Ramon Fonseca participated in the PKP conference on behalf of the Brazilian government as well as representing the IBICT institution. In English, IBICT translates as Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology.
Fonseca started his talk out by firstly acknowledging the sponsorship and invitation from the PKP conference; making it possible for him to be here speaking in Vancouver.
Note: I will attempt to use the Google Translate tool for as many links as possible.
Session Overview
IBICT’s main mission is to promote scientific interchange, training and development; contributing to the progress of technology innovation in Brazil. IBICT strives to expand Brazilian intellectual production nationally and internationally.
One key element of Fonseca’s workshop was to inform the public at large the the Web tools such as blogs, CMS, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook etc. has allowed numerous opportunities for Brazilians to “have a voice.” The Web provided the tools and Fonseca claimed Open Access has allowed the exchange of knowledge into and out of Brazil possible.
Some IBICT initiatives:
DiCi (1st attempt at open access)
Perl (Digital Library Project)
TEDE (Online Theses and Dissertation Publishing System)
BOTD (Brazilian Digital Library)
SEER (meaning OJS in Portuguese)
These software initiatives were launched to specifically to ensure people in Brazil had free access to knowledge. IBICT also currently provides training and support to national journal editors online which is more cost effective than face to face workshops.
CCN (National Collective Catalog Serial Publications)
CanalCiencia (Science Communication Channel)
Fonseca also talked about the Social Inclusion Program that gives assistance in accessing online knowledge with children in rural areas of Brazil and technical and infrastructure support to Indigenous communities.
One of the issues that Fonseca discussed was the current importance of maintaining the software and ideas. Launching the systems and concepts of Open Access is important but these projects need continual restructuring and continued experience for the sustainability of the programs.
The IBICT continues to look for solutions to Open Access and the impact of the Web for making positive and forward thinking decisions regarding technology, system development and strong partnerships for networking the goals and missions of IBICT.
Audience Input
An audience member asked about using MOODLE as a software for an in-house small college class journal. Fonseca suggested that the college look into OJS because it can adapted into many formats and is a very stable system.
Gunther Eysenbach is editor/publisher of the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), which has presently been established as the top peer-reviewed journal in the field of ehealth.
Eysenbach is also an associate professor with the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (HPME) at the University of Toronto. In addition, he is a senior scientist for the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation. The JMIR boasts an impact factor of 3.0 which is highly ranked within other journals of health and sciences (Eysenbach2009).
Session Overview
Eysenbach have a condensed version during his session discussion due to time constraints but he managed to give the audience the key elements of where JMIR began to its present developments. He referred to the main concepts of JMIR being described as triple ‘o’ (open access, open source, open peer-reviewed). The basis of his talk was to explain the evolution and modifications that JMIR uses to continue to develop and publish online medical journals.
JMIR has developed a system that allows many facets of the publishing of journals to interface with online Web based technologies. JMIR’s structure uses the concept of OJS but also has adapted the business model to keep up with the ever changing structures of the Web. For example, JMIR has developed a system that re-bundles the topics of the journal collections called eCollections to place common topic journals together.
There are three levels of membership/subscription. Individual membership, institutional membership and institutional membership B (Gold). The online business model supports complex innovations such as the generating of electronic invoices for members, automatic word check for plagiarism of author submissions and fast track editing options.
JMIR also experimented with open peer-review systems and found that approximately 20% of the authors want open peer-review but JMIR continues to look at this issue and currently has a section on the submission form for authors to be self assigned or editor assigned. The editors can view what is called the Submissions Dashboard to get a visual charting of the various submissions and the status whether it me a fast track edit or not and the editor can track the submissions status.
JMIR’s system also integrates XML into OJS with conversion scripts and the system can edit XML files online. Also, there is WebCite which is an on-demand archiving system used so that readers and authors can have the same version of file.
Audience Input
Questions arose around copyright issues which Eysenbach addressed that JMIR uses “fair use” policies and that submission forms invite authors to inform the journal if they want their work archived or not.
Costs of membership for developing countries was also a question from the floor and Eysenbach responded to inform the audience that various models are currently being looked at – possibly increasing membership fees to subsidize developing country authors but the issue around subsidizing criteria has yet to be worked out. This was recognized as a dilemma.
References
Eysenbach, G. (2009). Open Access journal JMIR rises to top of its discipline. Retrieved July 7, 2009, from http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/2009/06/open-access-journal-jmir-rises-to-top.html
John Maxwell is currently with the Canadian Center for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser Universtiy in Vancouver, British Columbia. John’s work specifically focuses on the advantages of open journal system (OJS) software models to be used as a framework for the Online Magazine Management Models (OMMM) project that applies to use in the area of publishing small cultural magazines (Maxwell, 2008).
Session Overview
John Maxwell reported on the very recent initiatives of a new model for small magazine editorial publishing. The OMMM) project based its creation on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) with what Maxwell describes as a process with a more collaborative approach but at the same time keeps within the intent of the OJS overall concepts.
Small cultural magazines do not have the exact purpose of journal publishing but there are similarities to moving from text based publishing systems into online management systems. The OMMM project is not at a stage of online publishing but is using the OJS concepts and applying that process to the electronic management of submissions as a starting point.
With the specifics of the OJS, Maxwell’s work centers around taking some of the same ideas of OJS and applying those systems to fit into a version that would be streamlined for magazine publishing.
What the OMMM project essentially produced was a translation of user interface from OJS into a more user friendly language for magazine publishing. As the project evolved two models of editorial governance were designed:
Discrete delegation of responsibilities
Collaborative, task-based, process management
One of the key concerns while working on the OMMM project was to capture a workflow model that would capture the essence of a wide variety of small cultural magazines. Currently the project is using PLONE as the Web platform – designed as a “miniature OJS.” PLONE houses the Editorial Submission Management (EMS) that includes the following aspects:
System of buckets for organizing content
3 stage workflow (red, yellow, green)
Basic notification
Word.doc – Web based content
Relies on collaboration and trust among the editorial group
Although this new concept is in its infancy the concept of using OJS framework has moved the publishing of small scale magazines into the cyber world and has started a ground level development in the first steps toward newer developments of online publishing for the future.
Audience Input
The overall sense from those audience members who spoke – were complimentary to the project or any project that uses online open access; however, access to the technology remained the major issue for users of any place across the world….not just remote areas. There still remains key issues around access to the technology and infrastructure in order to access these online programs for the publishing and reading of open source knowledge.
References
Maxwell, J.W. (2008). OMMM Project: Toward a collaborative editorial workflow. Blog. Retrieved July 7, 2009, from http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/wikis/ommm/OMMMProjectTowardACollaborativeEditorialWorkflow
