Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on publishing, editing, reading, using

[". left | coast | lurker ." <leftcoastlurker@gmail.com>]

I also wanted to briefly pipe in -- I am Managing Editor of Dancecult:
Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, an open-access, indexed, and
fully peer-reviewed Journal, run through that innovative yet bulky beast of
a CMS, OJS. We're located at:

    http://dj.dancecult.net

It would appear to me that Journals such as Feminist Media Studies have the
option of open access publishing available to them, if they so want to enact
their radical politics in distribution and platform rather than with content
alone. Take your free labour away from the man, and DiY with open access on
OJS --- [ http://pkp.sfu.ca/ ]. It is, quite evidently, the future of
academic publishing.

There are myriad new hurdles to overcome with such a decision, but at least
they are hurdles in the autonomous development of one's own platform, and
not frustrating blockages in dealing with multinational publishing systems
profiting off academic labour. Currently we are pursuing funding to cover
our server costs... we're still working on that one, but hopeful that we can
secure funding to cover the day-to-day costs of running an online journal
ourselves.

Of course, related issues concerning precarious labour arise. As Managing
Editor, I do more than perhaps other editors with the same position in print
Journals and even most online endeavours. With the collective labour of a
pro bono designer and programmer, the Executive Editor and input from our
dedicated volunteer team of copyeditors and production assistants, my
position has included the following:

* designing the Journal layout in InDesign with our own styles
* desining the logo, including Journal typography
* writing our own comprehensive Style Guide based upon CMS 16
* producing Journal Guides for publishing HTML and PDF
* installing, upgrading and troubleshooting OJS (an ongoing beastie)
* learning technical command-line knowledge of Apache server administration
* dealing with running a VPS 3 server over SSH
* customizing the CSS for style and customizing the CMS
* learning GIT upgrading procedures for patching and branching
* integrating our Journal and the website into social media (Facebook)

In short, publishing a Journal of this kind *properly* -- and not just as
some bland, default OJS skin and Word-to-PDF conversions -- means
integrating all the aspects of technical, cognitive labour I have amassed
over the past 15+ years in DiY media production *as well as* the artistic
and aesthetic sensibilities I carry with me from my work in media arts.

Undertaking online, open access also means investing in the *aesthetics* of
digital publishing. I believe the reason people stick with T&F and other
such houses is because essays look so lovely in print, and are still given
greater weight on CVs because paper is prejudiced over bits & bytes. In
short, it's all about prestige. But proper design of an online Journal is, I
think, undermining that perspective: make an online Journal look as good, if
not better than print, and with the higher numbers of online circulation,
the balance begins to tip.

Our next step will be to produce both open access ePub and proprietary
Kindle bundles of past issues. We hope to sell the Kindle versions at a
small cost to defray our operating expenses --- an idea garnered from what
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is undertaking with their archives.

best/

    tobias c. van Veen
   
.
.
Managing Editor | DANCECULT
Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
http://dj.dancecult.net
.
. 

> I'm the Editor in Chief of the online open access open archive (all
> volunteer) Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net.
> 
> We were born digital (7 years ago) and the PKP/OJS Open Journal Software
> support system.. We are now (for the P&T folks) being indexed by IBSS (and
> of course Google Scholar) and are being classified by the Australian
> "Excellence in Research" in two categories (a "B" in both Library and
> Information Science, and in Information and Computing Science).
> 
> The stats are truly astonishing... http://www.ci-journal.net/reports/ (also
> http://www.ci-journal.net/stats/)
 <...>


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