Here’s an idea that that is part of the proposal for one of the journals i’m working with on implementing aspects of open-process in academic publishing: a different way to deal with topics important to a journal is to replace the concept of special issues, with the concept of research threads.
In short: research threads are more suitable (more open, inclusive and more likely to result in higher quality submissions) to the dynamics of work of academic researchers than special issues.
I find that calls for special issues annoy me often, since i frequently find the ones i like, but cannot interrupt what i am at that moment working on and write for the special issue, although the topic intrigues me, and i’d love to write on it in near future (happened to me twice only in the past few months). I know i’m not alone in this ambiguous feeling toward special issues, few other colleagues i spoke to have the same problems.
Here’s the reasoning: a call for special issues often goes out 9-12 months in advance, sometimes longer. By the time an author hears about it, the author can be faced with few months until the deadline – this frequently seems to be the case – unless authors is already part of circles through which she/he will get informed directly (this also seems to be the pattern). Researching and writing a good academic article requires several months, often much longer. By the current dynamics of special issues, many authors that do think they have something to contribute and are willing to write on the topic, end up missing the opportunity to write and submit.
From the reader perspective, Special Issues are more of collection of articles of existing clusters/mini-networks of academics, rather then collections of best work that is being done on the given topic at given moment in time.
I don’t believe that special issues, as a form, are suitable any more for the best possible production of knowledge.
Instead, i propose a model of RESEARCH THREADS, with two distinct features:
1) deadlines are minimum of two, perhaps even three years ahead;
2) submitted articles are published within a research thread as soon as they are accepted and peer reviewed, in order to present new research as soon as possible, to make the research thread alive and to not make authors wait for a long time before their accepted article gets published.
I speculate that research threads primary benefit would be higher quality of submissions from wider range of academics.
Additional possible benefits:
a) no need any more to have special issues waiting in a queue;
b) several parallel research threads running simultaneously would give the journal a distinct identity and a sense of constant development through the current research threads;
c) clusters of researchers with common interests might be formed through this more open and wider participatory model
This sounds like a good idea to me. But you raise another issue, which is that the mechanisms for circulating calls for papers in general (for special issues, conferences or whatever) are really poor. I usually only find out about CFPs because people I know forward them to me. There are too many mailing lists, web sites, etc. where CFPs are posted. What I’d really like is a central web site where I could subscribe to receive CFPs in certain categories, or CFPs that contain certain words.
Come to think of it, I’d like to have the same thing for grants. I know only one PhD student who actually knows how to look for grants, because she used to work as a fundraiser; I and everyone else I know see this as black magic and are totally clueless about it.
CFPs – Completely agree. who can provide this central service, and how do you make small journals participate in it, given that they operate on shoe string budget? Best way is to make it worthwhile for them to use the service. Perhaps we need an RFC for standardized CFPs format, which can then be somehow auto-discovered (web crawlers) and made available to readers/subscribers to this service. That relies on the idea of journals formatting their CFPs correctly, which seems far fetched right now, but who knows one day. Or, simply make a central web place for a field to submit papers to, with easy ways to subscribe to feeds based on keywords.
another, bigger issue, is that careers today depend on publishing in the ‘right’, and not any journals. In the case of business schools, which are an exploding area of growth, there’s a guide for UK, ABS Journal Quality Guide, which lists journals which the association holds relevant to the field, with rankings – available at http://www.the-abs.org.uk/?id=257 . In purely instrumental thinking, if you want a job in business schools, you better publish in those journals. Hence, you better follow their CFPs. Perhaps a bodies like ABS (association of business schools) should be providing the easy way to follow CFPs, given that they dictate where one should publish
in order to be employable in the field.
Grants – some recruitment panels these days recruit based on how much income will a candidate bring in grants personally obtained by the candidate over what the department pays the candidate. Brutal, and in no connection with even a remote idea of enlightenment. Of course, this is also combined with ‘how much research impact will this candidate bring to the department’. Research impact list, which i saw for the first time yesterday (will try to find electronic copy), provided by UK gov, is something that is too horrifying to find words for it. I need to read it again, and asses it point by point. Overall, it reads like this: ‘all we, the state, care about is how can you demonstrate your work contributes to business.’. Of course, every written framework, no matter how narrowly aimed, can be hacked. I’ll find the source code first (gov guide i saw).
This, translated to your question, means that without grant acquiring skills, in some areas in university, one has minute, if any, chance of being employed. Couple of issues: this was never mentioned in my six years of education so far (and i only learned about it because i was discussing designing a taught subject on a BA course with a colleague – so, a question of ‘how do we justify it’ arose, hence the research impact). Which means that in some fields, what are the most essential skills for one to be employed in the field one day (finding grants, finding CFPs, publishing in ‘RIGHT’ journals, based on ‘RIGHT’ lists), is never taught. We are left to figure all of this out on our own. Of course, this is far from being applicable to all fields and all recruitment panels, but the trend is going this way.