Dear colleagues,
I would very much like to see this happen. With the goal of ensuring its success, I have some worries.
I think we should start in a very small way and be very, very careful regarding quality. In my editing work, I have seen a case where the paper voted "best" at a fine conference was unanimously rejected when considered for further publication by three expert reviewers. I have also experienced a case where the most frequently downloaded paper from a reputable journal was assessed as a joke or Halloween trick by the reviewers I asked to rereview the paper. These things should not happen --- but they do!
An openly accessible electronic journal starting with, say, only two really fine, carefully rewritten and carefully reviewed papers per quarter, would be more manageable and help guarantee the success of our TC6 electronic journal, a pioneering effort as Harry (p.) writes --- but only if we act quickly. Expanding a high quality journal subsequently is not a problem.
I do not think it would be hard to find a sponsor to host such a journal.
With high hopes and best regards, Harry (R.)
hp@ncsu.edu wrote:
Dear All
I was also away from email for a week or so, touring the beautifull North Island of New Zealand.
I was suprised to read in Otto's first message that Amy was looking for Guy P. and me. We (Guy P. and I) did have a tele-conference with Jennifer, and she liked our basic idea, i.e. that of accepting the 5 best papers from each conference plus papers submitted inependently of conferences. She insisted that we should expand this model to non-IFIP conferences, and she encourged us to provide some more information plus some 500 hundred emails of networking people who they could poll to see if there was interest in such a Journal. The idea was to publish a regular Journal. She was hoping that we would give her this information prior to an IFIP meeting. We never submitted the stuff Jennifer requested, and I personally never received any messages from Amy. The project died because I did not feel like pursuing it further. I was being battered by Otto about a strawman proposal for a new optical networking conference, which put me off doing anything for IFIP and its glory (you all know the rest of the story). I was also a little burnt out from too much work. So, I went sailing to the Chesapeake Bay !! (highly recommended for releasing stress ..not to mention their crab cakes!!)
Subsequently, I met Guy P. in Paris and he mentioned to me of the effort and discussions you all had to go for an open Journal. I recall that Guy P. and I re-worked our original proposal. I have no idea what happened to this proposal, and judging from all the emails I saw, it seems that there is a certain degree of confusion as to what TC6 is trying to do.
Personally, for whatever it is worth,I prefer an open electronic Journal. We all agree that in the next 5-10 years Journals will be mostly electronic. I like the idea of TC6 being a pioneer. Our (Guy P. and me) proposal of accepting the best papers from each IFIP (and later on non-IFIP) conference seems like a good idea. There is no problem with IP rights since we will demand full papers with 30% content more than the conference papers. The only problem is that who will pay the bill. We will need someone to setup and maintain the database, server access, and a part-time secretary.
Harry