[Discuss] A new journal, The Journal of Open Engineering

[Matt Maier]

I think it's a great idea. The written description(s) of it feel like 2nd
drafts. They don't make much sense to me on first scan and I'm relying more
on my preexisting background in open source hardware to figure out what you
mean than on knowledge a generic reader would bring. Maybe you're
intentionally targeting a specific audience like people who already know
how to publish in journals? If you want to broaden it to any rando with an
interesting project I'd be happy to contribute ideas to the copy. I haven't
been part of designing it, so I have a fresh perspective. Here are a couple
thoughts along those lines.

The description on the site is vague and abstract. The impression I get is
that you're trying to leave the scope as broad as possible. If that's the
case I feel like it would be better to just state that simply as "any part
of the engineering process" the author is "willing to write up under a
permissive license."

The approach you're taking also sounds a lot like the "user submitted" and
"front page" mechanism that other sites on the web use (like Imgur and
Wikipedia). Just that on this site the way you get from user-sub to the
front page is peer/editor review instead of upvotes.

It wouldn't hurt to start with a description of the problem you're solving.
What are people already using, or trying to use, and why is it not working?
Explain the pain. Something like "blogs are scattered" and "mailing lists
are hidden" and "github is ad hoc" so TJOE will be "consolidated,
discoverable, and curated." Then go on to explain why someone should take
the time to invest in this new site. Maybe "we're building a community of
open engineering reviewers/editors" and "the collaborative environment
means you can share the work to get a superior paper." Something like that.
People aren't really going to care about what technology stack you chose to
build on until they are interested in participating.

A classic milestone for open source projects is to use their own tool
themselves. So maybe the first paper in TJOE could be a description of who,
what, when, where, why, and how to use TJOE itself. The publication and
review stuff is part of the process after all.

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 11:39 PM, Berg, Devin <bergdev at uwstout.edu> wrote:

> Wanted to bring to your attention a new journal that myself and a few
> others are working on launching called The Journal of Open Engineering
> <http://www.tjoe.org/>. It is a no-fee, open access journal for
> engineering built on top of the recently announced PubPub
> <http://www.pubpub.org/> platform out of MIT. Through the PubPub
> platform, articles are submitted and published immediately and then
> reviewers can be invited to review the article. Once the article has been
> reviewed and appropriately edited to the journal’s standards, it is
> featured as a publication in the journal. The goal behind this approach is
> to allow for immediate publication (similar to a preprint server) but add
> on top a transparent peer review process.
>
> The PubPub platform provides a unique interface for collaborative writing
> using Markdown with plugins for additional features. Publications can be
> rich, evolving and contain live content. This is exciting for engineering
> as this means we can now integrate content such as 3D visualizations,
> animations, designs, computational models, and live code! Personally I find
> these features really exciting as designs and models are currently often
> presented in "dead" figures, and codes referred to simply with statements
> like "using custom code". I think this has potential for publishing open
> hardware designs as a greater array of design documentation can be
> integrated into the publication itself. PubPub itself is open source and
> evolving and therefore the TJOE can also evolve and be shaped to enable new
> content and features in the future.
>
>
>
> Sorry for being a little longwinded.
>
> Regards,
>
> Devin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Devin Berg Ph.D.
>
> Associate Professor
>
> Program Director
>
> Mechanical Engineering
>
> 330 Fryklund Hall
>
> Engineering & Technology Dept.
>
> University of Wisconsin – Stout
>
> 715/232-1133
>
>
>
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>
>
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