI number alone. For example, an article I recently published in BJU International is linked with a DOI number (doi: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2010.09820.x). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21070575. You can copy and paste the DOI number in a web browser and be linked to the article immediately. We have a new Associate Editor, Dr. Rob Siemens from Queen’s University. Dr. Siemens is an outstanding young clinician scientist with broad interests, high energy, and a great track record. We are delighted that he has agreed to take on this important responsibility. In the next few months, we will revamp our website and introduce Open Journal Systems – a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project. OJS will allow us to automate many of our editorial tasks and ensure online submission and reviews. We hope you are able to take advantage of these tools. We look forward to an intellectually stimulating 2011!

Higher Education: the Future

More and more, higher education is transforming from closed, instructor-led classrooms to open, student-directed communities of learning. College-level content is accessible anywhere and anytime. Formal courses, such as those from MIT OpenCourseWare and the Open University (United Kingdom), are available to all of us. In addition, learning resources from collections such as the National Science Digital Library, Open Educational Resources, and Public Knowledge Project bring up-to-date information to the public. Wikipedia, YouTube, and Flickr convert and organize content into accessible formats for students from diverse learning, lingual, and cultural backgrounds. New communities in Facebook, LinkedIn, and WordPress facilitate sharing and discussions. Smart phones and other mobile devices bring content and people to students continuously. I believe these platforms and others will continue to transform the lives of college students, faculty, and others involved in science. Anyone wanting to discover new content and attempt new experiences will do so using emerging technologies, information, and experts from the Internet.

Editorial Policy

Pursuant to the international character of this publication, the journal is listed and indexed by the following agencies: (1) Thomson Reuters (ISI) Science Journal Master List; (2) The Gale Group (USA); (3) Public Knowledge Project, a consortium of Simon Fraser University Library, the School of Education of Stanford University, and the British Columbia University, Canada: (4) E-International Scientific Research Journal Consortium; (5) Philippine E-Journals; (6) Google Scholar; and, (7) Philippine Journals Online.  The Asian Journal of Biodiversity (AJOB) is open to the global community of scholars who wish to have their researches published in a peer-reviewed journal. Contributors can access the websites: www.ejournals.ph, www.eisrjc.com, www.philjol.info, and www.asianscientificjournals.com. The Editorial Board invites guest editors and peer reviewers from the Philippines and abroad for every issue of the journal.  The Asian Journal of Biodiversity is viewed as a premier journal that publishes peer-reviewed biodiversity researches. Publishable research articles embrace new discoveries in species diversity, ecological diversity, genetic diversity and biodiversity education, which provide new information necessary to preserve, conserve and protect the faunal and floral richness of Asia. The journal primarily has as its audience, scientists, academicians, graduate students, environmentalists, policy makers, and other individuals interested in pushing the frontiers of biodiversity research. The primary criterion for publication in the  Asian Journal of Biodiversity is the significance of the contribution an article makes to the body of knowledge. The efficiency and effectiveness of the editorial review process are critically dependent upon the actions of both the research authors and the reviewers. An author accepts the responsibility of preparing the research paper for evaluation by independent reviewers. The responsibility includes subjecting the manuscript to evaluation by peers and revising it prior to submission. The review process is not to be used as a means of obtaining feedback at early stages of developing the research paper.

Scholarly Knowledge Development and Dissemination in an International Context: Approaches and Tools for Higher Education

This paper looks at the process of collaboratively creating and disseminating information resources, such as journals, books, papers, and multimedia resources in higher education. This process has been facilitated and encouraged by two relatively new movements, open-source and, especially, open access. The most definitive expression of the principles of open access is the Budapest Open Access Initiative. It calls for the creation of journals that are freely available via the Internet to anyone. The broad principles of open access can be the foundation for creating many types of information resources–from online textbooks to sophisticated instructional videos. What distinguishes such open access resources is that they are distributed without charge to users and that most of the individual and institutional authors give permission for them to be revised, remixed, and reformed by users, who may then distribute the “new” version of the resource. Much of the work on open access information resources is collaborative and involves international teams with diverse experiences and areas of expertise. Such collaboration is not easy, but there is a growing set of electronic tools that support such work. The electronic toolbox for collaboratively creating new information resources includes tools that can serve as “electronic hallways” where potential collaborators can meet and interact informally; gateway Web sites and document repositories that support the exchange of information; Web tools that support groups with special interests; tools for supporting project teams; collaborative writing support systems including file sharing, document exchange, and version control software; wikis where a team can collaboratively write and revise documents, and project management software. There are also many avenues for disseminating information resources. These include open-access journals and the software packages that support them such as the Open Journal Systems package from the Public Knowledge Project, pre-print and repository archives and the software for creating such archives (e.g., dspace, Fedora, Joomla, and Drupal), Web resources for indexing and locating relevant information, and international as well as virtual conferences and the software for operating such meetings. This paper explores the different approaches to both creating and disseminating information resources for higher education and evaluates some of the most commonly used software options for supporting these activities.

The Stratified Economics of Open Access

Those involved in scholarly publishing are coming to recognize how open access to this body of work can increase its value and reach. Yet no one economic model of open access prevails. Rather, open access is being achieved through a variety of forms that include author self-archiving, immediate (sponsored) open access, delayed open access, and article-processing-fee open access.  These open access models are each the result of a stratified scholarly publishing market that can be roughly grouped among independent journals, scholarly society publishers, and commercial publishers. Each of these three market segments is experimenting with forms of open access that hold promise for sustaining, if not extending, the segment’s market position. This paper reviews the economics of these open access models, while drawing attention to the consequences of this market stratification for access to knowledge and the sustainability of scholarly publishing as a whole.Artiklen 'The Stratified Economics of Open Access' er skrevet af den drivende kraft bag OJS og hele Public Knowledge Project, John Willinsky.Læs mere om John Willinsky på Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Willinsky  

Watching the Nation, Singing the Nation: London-Based Filipino Migrants' Identity Constructions in News and Karaoke Practices

This study explores the identity construction of London-based Filipinos across the media of news and karaoke. In bridging the “public knowledge project” with the “popular culture project,” I argue that the seemingly innocent social practice of singing involves raising and erasing of symbolic boundaries. As national identities are constantly flagged in everyday life, I examine how Filipino audiences negotiate multiple attachments in both media practices. From participant observation and qualitative interviews, I discover that news reception generally enables both banal nationalism and banal transnationalism, whereas karaoke functions more as a homeland-directed “high holiday.” I demonstrate how audiences weave in and out of their loyalties to British and Filipino publics across the media of British news, Filipino news, as well as karaoke.

Riding on the crest of electronic publishing wave

When biij came into being in early 2005, it was envisioned as a tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Today, biij continues to fulfill this role, having gone through a process of evolution and growth. In the early days [1], the email system was the main means of communication. All manuscript submissions, including its figures and images, were sent as email attachments to the managing editor. The subsequent reviewing stages were also done via email. To simplify the tracking process, the managing editor developed an in-house software to view and update the status of each of the submitted manuscripts. It was developed using the Active Server Pages (ASP) programming language and a Microsoft Access database, and is only viewable by the editors. Although the software served its purpose well, the journal has grown so much so that its requirements for additional features far outweigh the resources that were currently available. From January 2007, biij gradually implemented the open source Open Journal Systems (OJS) software for online manuscript submission, tracking and management. The software was developed as part of the Public Knowledge Project, managed in partnership between the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, the Simon Fraser University Library, the School of Education at Stanford University, and the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University [2]. From the outset of biij's birth, the publishers have always emphasised the searchability and availability of biij’s contents. In October 2005, biij became a member of CrossRef [3] and provided a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for each of the published manuscripts, including the abstracts from selected meetings and conferences. This ensures that biij’s contents remain available in the future, even if there are changes to the structure of its website. Biij is now indexed in a number of indexing databases, including Scopus, Embase, and Compendex (since January 2008); Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) (since April 2006); INSPEC (since March 2006); Index Copernicus International (since April 2006); Google Scholar (since December 2005); and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (since September 2005). In November 2008, Elsevier also agreed to include all manuscripts prior to 2008 in its Scopus and EMBASE database. biij contents are currently being submitted to Pubmed Central [4], the online repository for biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) [5]. This process is part of the requirements for the application of evaluation for the Pubmed/Medline database, to be initiated sometime in 2009.

From the Executive Editor's Perspective . . . .

From the Executive Editor's Perspective . . . .

The Public Knowledge Project and the Simon Fraser University Library: A Partnership in Open Source and Open Access

ABSTRACT The Public Knowledge Project is an ongoing collaboration between academics, librarians, publishers, editors, and software developers, working together to build alternatives in scholarly publishing. The project has developed a suite of open source software that significantly reduces the time and expense required for producing academic journals and conferences, and facilitates making research results freely available through open access. This article examines the history of the project, provides an overview of its open source software, discusses the growing community participating in the project, and considers its future directions.

The Politics of Open-Access Publishing: <i>M/C Journal</i>, Public Intellectualism, and Academic Discourses of Legitimacy

This article investigates the discourses of academic legitimacy that surround the production, consumption, and accreditation of online scholarship. Using the web-based media and cultural studies journal (http://journal.media-culture.org.au) as a case study, it examines how online scholarly journals often position themselves as occupying a space between the academic and the popular and as having a functional advantage over print-based media in promoting a spirit of public intellectualism. The current research agenda of both government and academe prioritises academic research that is efficient, self-promoting, and relevant to the public. Yet, although the cost-effectiveness and public-intellectual focus of online scholarship speak to these research priorities, online journals such as M/C Journal have occupied, and continue to occupy, an unstable position in relation to the perceived academic legitimacy of their content. Although some online scholarly journals have achieved a limited form of recognition within a system of accreditation that still privileges print-based scholarship, I argue that this, nevertheless, points to the fact that traditional textual notions of legitimate academic work continue to pervade the research agenda of an academe that increasingly promotes flexible delivery of teaching and online research initiatives.

Online Publishing, Technical Representation, and the Politics of Code: The Case of CJC Online

The Canadian Journal of Communication ( CJC) began to experiment with online technologies in 1994, in part as a response to the increasing commodification of scholarship by commercial academic publishers. This article reviews and reflects on the CJC’s online publishing efforts over the past decade and suggests that online publishing technology is a site of struggle that is situated by and situates academics, publishers, and readers along interdependent axes of agency, citizenship, and commodification. Today, the CJC uses and contributes to the Open Journal Systems (OJS) publishing technology developed by the Public Knowledge Project. We argue that academic-initiated undertakings such as OJS and the Canada-wide Synergies project present academics with strategic opportunities to define and control online scholarly publishing.

An Architecture for Efficient Resource Discovery with Metadata Harvesting in a Multidisciplinary Distributed Repository

AbstractThe profusion of non-relevant information for a given query on the Web explains the pressing need for formulating ebullient strategies for pertinent Web resource discovery and retrieval. One of the major requirements for effective document retrieval is its diligently encoded metadata. At the same time metadata standards to be followed for annotating documents from large collections are pretty complex. This is because the standardized global metadata cannot represent all the elusive forms of document metadata for improved retrieval ranking. In this context, we propose an approach to facilitate document retrieval from multidisciplinary domains where each belonging to discrete domains would be indexed in a segregated instance of a repository. This would facilitate document metadata customization for each specific discipline by adding specific metadata themes. Since the approach retains the standard metadata schema in addition to the customized metadata schema, it would result in enhanced resource discovery. The metadata retrieval process will be supported by an extended protocol for metadata harvesting (X-PMH) [1] and will be implemented in each repository. The extended metadata harvesting approach has been used to tie together the metadata customization components made at various repository instances. The proposed framework could be integrated into Open Digital Libraries (ODLs) [2] and shall serve as an intrinsic model that adds value in the context of multidisciplinary metadata simplicity, maintenance, and descriptive metadata availability in the event of repository instance failures. Our approach is to implement this cost-effective architecture using the PKP-OAI (Public Knowledge Project – Open Archive Initiative) [3,4] harvester on DSpace [5], an open source digital repository platform that supports metadata harvesting in its innate form. Once this is fully achieved, a federated search build upon such repository instances using open source technologies [6] would yield promising results in the context of information retrieval.

In This Issue

We are pleased to present the 8th issue of JMDE, and the second to appear using the Public Knowledge Project’s (PKP) Open Journal System (OJS). As you may have noticed, the journal’s past issues are slowly being transferred to the new system’s archives and we hope to have the move completed later this year or early next year (as well as publishing HTML versions of all of the papers that have appeared in the journal). Volumes 5, 6, and 7 are currently available in these archives and 1, 2, 3, and 4 can still be found at the journal’s previous URL: http://evaluation.wmich.edu/jmde/.