Date: Tue, 31 Aug 93 09:36:57 EDT From: chris chase-dunn Subject: new world-system journal To: systemites Page 1 From: Chris Chase-Dunn chriscd@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu To: wsn, the world-systems network A proposal for the founding of an electronic world-systems journal The cost of information sharing is dropping geometrically. Internet- accessible electronic archives make it possible to produce and distribute an electronic journal essentially for free. Since most of the editorial work for academic journals is done on a pro bono basis, it is possible to produce a refereed serious journal without spending dollars, or by spending very few. The low cost of storage makes it possible to publish long pieces with big data appendices, something which hard copy journals usually cannot afford. Thus we have an opportunity created by changes in technology and I propose that we seize the time. Page 2 REVIEW, the Fernand Braudel Center journal is an excellent forum for world- systems research and theorizing. It is open to challenging theoretical positions and to various methodological approaches. But, as a hard copy journal, REVIEW is an expensive proposition and economic realities limit the length of issues, articles and appendices. Therefore, I propose a discussion on wsn of the idea of establishing a new electronic world-systems journal. My proposal will be as specific as possible in order to provide a basis for discussion of various issues. Editors: should be senior scholars who can afford to commit themselves to the administrative and editorial work necessary. Page 3 Editorial Board: eminences, enfant terribles, the usual suspects, and others. Selected by those who commit themselves to do the work. Methods: submissions are refereed by at least two outside reviewers. All work is done by e-mail to keep costs to a minimum. Subscriptions are free. The semiannual journal will be archived in wsystems at csf in Boulder. Users can retrieve whole issues or single articles. Copyright will remain with the authors. Title: Journal of World-Systems Research So what do you think? Please send comments to wsn@csf.colorado.edu ================================================================== Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1993 10:26:08 From: dassbach@mtu.edu (Carl Dassbach) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Journal of World-Systems Research Message-Id: Sounds like a good idea and I would support it in any way I could. Do we need the hyphen? ***** DASSBACH@MTU.EDU ***** Carl H.A. Dassbach Phone: (906)487-2115 Dept. of Social Sciences Fax: (906)487-2468 Michigan Technological Univ. Houghton, MI 49931 U.S.A. Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1993 11:39 EST Subject: Journal of World-Systems Research (online) To: wsn@csf.colorado.EDU X-Envelope-to: wsn@csf.colorado.EDU Hi Folks, What Chris is proposing sounds like an excellent idea to me. He makes the point that supplementary sections of articles and research reports can be included in an online journal, such as full data sets, that are prohibitively expensive in hardcopy journals. In the spirit of getting all we can out the information technology available, I'd just like to point out that it should be quite possible to enable such a journal with keyword search capabilities as well. I suppose appendices with data sets in articles could either trail the articles (as they do sometimes in books) or be archived separately (or both) and that these options carry their own efficiency trade-offs. That seems essentially like a data base management question and I'm only raising it as a case in point that if we're going to begin such a thing we should be aware of the latitude of available options. That means the more brainstorming we can get for this the better (hint, hint). Those are my two bytes worth at the moment. Bill Haller University of Pittsburgh University Center for Social and Urban Research and Dept. of Sociology ================================================================== From: Steve Muhlberger To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: new world-system journal Date: Tue, 31 Aug 93 15:07:00 PDT Dear Chris: It sounds great. Things like this are the next step. I would be prepared to do some work, though I may be less useful than others with a more thorough grounding in world-system theory or access to a larger library. Steve Muhlberger ================================================================== From: "Wilkinson, David POLI SCI" To: World Systems Network Subject: Proposed Journal Date: Tue, 31 Aug 93 12:53:00 PDT Fine idea; better without the hyphen. David Wilkinson Date: Wed, 01 Sep 93 06:48:11 EDT From: CHRIS CHASE-DUNN Subject: new world-system journal To: SYSTEMITES Thanks to those who have commented on the proposal for a new world-systems research journal. Graham Todd mentions that plagiarism might be a problem and that it would be very easy. Keeping a log of downloads is a good idea. Any other possible ways of reducing the size of this problem? Doesn't anyone think that a new journal is a bad idea? send posts to wsn@csf.colorado.edu chris chase-dunn chriscd@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu ======================================================= From: John Timmons Subject: problems with W-S Journal To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 1 Sep 93 11:17:39 CDT WSN-ers: While I applaud Chris' energy and enthusiasm about an electronic journal, some issues need to be considered before we leap into it. Many were raised at the meeting of WSNers at the ASA. First, and this is my main concern, is it defeats the purpose of a basically instantaneous and discursive medium. That is, pieces submitted to the journal would be stalled in the process of review and editing and waiting for the next issue. This could be six months, or in the case of a backlog or the usual delays in getting a journal out, up to a year or more. Contrarily, the World Systems Archive at Colorado is immediate... so people's work can be transferred out and downloaded as soon as they submit it. Therefore I proposed at the WSN meeting an edited series of working papers, which would be available in the archive and would roll over much more quickly than the journal. For publicity and to stimulate debate on these papers, abstracts or even the full paper could go out over WSN. On the other hand, the journal could work on that format too. Second, I have doubts about who would SUBMIT articles to the journal. What kind of pieces would be submitted? Could they then be revised and submitted elsewhere? A series of working papers would make that more legitimate. If people DO have papers in mind for the journal, it would probably behoove the organizers to do some informal poll about it.... What if they gave a journal and nobody came? Related to this question is the ugly old question of how articles so published would be looked upon by them who review us for our promotions. Yeah, someday electronic journals probably will be respected by "Them." For the next few years, however, how would such a journal really be better than the working papers series I suggest? Does it, in this case, really pay to be out in front of this curve we imagine? Frankly I'm not happy being a party pooper on this exciting idea, but I believe it could slow down some of the exchange that WSN is worth reading for. Hope you all will think about that a bit. There's two bytes, or more. In virtual solidarity ;-} Timmons Roberts new e-mail: timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Date: Wed, 01 Sep 93 14:46:25 EDT From: chris chase-dunn Subject: new w-s journal To: systemites I should mention that I am collecting all the contributions to the discussion of the journal proposal and will archive them in the "seminars" subdirectory of wsystems at csf.colorado.edu The format problems mentioned by Tieting Su will be solved in time. For now I would suggest that we use ascii text files. These are easily moved over internet by ftp and gopher. If authors want to make hard copy figures, graphs, maps, etc available to readers by request through snail mail they can. eventually the technology will be able to move graphics. there will soon be an easily used program that tranlates binary files into ascii files and back. that will make all things possible. the questions raised by Timmons Roberts are good ones. I would like to see what others have to say on these matters. chris chase-dunn (respond to the net) wsn@csf.colorado.edu ======================================================= Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1993 15:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Terry Boswell Subject: Journal of World-System Research To: wsn My fears about an electronic journal are the opposite of Timmons' concerning a loss of casual immediacy. I worry that an electronic journal would have a difficult time maintaining high standards. Email lacks built in quality control mechanisms, like having to retype or check over final versions of an article on hard copy. What's great for virtual conversation and off the wall discussion, would be terrible for a scientific journal. The lack of legitimacy for such a journal is a fear that Timmons and I share. We can have a working paper series whether we have a journal or not. In fact, we could use a working paper series from which to select articles. But to be worthwhile, a journal needs to be a reliable source of information with careful references, rigorous analyses, full documaentation of sources, and so on. I enjoy reading an occasional Fossian stream of consciousness, but I would only cite his published work. And I would only submit a paper to a journal that guaranteed high standards. I think the success of an electronic journal would depend on the appoint- ment of a good editor with a strong committment not only to rigorous peer reviewed research, but also to quality control over rhetoric and composition. Email is fun because it is quick and dirty, but who wants quick and dirty research? A tough editor would also help establish the legitimacy of the journal. Also helpful would be an editorial board that includes well-known scholars such as Chase-Dunn and Gunder Frank. Finally, an appealing aspect of JWSR is the possibility of a large circulation, which would also give it added legitimacy. We have an important opportunity here. I think the problems can be overcome, especially if we get a good editor. That person would have a major influence on the development of world-system research, and deservedly so. Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1993 08:21:19 -0600 From: Don Roper 303-492-7466 To: wsn@csf.Colorado.EDU Since hard copy journals can be scanned to produce electronic copy, I worry less than otherwise about how much electronic journaling will promote plagiarism. Full text searching is also coming down the road and that might help lower the problem of plagiarism. I think it's a good idea to post working papers and begin some refereeing and review and discussion around the papers, but I think Timmons is right about the difficulty of immediately convincing administrators that publishing in wsn constitutes a genuine publication. Can you imagine referees/editors of wsn, in order to prove that wsn has high standards, turning down 80 out of 100 manuscripts, when wsn has so many megabytes of storage capacity to fill? Rather than a qualitative jump into competition with hard-copy journals, I suggest a gradual move towards electronic journaling by forming a cooperative relation with one or more hard-copy journals. Since traditional journals are resource intensive, they should be used for only publishing the very best. The role that I see for the electronic media is to help augment the refereeing process to determine what ultimately finds its way into traditional outlets. The filtering/refereeing that I think fits the electronic medium is an open forum. I suggest that "refereeing" be done in front of everyone with the author having ample opportunity to reply and make changes. Comments could be stored side-by-side with the longer manuscripts. What I'm describing has been tried and failed, but I still think can work. Last year about this time, Martha Gimenez, manager of the PSN@csf (Progressive Sociologists) list, had a conversation with Norm Denzin (editor of The Sociological Quarterly) about using PSN as a place to discuss materials the best of which TSQ would give an enhanced probability of publishing. I think she had about 3 papers submitted with little or no discussion of the papers. I participated with Martha in this effort and my sense of the reason for it not working is twofold: 1. We failed to generate a substantial commitment to the process from a sufficiently large portion of the PSN membership. This discussion on wsn is critical, it seems to be, for the development of consensus and purpose to create successful electronic journaling of whatever kind. 2. Another reason why PSN carried so little discussion of the papers that were submitted is that we failed to build in an explicit commitment which would require every author who submits a paper to write comments on several other papers. My basic point is that, if WSN members form a commitment to do the hard part of any journal, viz., commenting on, refereeing, one another's papers, hard-copy journal editors will come to WSN to shop for high quality manuscripts. If we want to know if they are going to shop at WSN before committing to labor-intensive comments, then we should cut a deal with editorial boards in advance. Traditional journals are presumably concerned about the possible implications of the electronic media for traditional publishing. This can be an opportunity for them to move into the electronic arena -- it can be a win-win situation. If we create adversaries rather than partners, it will take us longer, it seems to me, to get the widespread commitment to quality refereeing necessary to make electronic journaling a reality. ... don roper Date: 07 Sep 1993 09:25:02 -0500 (EST) From: Tom Hall Subject: More comments on electronic journaling To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Some thoughts on WSN electronic journal. I think Don Roper's suggestion is very useful. Working with a journal, _Review_, or failing that, making a gradual transition. One way this might be done is to continue to archive material as is being done, and when sufficient papers get to final form, or at least a form which author(s)' are willing to have cited and quoted, issue them as a journal. A major trade off is between respectability (espec. re tenure decisions) vs rapid turn around and electronic point and shoot writing (Boswell & T. Roberts' concerns). Respectability needs to be earned, the way to progress toward that is to have good papers, but that will involve putting stuff here that could go elsewhere. Probably something that cannot be asked of those facing a tenure decision. We will also need to make our own sort of "rules" or "norms" with respect to print journals. I see several options: a) if we do it as a journal that's it, no republishing b) if we do it as journal, it can be republished ONLY in a print journal, with due acknowledgement that we had it first electronically. While we might accept this, print journals might not, that's where a working arrangement with one or more print journals would be useful. c) we don't care what else author's do with papers One possibility would be to have the referring electronic, with a posting or archiving of referees' comments. If we are to do blind refereeing, then papers and comments will need to filter through an editor who will repost to the net with initial identifiers stripped. One way around this is to follow what some science journals are already doing: signed reviews. The idea here is that in any small set of people working on similar problems, anonymity is really a charade, so allow form reflect substance. If we go through an informal posting open comments & discussion, then "referees" can draw on those discussions in making their comments and recommendations. I see some other practical problems: A. How do libraries track us? Who will maintain an archive if our archivist, or its host, gives up? B. How does word of us get around? to subscribers to submitters to indexers Finally, the largest problem I see, is getting someone to do all the necessary work to get such an enterprise going. It will almost certainly need to be someone with tenure and security whose institution will "credit" the effort expended. This may be the real sticking point. Basically, I like the idea. It would be useful to learn something of how other electronic journals operate (there is a growing literature on this). One final suggestion is that all of us who are writing World-System (+ or - the hyphen) stuff post working drafts of papers to the WSN archive, and post short abstracts on the net. We might collectively try to comment on one or two per month. My own preference would be for author(s) to identify intended audience and purpose so that critiques will be most useful to authors. If we get enough action going here this way, we will already be partway toward a journal of our own. Enough blather from me for this round... Tom Hall with a new, third & preferred email address: thall@depauw.edu ======================================================= Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1993 21:57:05 -0600 (CST) From: "DAVID J. ACKERMAN" Subject: Re: Electronic journals and acceptance To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Tom Hall raises some good points. Perhaps the fastest way to gain "respectability" (if such *really* exists ), is for initial contributions to include sizable numbers of papers from tenured, accepted authors. I can think of several journals in my primary field (management) which have gained stature simply because the early issues included a healthy number of articles by folks who were known. Otherwise, I'm in favor of electronic journals. Oh yes, for those wonder what a management type is doing hanging out on wsn, some of us have enough sense to recognize that international/transnational strategy exists only in a broader context of history/economics/world systems and that attempts to study organizations in isolation is not very productive. Trust that you don't mind a "seeker of knowledge" crossing over disciplinary lines.... Dave Ackerman ackermdj@msuvx1.memst.edu ================================================================== Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 10:55:33 +0100 (BST) From: "P.J. Taylor" Subject: Political Geography To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu This is just a note to introduce the journal Political Geography to world-systems analysts who are unfamiliar with its contents. It has been published since 1982 and from the beginning identified one of its three areas of interest as "Political economy approaches dealing with issues such as those arising from alternative theories of the state or the world-economy perspective". Immanuel Wallerstein is on the editorial board. Most of our authors have been geographers but we are avowedly multidisciplinary in spirit - we have recently published papers by Chris Chase-Dunn, Gunder Frank, Samir Amin and Philip McMichael the latter in a special issue on the globalization of agriculture. In short we are pleased to consider papers on the politics of the capitalist world-economy. The editor is Peter Taylor, Department of Geography, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, ENGLAND. Date: Sun, 12 Sep 93 03:06:01 EDT From: Peter Grimes Subject: Electronic Journal (again) To: WSNers WSNers; I've been following the recent discussion of Chris's Journal proposal with interest, and wish to jump in with a few points. 1) The conflict between Timmons' & Terry's concerns (the former worrying about killing the spontaneity of our exchanges while not getting sufficient professional recognition for submissions to an electronic journal, the latter concerned that we would have difficulty maintaining sufficiently high standards) reflects a conflict of implicit models about what the role of an electronic journal should be. This conflict may be best resolved by explicating what we believe are the basic functions that an electronic journal should serve, and how such functions are similar to or different from journals in print. 2) I would suggest that we consider how the differences in media (paper vs E-mail) affect the content of submissions. Each medium has its advantages and disadvantages. It seems to me that the advantage of the print/paper medium is its PERMANENCE, its ability to be put on a shelf and SAVED, to be repeatedly consulted for quotations or statistics, etc. Given this quality of permanence, as well as the high production costs, a logical corollary is that issues be carefully edited so as to achieve the highest quality possible. Another corollary is that issues only come out a few times per year, and articles submitted take months to evaluate. E-mail, in contrast, is transitory and FAST. Once you type out an idea and send it, within minutes everyone has it. Reaction is also fast. Within 24 hours someone will have responded. While conversations can be downloaded and printed, the absence of the NECESSITY of printing (and mailing) means that there is a "real time" character of E-mail that must necessarily be absent from print journals. 3) It seems to me that the strength of WSN is precisely in its ability & capacity to be spontaneous--unlike printed media. So however we decide to go on the "Journal" question, I strongly believe that we should retain the WSN in its current anarchic format. Hence no journal should replace or displace WSN as it now is. 4) That being said, what could a journal offer that we don't already have? We already have a paper journal--REVIEW. We already have spontaneous exchanges--WSN. Looking over Chris' original proposal, I see that the main advantage he sees in having an (electronic) journal is the capacity to store, with the articles, data archives. Otherwise, he seems to be proposing a journal that would be refereed like REVIEW. I disagree with this idea, because it strikes me as imposing the worst aspects of a paper journal (editorial board, outside reviewers, time lag between submission & publication) on our fluid electronic medium without giving any real benefits to authors or readers. 5) These considerations lead me to suggest that instead of a refereed journal, we follow a version of Timmon's suggestion: (a) people could submit copies of their work--accompanied by data sets where appropriate--to the WSN archives, along with a posted abstract. (b) Those submitting would be responsible for taking appropriate care that their submissions were spell-checked, legible, etc. (We could post a set of simple rules guiding paper formats for this purpose.) (c) Submissions could also be sent to a paper journal should that be desired by the author(s). In this sense, the papers could be "working" papers--comments by WSN readers could serve to strengthen papers for later submission to more formal outlets. (This solves the credibility question--WSN would NOT be trying to compete w/paper journals, but instead to serve as a forum for discussion & improvement of papers.) (d) I would encourage us to explore connections with REVIEW and maybe other journals as well about exploring our archives for possible publications. (REVIEW would seem a natural partner in this enterprise.) (e) Finally, to enhance participation (addressing the problem of "giving a journal to which nobody came"), we might think of being more intentional about reading submissions--as we tried to do with Wagar. No-one reads all papers published in every issue of a paper journal, and I'm sure that many papers in our archives might also go unread. That cannot be controlled. But that would also be true of a print journal. But at least we could try to set aside time for exchanges between readers (& authors) about submissions. That's all for now. Peter Grimes [p34d3611@JHUVM] Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 16:18:26 EDT From: chris chase-dunn Subject: new world-system e-journal To: systemites Page 1 From: Chris Chase-Dunn chriscd@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu To: wsn, the world-systems network Re: comments on the comments about a proposed electronic world-systems journal. The issues raised in the discussion of the possibility of a new journal have been thought-provoking. Several contributors were concerned that a new journal would get in the way of the spontaneous conversation we have on wsn or the timely freedom of posting and responding to papers on wsystems, our electronic archive. There is no reason why that should be the case unless the amount of energy and attention is scarcer than I think it is. Page 2 A good journal would require work. It would require that articles be reviewed and critiqued and improved and resubmitted. Publishing an article in a journal, whether or not it is electronic, implies that it has been vetted by the editors. A good journal is respected because it publishes quality material. Is such material available? I think so. Should it be published in an electronic world-systems journal or would it be better if it were published in existing hard copy journals such as REVIEW, Political Geography Quarterly, etc. Page 3 Generally I agree that it would be better in the existing journals because they are easier for a wider audience to access and publication in them is given more "credit" among academic authorities than would be the case for a new journal, at least for a time. But there are articles that are rejected by the existing journals that might find a more responsive audience in an electronic journal. And there are very long articles and those with long data appendices. These are difficult for hard copy journals but easy for an electronic journal. Page 4 Right now many, if not most, social scientists still haven't figured out how to retrieve electronic documents. But that is a situation which is bound to change fairly quickly. And the technology is getting easier to use. If we began the work of establishing a new journal now it would probably be a year before the first issue could be "published." The main risk-takers in such a venture would be the editors, the authors and the referees. The advantage over starting a hard copy journal is that no money need be risked. That is an advantage in a time of scarcity and "streamlining." Failure would be constituted by working on something that nobody would read or use. Success would be constituted by having good articles that were in demand and were cited in future scholarship. The probability of success would be raised by doing a good job, especially in the beginning. Please send responses to wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: 15 Sep 1993 02:01:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: e-journal To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu I don't believe that anyone has raised an issue which makes the idea of an electronic journal unacceptable or even unappealing. On the contrary, if arguments such as quality control, plagiarism potential, loss of spontaneity, etc., are taken seriously, they can enhance the contribution that such a journal may play. I have been impressed by the very openness of the discussion of these matters, and expect that same approach would be instituted in the production of the journal. Openness itself would be innovative as would the manner of accessing the materials. The short turnover time, the drastic cost reduction, the potential of the medium to permit new kinds of scholarly communication, and the fun of it really sound enticing. I subscribe to the Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture from LISTSERVE@KENTVM.KENT.EDU and enjoy rummaging through the table of contents to find the few articles of sociological interest. Articles can be e-mailed conveniently. I am not aware of any on-line journals that are primarily social/political or economic in focus. It would be refreshing to read on-line scholarship concerned with other than on-line issues. Finally, the energy and commitment needed to undertake such a project are apparent in the messages I've read. So, I'd just like to offer my support and encouragement. Myron Orleans Calif. State Univ., Fullerton MORLEANS@FULLERTON.EDU ================================================================== Date: Wed, 15 Sep 93 14:36:08 EDT From: Dale Wimberley Subject: Electronic Journals To: World-System Networkers X-Acknowledge-To: My university's library maintains access to several electronic journals; access to these and some other info on electronic journals can be gotten through Gopher. (I am assuming that off-campus access is not restricted due to copyrights.) Anyone who has access to the gopher (probably by simply entering the command GOPHER on your local system) can look at this by selecting the following hierarchy of menu choices: All the Gopher Servers in the World [may be within some more general menu category on your local system] Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Other Virginia Tech Gopher Servers Virginia Tech Library Electronic Journals Gopher This might provide some other useful examples of how it's done. Date: Wed, 15 Sep 93 23:33:42 EDT From: Graham Todd Subject: E-Journal To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu I think I like Peter Grimes suggestions best. Perhaps the best way for an E-Journal to become "respected" is for it to first be integrated into the regular print medium. Data-sets, stats, and appendices archived "on the Net" could be referenced in the regular journal as a way of bringing more people on-line. Certainly the strengths of this medium are the faster turn around, the potential for longer (and shorter) pieces than appear in print; and the potential for discussion, revision, etc (the classic collegial stuff). But to avoid having an E-Journal sink into recondite obscurity some work promoting it in the "hard-copy universe" would be required. I've subscribed to alot of different discussion groups and have browsed alot of others on Usenet, WSN is among the best, but there's Gigabytes of crap out there! I imagine an e-journal put together on WSN would be worthwhile. Perhaps an experimental issue could be put out in the next couple of months or so (or is the notion of an "issue" too linear and text-based?). ekota isko pitama (cree: "that's all folks") ================================================================== Date: 17 Sep 1993 01:45:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: Subscription information To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Message-id: <01H31CT8A2VA002531@FULLERTON.EDU> X-VMS-To: IN%"wsn@csf.colorado. edu" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT It is possible to subscribe to The Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture by sending the following: sub EJVC-L to: LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU Not only are the articles generally quite good, but their system is great. When you subscribe, the listserv transmits clear instructions and clarifies the standards and expectations for the journal. I've seen other high quality journals on architecture and communications via e-mail. I sure do think it would be a good idea to give it a try in sociology. Myron Orleans MORLEANS@FULLERTON.EDU