Talk:WikiJournal User Group/Archive 2018

Unifying templates

I think we should overall use more templates similar to Template:WikiJournal/Publishing/Intro (used in the intro of all Publishing pages such as WikiJournal of Medicine/Publishing). This allows for unification of our pages, as well as individualization where needed. Improvements to any information or guideline will therefore be shown in all journals at the same time, which will be of great help when even more journals are created. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

As above, obviously a great idea. Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 22:33, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree. Otherwise I suspect we'll have a lot of accidental divergence over time. Even the way that the Submission page of each journal transcludes the WikiJournal Preprints page makes maintenance and updates much easier. One long-term possibility would even be to have a single unified bylaws for the journals, with each journal having a journal-specific amendments section for anything that differs from the standard version. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:13, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

In emails last month, a "Code of Conduct" was also mentioned. With templates and/or selective transclusion we could also create such a page for each journal from content already given, mainly at "Ethics statement", since I assume the mast majority of the content will be overlapping. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

The ethics statement, once approved, has implications for the bylaws for each journal as well (WikiJournal of Medicine/Bylaws, WikiJournal of Science/Bylaws, WikiJournal of Humanities/Bylaws). It will also be reflected on the pages for each role, taking the medical journal for example: Authors, Peer reviewers, Editorial board, Associate editors. I see two main options:

1. Using Templates or selective transclusion to transclude the same text in all places. For example, a template named Duties of the editorial board could be transcluded in the editorial board page, the ethics statement, as well as in the bylaws. It can be coded so as to display for example "...of Medicine" in the medical journal and "...of Science" in the science journal etc.
2. Link to the ethics draft, such as further information: Ethics statement#Duties of the editorial board.

I think alternative 2 is better in the bylaws, because the bylaws are rather of a formal/legal nature (with entries almost in a list format), while the ethics statement is more of an ethical/professional nature (with more of a prose format). I'm open to either alternative for the pages of each role. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 18:29, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Ethics statement updates

I've done some more updates to the Ethics statement based on: COPE, ICMJE, and CSE, as well as the journal/publisher groups PLOS, F1000, and PeerJ.

Many of the issues are common to all journals. In addition, a few are unique to the Wikipedia-integration features of WikiJournals: large group authorship, attribution of content from Wikipedia, and the definition of a preprint server.

It would be good to have as many eyes cast over it as possible to check that we are happy to stand by it. We can also update and amend it over time as needed. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:45, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Great work, T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)! I've looked over it and made some amendments (page history). Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:38, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Self-citation

The statement about self-citation is problematic and cannot reasonably be made precise. I propose the complete removal of this statement. If we started giving rules about self-citations, why not give rules about citations of friends, of rivals, citation trading, etc? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Some similar points were also raised in the google group mailing list. I think compelling points are being made on removing the explicit self-citation limit. I think what such guidelines are attempting to achieve in other journals is to prevent people churning out papers that only cite themselves in order to bump up their own citations stats. Perhaps it's possible to reword it as something about publications should not be for the purpose of self-promotion? In particular, citations should be appropriate to the statement being supported. If anyone has an example from another journal's guidelines it might be useful for comparison. In general they tend to also be quite broadly worded so that they state expectations of how participants should behave (spirit of the law) rather than hard rules (letter of the law). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Given the discussion here and in the google group mailing list, I've removed the section on self-citation. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

It's all right without such a section from now. Pending what experience we will have in such cases, we can add such a section at a later time. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:44, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Self-citation is a logical part of academic publishing. Problems arise when there is a conscious effort from authors, editors or publishers to influence the integrity of the citations that are added. There have been many cases in the past of publishers or groups of journals who would form citation cartels and there is a recent case of a paper that was retracted for being cited too much on Retraction Watch. Encompassing this in a single statement is going to be very difficult, but a general statement like: "The WikiJournal of Science does not accept manuscripts that show aberrant citation behaviour" might be vague enough to be useful if an issue arises.Van Vlijmen (discuss • contribs) 08:59, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Still, the vague nature of the statement would still limit its practical use. I'm still not sure whether it is needed. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:04, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Isn't the only practical use going to be that a paper can be rejected on the basis of overindulgent self-citation? A statement like the one suggested is perfectly useful in those cases Van Vlijmen (discuss • contribs) 06:09, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Citing peer-reviewed literature

The statement that "Cited sources should be from peer-reviewed literature" is problematic.

This excludes many sources from the not so old times when peer review was not done systematically, such as: most (all?) articles by Einstein, or the articles predicting the Higgs boson in the 1960s. More recently, the existence of preprint servers is allowing increasingly many researchers to dispense with peer-reviewed journals: for example, the 2002-2003 articles that earned Grigori Perelman the Fields medal are published on arXiv only. These articles have attracted much attention and one may argue that they have been peer-reviewed, but not in an official or formal sense.

So I propose to remove the statement about peer review, at least for the WJS. This could be replaced with something about "reliable" sources, which may mean different things to different people in different fields. (Actually, much peer-reviewed literature is not reliable.) Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

"Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications. Such material, although written by an established author, likely lacks the fact checking that publishers provide. Avoid using them to source extraordinary claims." (w:WP:RS#Exceptions) Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 21:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with user:Tsirel. First, it is unlikely that an un-per-reviewed great discovery would be a suitable submission to any WikiJournal. Second, if an exception does arise, the editorial board can override this guideline on a case-by-case basis.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 22:28, 9 January 2018 (UTC) This is all a bit more complicated than I first thought. One problem is that "guidelines" serve two purposes: (1) to show the world what we want to be, and (2) to govern ourselves and each other. It's not easy to balance these.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:10, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

As I have recently been reminded [1], usage on WP at least seems to be that certain fields treat a large number of cites as equivalent to peer review when it comes to arXiv. However, I submit that this is a field-specific case, and that we might be better served with a blanket statement that mandates peer reviewed status unless well-established precedent for exemptions exists in the field. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 07:58, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

To G.V.: No, sorry, my edit above is not my opinion but a Wikipedia policy. If you want to know my opinion, here it is. Given that the non-expert-driven Wikipedia permits some restricted use of self-published material, naturally, an expert-driven journal may permit a less restricted use of self-published material. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 18:30, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

To Florian (Elmidae): The notion of "well-established precedent" is vague. Moreover, our policy should not give the impression that all peer-reviewed articles are OK. (Think about water memory.) This is why I am advocating a more flexible policy, which lets an author cite any source (s)he can vouch for, subject of course to the scrutiny of our editors and peer-reviewers. After all, authors are supposed to be experts. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 23:01, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree that it is sometimes necessary to use a source without peer review. I also think it's all right to use textbooks as sources, but it's difficult to know whether the particular section has actually been appropriately peer reviewed. Thus, at this section of the ethics statement draft, I've now changed the wording to "Cited sources should be from peer-reviewed literature whenever possible, and preferably from secondary sources". Feel free to suggest a better wording. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:07, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

What about "Cited sources should be published and reliable, with a preference for secondary sources"? To be reliable and published are Wikipedia's standard requirements. But we could avoid the rather tedious discussion of which sources are reliable, and leave the rest to the authors, reviewers and editors. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 22:49, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Tricky. I'm likely too biased towards my own limited experience here. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 06:49, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, we can leave some freedom for the reviewers to make case-by-case judgement as well. The wording is now "Cited sources should be from reliable, published sources, preferably peer-reviewed, secondary sources". Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 19:46, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström: This looks good, thanks. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:11, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Is confidentiality possible?

It is definitely possible to keep submissions and their authors confidential before publication. But after publication, there isn't currently a way make the author's Wikipedia Username disassociated with their article. The "author correspondence by online form" links to their e-mail via Wikipedia user page. Also, as an example, the article for the Hippocampus on the WikiJournal lists "Marion Wright et al" as the author. When you click on the "et al" link, it goes to a breakdown of edits on the page by author. It is easy to assume that the Wikipedia User who has made the most recent edits is also the author of the WikiJournal article. It seems like we should mention that you must associate your full name with your Wikipedia username if you wish to publish (or do we allow publishing pseudonymously?) Rachel Helps (BYU) (discuss • contribs) 17:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

You're right that we should point out somewhere that the publication is under the author's name. Currently, fully anonymous/pseudonymous publication is recommended only under extreme circumstances (examples [2], [3] and [4]). I'll think about whether that's best in the guidelines or ethics statement. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:21, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I've now mentioned this risk at Author attribution. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:26, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that addresses my concern. Rachel Helps (BYU) (discuss • contribs) 16:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Confidentiality of submissions

The guidelines are written as if the standard procedure was for submissions to be confidential, whereas most submissions will probably be public. Actually, not allowing confidential submissions would make things simpler. (This would not prevent authors from confidentially consulting editors before submitting.) See this discussion at WikiJSci, so far inconclusive. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 22:21, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I do think we should allow confidential submissions, by the reasons mentioned at the WikiJSci discussion. Also, I think the Submission pages and the authorship declaration form linked from there do a pretty good job already in encouraging authors to choose the non-confidential process. Practically, I think it already works in such way that authors may read the relatively short Submission page, without necessarily having to read the entire Publishing page, but perhaps it can be made even better. Perhaps something similar to Nutshell? Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:35, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Author's responsibility to keep track of minor changes

We often do small technical edits to the wiki code of articles, so it's practically difficult to inform the authors every single time. Therefore, I've changed the draft page to state that "It is preferable that the authors are informed about changes, but it is ultimately the responsibility of authors to keep track of changes to their articles, such as by adding them to their watchlists." [5]. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:23, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Segregating guidelines about human research

This heading in mixes general stuff with stuff that is specific to human research. I propose to better separate the material about human research. (This material is relevant only to medicine and humanities.) Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:56, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I've now edited so that it does not show those details in WikiJSci: [6]. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Copyright and permissions

I am a bit confused about the statement under the heading 'Permissions' in the section on copyright and licensing: "Authors must gain written consent from the copyright holders for any copyrighted material within their work unless that material has also been made available under a compatible license." This means that the written consent statement must allow the author not only to reproduce the copyrighted material, but also to share it under our license, right?

Then we probably have to provide a template for such written consent statements. Alternatively, we could make things easier by only allowing material that is already available under a compatible license. Or by stating that authors must respect copyright law, without elaborating. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 22:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I prefer giving an example of such a letter. We can easily adapt something from Wikipedia:Example requests for permission. I could do that in a near future. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Inclusion of a Statement on the Compliance with Ethical Guidelines

With the increased scrutiny of abstracting and indexing websites, like Pubmed Central, it is important that every published paper has a statement on the compliance with ethical standards. This is very commonly added to publications from all the large publishing houses and makes a lot of sense as it forces the authors to make statements on these topics. A manuscript without such a section should not be accepted as the authors might plead ignorance on the topic.

A suggested section of a paper with no conflicts of interest and no experiments with human or animal subjects might be:

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Author 1 declares no conflicts of interest Author 2 declares no conflict or interest etc.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors

If the authors have conflicts of interest or if they have used animal subjects, these statements should be amended to reflect this. If the authors have used human subjects, this should be noted and consideration should be given to the addition of a declaration on informed consent Van Vlijmen (discuss • contribs) 09:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The authors make these certifications in the authorship declaration form upon submission - see WikiJournal of Medicine/Submission. I'm not sure they necessarily need to write in in the article as well. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:59, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

How is a reader then to know when reading the paper? We have had scores of journals rejected of the last few years from inclusion in abstracting and indexing services for not having these statements included in the actual paper (with this being listed as the reason for rejection), so if a service like Pubmed Central is of interest to the journal, this will need to be addressed Van Vlijmen (discuss • contribs) 06:06, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Necessary roles of authors

In Author attribution, after "Named authors must have contributed to all of the following aspects of a submitted article:" I added "unless otherwise stated in a section of the work that details the contributions of each named author" [7], because it might otherwise set unrealistically high demands on each named author. Also, it would encourage making such mentions of the contributions of each author. Another alternative would be to change the ANDs to ORs in the list, but I would prefer that, unless otherwise stated, each named author is accountable for all the listed aspects. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

How to ratify

I think we can ratify these guidelines after having a vote on this page where all participants give a Support or Oppose, or give additional comments or requests. I think we should count votes from those with any role in any WikiJournal (board member, editor, author or reviewer), but anyone may comment. A clear majority of Support among voters after let's say 10 days will lead to ratification of the ethics statement. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree, I think that would be the sensible way to organise it. Lets do it in a new section to make it clear, easily linked to, and archive-able. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 21:20, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Vote: Ethics statement

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.

Conclusion

With unanimous support, I am now ratifying this ethics statement. Thanks to all of you for participating! Jackiekoerner, let us know if you are still unhappy with the amendments made to the issues you raised. We can now integrate this statement in journal guidelines, and link it from our bylaws. I will also soon apply to have WikiJournal of Medicine join the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The statement does not need to be final, however; we can always discuss it further and change it upon consensus. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

The full ethics statement is now transcluded for each journal. The author-specific, editor-specific and review-specific sections are also selectively transcluded into their relevant pages. This means that all the pages should remain in sync for the different journals. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:29, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Discussions with PMR about WikiJournal and Wikidata

Below is a summary of some discussion I had with Peter Murray-Rust (w:User:PeterMR) about WikiFactMine and WikiJournals. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:42, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Content mine is a way for machines to extract WikiData facts from prose. The algorithms 'read' the academic literature and Wikipedia and extract simple 'semantic statements'. Human authors and reviewers are always in the loop, but the tools are there to enhance productivity by helping with fact-finding and fact-checking. This is all pretty experimental, but would be a nice set of tools to offer (optional of course). I've started drafting what a project proposal would look like at MetaWiki here.

1. WikiFactMine-assistance for reviewers assessing WikiJournal papers
   • Automated tools to help peer reviewers identify statements that clash 'facts' in wikidata that have been extracted from the OA literature
   • WikiFactMine compares statements in submitted paper to those in wikidata
   • 'Uptodateness' checker
   • Maybe presented a bit like WhoColor?
2. WikiFactMine-assistance for authors writing WikiJournal papers
   • Automated tools to highlight/summarise relevant 'facts' from wikidata for the author to consider including (assisted literature review)
   • Spellchecker (assisted copyediting)
   • Automated infobox generation
3. Machine-aided redlink identification
   • Automated way of creating a 'most wanted' list of topics for people to consider writing WikiJournal reviews on
   • Topics that are the main subject of many papers in OA literature, but not present in Wikipedia
   • Also useful for general Wikipedia community
4. Value-added for published articles by better integrating them into Wikidata
   • Extract machine-readable triplet statements from WikiJournal papers (to add to WikiData)
   • Add published paper as WikiData item & associate that item with key concepts

We also discussed ideas for how to engage specialist communities that might be interested in WikiJournals, and came up with a few ideas:

1. Teachers and educators using Wikipedia as teaching tool, eg:
   • WikiEdu
2. Academic societies, eg:
   • Crystalography IUC
   • Antarctic research SCAR
   • Extracellular vesicles ISEV
3. Another round of general outreach, eg:
   • Signpost
   • WMF blog
   • Editorial in WikiJSci

I think there were some interesting ideas raised, so I posted them here for record. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:42, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I think the WikiEdu angle in particular has some potential. I have seen some great review articles come out of undergrad class projects (admittedly the ones that stick in my mind were historical/social science, but still). Proposing eventual publication in a journal might also add another level of interest for students who are starting to develop an eye for their publication records. Maybe we should kick off some discussion on the WikiEd noticeboard talk page?

I'm generally not too hot on anything involving WikiData, because I think the entire thing is heavily flawed regarding accountability and accessibility. It combines some choice bad parts of WP (open to vandalism, complicated to edit) with a lack of some of WP's strengths (thousands of watchful eyes, some specialists on anything, functioning community decision processes). I'm not sure WikiData is really reliable enough to proffer as a fact-checking tool to reviewers. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 14:01, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm also a bit sceptical about having any general mention of WikiData to authors or reviewers, since it would add to already lengthy guidelines for those not familiar with what WikiData is. On the other hand, those targets for further outreach seem to be highly relevant. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:43, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello - I'll introduce myself as Wikimedian in Residence at ContentMine. I'm currently volunteering with them.

On Wikidata generally, I see the history as generally parallel to Wikipedia's, though simpler. At five years in, there is a general consciousness of the need for references, and the metrics show it is getting better. The other is data modelling, and there Wikidata needs to model just about everything. Progress will be piecemeal. See w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-23/Op-ed and quite a comprehensive discussion section, for much more about where Wikidata might be heading.

On the proposal now up at m:Grants:Project/ScienceSource. So, what would ScienceSource do with and for WikiJournal? The proposal says that it would process the WikiJournal articles within its biomedical scope. Actually, "process" is somewhat open-ended: it will depend to some extent on what the community would like to see done. It means building up layers of annotation, and those can be of different kinds.

The main thrust, though, would be this. First, identify terms in the text by their Wikidata codes. Second, look at pairs of terms to see whether together they mark out a statement in the paper that could be, or is, a statement in Wikidata. Potential statements of that kind can be referenced to the paper they are found in. Or, they can be referenced to the source cited. Either way, we want to understand the provenance of the statement, and check whether the reference is "reliable", in the sense the project will try to define, ever more tightly.

Short example: annotations lead up to the annotation that a certain statement is a well-referenced fact fit to be in Wikidata. Then a further annotation is added, of that annotation, that the reference cited is contradicted by new research. This happening should raise a flag and consequences ripple out (to the paper itself in Wikipedia form, to Wikidata, if we get clever to anything else referenced from the same citation). This would be a bit more than an alert. It would be within a machine-readable structure, recorded and documented by protocols ScienceSource would define and control.

As a listed participant in the proposal, I'd be glad to pick up on any points you'd like to raise. Charles Matthews (discuss • contribs) 14:52, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I can support having WikiJournal articles processed in this way, but it shouldn't be an additional burden for authors, but it's also up to other WikiJournal participants as to how much we want to implement this. I can't fully imagine how it would look like in reality. Would the grant need approval before being able to make a demonstration on an article? Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:54, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

No burden to authors. We'd appreciate support for our aims of added value. The configuration of the system is a substantial amount of work, so it is not feasible to process a small batch of material. All this would go on at arm's length from the WikiJournal editorial process, but might result in feedback on both content and referencing. Charles Matthews (discuss • contribs) 11:18, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Please see my blog regarding collaboration with Miraheze

I am currently advocating Miraheze as part of an effort to remove some of the chaos from Wikiversity. Miraheze could benefit the WikiJournal effort in two ways: First, you won't be so motivated to find a different wiki (a time consuming effort.) Second, it will promote the planning, collaborating, and composing of articles in Wikitext from the start. Even if software becomes available to convert Word and PDF files into wikitext, there is a certain style to wikitext that should be incorporated at the beginning stages of composition. One example of this is the convenient use of links to other WMF pages. Another example would be the construction of style guides. The following links to a personal blog. To avoid cluttering up this talk page, you might wish to respond on the talk page at:

User:Guy_vandegrift/Blog/Making_Wikiversity_less_chaotic#Weird_idea#0:_Miraheze_Miraheze_Miraheze

--forgot to sign Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I'll keep this here, if you don't mind - better for getting more input. So, you are suggesting that all pages for the journal might move to Miraheze, essentially to make use of better software? (Not sure I get the first point above :) --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 14:23, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I am currently involved in Wikiversity discussions that probably render that First point obsolete. One of the missions of Wikiversity is to host student low-quality efforts. In the past, I took the position that the need to host these low quality pages rendered any "housecleaning" of pseudoscience and other crank articles nearly impossible. How do we distinguish between a child's speculations and those of a "crank"? These low-quality efforts render Wikiversity a less than ideal host for WikiJournals. I toyed with all sorts of ways to somehow "split" Wikiversity into two two parts, and one idea was to use Miraheze, either as a host for the best, the worst, or a combination of both.

A number of experts in the "wiki-way" have convinced me that a better solution is to move the low quality articles into a "Draft" space that parallels Wikipedia draft space, except that I propose a less humiliating format. To see an example of the "kinder-gentler" draft space look at special:permalink/1803012 and note that the reader hardly notices this page is buried harmlessly in somebody's userspace. Also note that the userbox in the upper right hand corner is so much more tasteful than the template Wikipedia uses to identify Drafts.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:59, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

This example highlights the humiliating appearance of drafts in Wikipedia: w:special:permalink/808275590--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I welcome any method for removing low-quality content from Wikiversity mainspace. Yet, I don't see enough reason to move any WikiJournal content to Miraheze, since I think the confusion of involving another wiki weighs more than any benefits thereof. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:49, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström and Mu301:I agree 100% that there should be no WikiJournal articles hosted on Miraheze. Instead, I propose that:

1. Would-be authors be informed that private Miraheze wikis are available at zero cost so that the authors may collaborate with some degree of privacy. All submissions would then be placed in Wikiversity space.
2. That another and largely unrelated purpose of Miraheze be related to the question what to do with fringe-science and research articles that currently reside on Wikiversty. The impact on WikiJournals is secondary: We want to make Wikiversity seem more "conventional", and doing so will make it a better host for the WikiJournal group. I have no objection to creating a separate WMF wiki for WikiJournals, but until that happens, we should do our best to serve the WikiJournal group by maintaining Wikiversity's reputation.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:07, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

"Public academic peer review by independent experts"???

I was showing a colleague have now shown three colleagues the WikiJournal of Science and "Public academic peer review by independent experts, and the top menu Template:WikiJSci top menu raised some concern. I have two suggestions:

1. Is there a way to emphasize that this is public review by "independent experts" on this page top banner?
2. Is there a way to permit some aspect of "private" and "confidential" review. For example, you could give readers an email address for private communications, and have the editorial board ready to step in if anybody wants to raise an issue with a submitted paper. You need to do this for all submissions. I don't know if or how the academic community categorizes review methods, but at the very least, you need to satisfy the requirements of most tenure and review processes at the college level.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:31, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
3. I don't know why, but I tend to get weird ideas, which is reflected in my publication record: Music, Quantum Mechanics, and one article in the Philosophical Quarterly. I began in plasma physics (experimental and theoretical), but most of my work has been essentially pedagogical. And for each paper I published, there were two or three ideas that failed to ever get into print (example). OK-so take me seriously but not too seriously: I think we should charge a small submission fee ($40?) with the understanding that we will pay an expert to review the article. We could even guarantee publication in WikiJournal Preprints along with a critical but fair assessment of articles rejected by our more prestigious WikiJournals. Of course, in the spirit of the WMF, the money goes only to referees with little or no affiliation with the WMF. Referees too closely affiliated with the WMF would relinquish their fee to a designated charity unrelated to the WMF.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 14:20, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for those ideas! I made sections below to accommodate each topic. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:12, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Banner

I think banner needs to be as succinct as possible, so I think the specification of "independent experts" can belong to the "About" page. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:12, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Peer reviewer anonymity

Peer reviewers may be anonymous, and there's a contact email that readers can use anonymously. There's no such specific email for WikiJSci yet, but I can set it up in not a too distant future (I'm a bit too busy with other stuff this weekend though). Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:12, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

The "may be anonymous" condition is sufficient and similar to journals which I have refereed. I am generally given the choice of whether to reveal my identity. What bothered my colleagues was the word "public". I guess it just means that the reviews will be made public, but they had the idea that "public" meant anybody could offer a review. I think the WikiJournals are suffering from their affiliation with the WMF -- my colleagues saw the word public and assumed the reviewing would be like those insane discussions we see on Wikipedia & sisters. To compensate, the WikiJournal editors need to go out of their way to dispel such misconceptions. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 02:01, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Payed reviewers/editors

Peer reviewers should make their reports voluntarily and not for pay. To amend lengthy times to find peer reviewers, there are many things we should do before that, such as recruiting more people overall to the project, who can help out as peer review coordinators. If we keep having trouble finding peer reviewers, I'd rather start with a rapid grant to have a payed editor, who could both help finding peer reviewers, as well as performing other routine administrative tasks.Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:12, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I have some experience (as an author and reviewer) with the physics journal JHEP, which pays peer reviewers ($30). As a reviewer I think that collecting the money is more trouble than it is worth, and being paid does not add to my motivation. (Just compute the implied hourly salary.) I am also skeptical that a paid editor can help us find peer reviewers: the editor would be unknown to the people (s)he would contact, and would send emails that would most often be considered as spam by the recipients. On the other hand, there are other tasks that a paid editor could usefully perform, once the volume of submissions justifies it. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 23:08, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sylvain Ribault: I'm glad we have someone with your experience on board. If it didn't work for JHEP, then it is not likely to work for WikiJournal. I withdraw the suggestion. It is curious that JHEP's $30 fee so closely matched the $40 fee that I suggested. A $200 fee would be less hideous than what some predatory journals charge in page charges. But these WikiJournals are already avant-gard in many respects. Any effort to change the world too much is bound to fail. Let another journa experiment with that idea, IMHO--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:50, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree with the above. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 06:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

FYI, I took this to the next level at Talk:WikiJournal_of_Science#Manuscript:_A_card_game_for_Bell's_theorem_and_its_loopholes^permalink --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:25, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Anyhow, I'm still open for a hired editor to make invitations. Indeed, a hired editor would most often be considered as spam when inviting reviewers, but I'm not sure there's much difference from an invitation from a board member. Surely, an invitation looks more professional when coming from an academic, but at the same time I feel it's more effective if an administrator does administrative tasks so that academics can work with what they are specialized at. Mikael Häggström 19:56, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I would argue that choosing and inviting reviewers is a scientific, not administrative task. Over time, editors should know their reviewers, their strengths and weaknesses, whom to invite for which type of submission. (I know a JHEP editor who has reviewers for rejecting papers, reviewers for accepting them, and reviewers for the tangent cases.) And in due time we should have enough academic editors that they need only invite reviewers whom they know, if only by name, or possibly reviewers who are recommended by a known colleague. At least that is how it might work in physics, would this be plausible in other fields? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I can agree to continue having academics and scholars making invitations to peer reviewers an for free, as long as we find volunteers to perform the task. So far we've eventually found enough peer reviewers, but finding them may take months in some cases. But if we can live with that, we don't need to hire anyone for it. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Psychology

Hi, I know a professor who would be really interested in having graduate students contribute to a WikiJournal of Psychology. Such a thing doesn't exist yet. How would one start that process? Rachel Helps (BYU) (discuss • contribs) 22:31, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

My advice is to have the students create drafts of their articles on Wikiversity. Then either do the WikiJournal of Science a square and submit to the WikiJournal of Science, or take an afternoon to create your own journal on Wikiversity. I will help with the latter if you are interested.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 02:25, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Rachel Helps (BYU), would you consider the scope of WikiJournal of Humanities to include psychology as well? We can potentially add "psychology" in addition to its official inclusion of "humanities, arts, and social sciences in their broadest sense". Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:16, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

At our campus, Psychology is in the Math and Sciences division, I think because they have to learn statistics. It seems to be appropriate for it psychology to be in either journal. Interdisciplinary is good.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:53, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Either way, I think we should make it clear if a journal accepts submissions in social sciences or not. I looked at the WikiJournal of Science and they currently accept papers that fall under STEM disciplines, which does not include psychology. Rachel Helps (BYU) (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:59, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Since psychology is generally considered to be very cross-disciplinary, the majority of psychology topics would fit under WikiJHum. For example, clinical psychology would be within scope of WikiJMed, experimental psychology would likely fit into WikiJSci, with other psychology topics falling within WikiJHum's scope. In general I think that new journals need to have a starting quorum of editors to build and run it to avoid stalling. I've made a couple more comments over on the WikiJHum discussion page. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 20:56, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

If the professor mentioned by Rachel Helps (BYU) can pull together a team, perhaps an independent WikiJournal of Psychology can be created rather than including psychology under WikiJournal of Humanities. However, till this project can mature, psychology articles can be kept under purview of WikiJournal of Humanities and if a reasonable number of articles get submitted within a certain time-frame, perhaps a fork into this new and proposed entity WikiJournal of Psychology can be considered. Diptanshu💬 14:18, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal not yet a sister project?

Almost 1.5 years passed, yet WikiJournal has not yet become a sister project, despite huge support majority. What are the obstacles that prevent WikiJournal from becoming a sister project? --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I was just wondering about this same issue. The application to be a sister project is pretty well developed given the guidelines. It may be appropriate to contact the sister project committee (SPCOM) to remind them that the case is still open (they have a mailing list at spcomlists.wikimedia.org), though it might be out of date. I don't think SPCOM has met in a while, since the last official rejection was in 2014 (wikifinition). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:40, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Having followed a number of these proposals on meta I would judge this one to be very strong and the support for it to be extremely positive. Approval of the creation of any new wiki tends to take a very long time regardless of how compelling the arguments are. I would suggest adding a section at meta listing the submissions that have gone through review and that have been published to demonstrate to those unfamiliar with the project how much activity there has been since the discussion was opened. Approval tends to be based more on contributions and activity, rather than just based on the merits and support for it. They want to know: there is already a home wiki (here) hosting the project, so why do you need a new separate website to be created and configured? Is there enough participation for it to be a viable stand-alone wiki? (ie. counter vandalism, admin, and other wikignome contributions.) I think this is a fantastic idea, though I admit I'm a bit ambivalent about "spinning it off" from en-wv. It seems to fall well within the scope of our project and I'm not convinced that the case has been made that this is not a duplication of wikiversity. --mikeu ^talk 16:45, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Having its own wiki would definitely be beneficial since it would also offer us a left side menu that is more specific to the needs of the project, such as clicking the main icon at upper left would take you to the main page of the project. After having ratified our ethics statement (discussion above), I can work on having the project at least approved as a thematic organization. That will be one step closer to having its own wiki. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

agree w/ Mikael Häggström--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 12:03, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I also agree w/ Mikael Häggström. Any loss to Wikiversity due to abandonment by the WikiJournal group is overcome by the gain to those who believe all academic and scientific communications should be licensed under creative commons.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:57, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Unnecessary templates

Hi all! I think that some of the templates we're using are unnecessary and complicate the wikitext, namely all the {{review}}, {{response}} and {{Editor's comments}} templates (see here for an example). If reviews and editorial comments need to be distinguished from regular comments, and an appropriate section title is not enough, then we can repurpose the {{review}} and {{Editor's comments}} template so that they insert an {{Ambox}} explaining that what follows is a peer review or editorial comment. I think it would be neater and would make all the nested {{response}}s unnecessary. I'm willing to take care of the change if no one opposes. Ok? --Felipe (discuss • contribs) 03:16, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I think {{review}} and {{Editor's comments}} are worthwhile because of the standardized format, and reviewers are generally in touch with an editor who can help out with any wiki coding. However, I actually don't think we should have the {{response}} template, because its usage makes it difficult for those not knowing wiki coding to participate, and may thus discourage people in making entries. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:44, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sophivorus: I agree that the use of {{response}} ends up making pages very complicated to format. It works well for the simple situation of single response to reviewer comments, but not when there is back-and-forth between reviewer and author. So, I'm happy to deprecate {{response}}, though I'm still keen on trying to eventually work out some formatting that helps make obvious reviewer comments versus author comments. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:55, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Authors may suggest additional reviewers (?)

I've added at WikiJournal Preprints (shown in the Submission pages of each journal) that, for the peer reviews, "To speed up the process, authors may suggest peer reviewers that editors may invite". Still, it is up to the editor to judge whether the reviewer is appropriate, and should be aware that the author may have conflicts of interest in her/his reviewer suggestions. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal User Group top menu

Since we've been gathering WikiJournal-wide materials, (bylaws and ethics statement etc) I thought I'd make a menu bar to gather the relevant links together. There are also the sister project proposal and user group description page on meta. There are still some limitations with having some of the relevant pages on meta and some on wikiversty, but overall it's relatively functional. Let me know if you have ideas for formatting, or which pages should be linked or omitted. I've gone with something that looks very similar to the formatting for the journals, but we could alternatively make it distinct. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:22, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Great work T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)! The next page I'd like to have as a common template is the editorial guidelines, but I have no time to do it myself in a near future. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 10:35, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I've made a start at WikiJournal User Group/Editorial guidelines. I'll notify again once it's finished and ready for use. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:20, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Great start, Thomas! I took the liberty to add the changes to the guidelines made at WikiJMed since March 12, and making it the official WikiJMed guidelines (so as to avoid contradictions between those two). Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:51, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Finished. Should all work and stay unified from WikiJournal User Group/Editorial guidelines. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Adding "Preferred journal" to the authorship declaration form

I've added "Preferred journal to the authorship declaration form, since it makes it easier for us to know which journal should initiate the processing of the article. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 11:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Version control and peer review

When inviting someone to write a review on a submitted article, we give a link to the submission's page. However, the submission is not frozen, and can be edited. This could be confusing to the reviewer. I can see two possibilities to address the issue:

• Send to the potential reviewer a permalink to a particular version. The reviewer works on that version. If the submission changes by the time the review is written, the authors and editors have to sort out the mess.
• Have a more interactive way of doing peer review, where the reviewer is expected to follow the submission's evolution, and maybe to do some small modifications herself. (For example, fixing typos rather than listing them.) To do this we need the reviewer to have an account. If the reviewer is anonymous, maybe we can create a temporary pseudonymous account for her.

Ideally both options would be available to reviewers. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 13:42, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

A disadvantage with the first point is that a second reviewer would perform redundant work, in commenting on issues that have already been amended by comments from the first reviewer. For the second point, I find it interesting to allow peer reviewers to make minor edits, so it probably warrants a specific discussion: Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the first option may lead to redundant work, but this is what happens with traditional journals, and this option probably needs to be available for reviewers who are not at ease in the wiki environment. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:34, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Allowing peer reviewers to make minor edits

I do think it's a good idea to allow peer reviewers to make typos and grammar errors, as long as it doesn't change the meaning of the text. This should preferably be done using a wiki account that is clearly stated to be from them at the Discussion page. Peer reviewers can be informed about these options at Peer reviewer guidelines, including the ability to use the "View history" tab at top to track differences in versions. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Then how do we do this in practice? Two options:

* The editor creates an account and sends the password to the reviewer. Advantages: less work for the reviewer, easy identification of wiki account, standard user name for reviewers. But is this allowed?

* The reviewer creates the account (or uses an existing account), and informs the editor.

Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

My understanding is that the only rule is that you can't have multiple people use the same account, but one person can create an account for someone else. We could therefore make accounts like User:Reviewer-94198 to hand out. The only issue would be the minor additional editor work. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:27, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Sylvain Ribault and Evolution and evolvability:I've now added the allowance to the peer review guidelines [10]. Regarding how to practically do it, the easiest way is to have the reviewer create an account, and I don't think it's necessary to declare it to editors or the board, as long as the edit doesn't alter the meaning of the text. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 11:38, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Importing peer reviews

Hello all WikiJournal participants,

There's been an interesting conversation in the editorial board of WikiJournal of Science of a case where an article had previously been submitted to another journal, received peer reviews, gotten declined, and now submitted to WikiJournal. Points raised include that the reputability of that other journal can be taken into account in accepting their peer reviews, and it seems unethical to omit important comments previously raised. Yet, we cannot ignore our peer reviewer criteria. It seems we need to know the identity of the peer reviewers in order to make this judgement. I think this is further necessitated by the fact that we may want to complement the peer review, and we'd risk asking the same reviewer a second time if we don't know the identity of the reviewer.

I've made a section at Editorial_guidelines#Importing_reviews (template currently adapted for WikiJournal of Medicine but which should be up for the other journals as well in a near future) with the text: "In case a work has already undergone a peer review by another journal or reviewing service, that peer review can be accepted by WikiJournal of Medicine if the peer reviewer criteria are met. This requires that the editorial board gets to know the identity of the peer reviewer, and that the reviewer agrees to have it published under creative commons license (CC BY-SA). External peer reviews that do not fulfill these criteria should still be uploaded if possible, but do not count to the minimum of 2 independent peer reviews for each article."

Feel free to suggest further edits to this. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:54, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

This policy sounds reasonable to me. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:38, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

It's now transcluded into all journals. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 22:59, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm reading a slight possible contradiction here. "peer review can be accepted by WikiJournal of Medicine [or Science, Humanities] if the peer reviewer criteria are met" combined with "External peer reviews that do not fulfill these criteria should still be uploaded if possible". The implication is "external peer reviews that do not fulfill these criteria should still be uploaded if possible but are not acceptable". I believe they should be acceptable if they contain constructive, valid criticism even if they decide against acceptance. It's usually not too hard to tell reviewers apart even if they don't divulge that they've already reviewed the submission. This can be especially valuable, if their criticism is valid but overlooked by the other reviewers. More reviewers are usually better. It's then up to the authors to appropriately handle the criticism. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:42, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Good point, Marshallsumter. I've now clarified that "...that peer review can count in..." to emphasis that additional comments are valuable although they do not fulfill the criteria, but do not count to the minimum of 2 independent peer reviews for each article. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 11:46, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Abstract vs Lead section

In a WikiJournal article, should there be an Abstract as in a traditional journal article ("We do this, we do that."), or a Lead section in the sense of Wikipedia? In the current submissions to WikiJSci it seems to me that we have Lead sections that are deceptively called Abstracts. In principle, encyclopedic review articles do not need Abstracts. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:18, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd rather follow the wiki tradition of lead sections than the academic journal tradition of abstracts. The software, and also the web, are better adapted for lead sections, for example when sharing an article through Facebook, Twitter, etc. In any case, the current practice of inputting the entire lead section as the value of the "abstract" parameter of the Template:Article info is inelegant. Even if we decide to keep abstracts, I'd rather move them out of the template and have the template insert just the "Abstract" title. --Felipe (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

A agree that for encyclopedic reviews, the wikipedia-style lead should be used. This would match our asking that the rest of such an article to be written in the encyclopedic style (avoiding "here we focus on" and other reviewisms). As well of being in the impersonal style, I think that it's more useful to summarise the key points than to basically list the headings. In biochem, I've actually found that many review articles have their abstracts written like leads (example). However, we could well remove the "abstract" heading in those cases and leave it as an untitled lead section. Overall, I think that it serves the same purpose as an abstract - to let readers know what to expect in the rest of the article, and to pull a couple of key points if the aren't planning on reading the whole text.

I've initially included the |abstract= as a part of the {{Article info}} template because eventually I'd like some simple script/program to populate the crossref data (doi) for articles accepted for publication rather than requiring manually input of the info. It also allows some simple formatting to differentiate it from the rest of the article, but I agree that it's clumsily implemented. Are you thinkiT.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, thank you, we all agree that we want lead sections. To summarize, we should decide

• whether abstracts that are in fact lead sections should still be called abstracts,
• whether they should be fed to crossref,
• which templates we need,
• what we write in our guidelines.

Meanwhile I have suggested to the authors of Spaces in mathematics that they write their abstract in the style of a lead section. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 19:12, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

I just converted the abstract of my article to a lead section, check it out! Regarding the script for feeding crossref, I think it should be possible to get the lead section using either the TextExtracts API or the page/summary endpoint of the REST API. --Felipe (discuss • contribs) 06:22, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm neutral regarding whether we should call these parts "abstracts" or "lead sections". Still, I do think our Publishing guidelines should mention that they should be structured into Method/Background, Results and Conclusion parts for original research, while being more freely composed summaries for reviews. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:18, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

• I agree with Mikael! An abstracting service will look for the first unlabeled section, or if labeled "Abstract", "Introduction", "Lead", "Lede", or "Summary" to be their Abstract for the publication. The other section titles are a good pattern to indicate original research unless you'd like to use a banner. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:33, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

I've now added this at: [[11]]. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Uniform Publishing pages

I've now made a template, WikiJournal of Science/Publishing and implemented it at the corresponding pages of each journal. While I was at it, I also made the following edits:

• A summary is added at the top (which can be expanded somewhat). I shortened the first "Informed consent" part and added it here, since it's mentioned in more detailed in the transcluded part of the Ethics statement. I linked the consent form example from the ethics statement.
• Contact emails have been added for submissions for WikiJSci and WikiJHum for authors requesting confidentiality of their works.
• I adapted to the fact that WikiJournal of Science articles may potentially be used as sources in Wikipedia -See previous entry. This can potentially include original research, but we should await the reception of this in Wikipedia before doing this for WikiJMed and WikiJHum articles. This also included a merge of the section “Original research, synthesis, opinions and speculation” to “Publicising and disseminating works”.
• I also simplified the publication variants to include only the editable wiki version and the “Version of record” PDF version. The additional line was “The title above the abstract links to a version stored in the article's history page that cannot be changed. It is the version of the article that was accepted by the journal.”, which is a feature that we can continue to have, but I think the PDF should then be updated ASAP, so in any case I think it brings unnecessary confusion to mention to all prospective authors.

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Thomas Shafee as Chair

As part of the overall bylaws for WikiJournal, we do have a Chair position that we still haven't used so far: WikiJournal_User_Group/Bylaws#ARTICLE_V_-_CHAIR
The appointment is "by consensus in the WikiJournal Council."
I hereby nominate Thomas Shafee for this position. I think he is the leading contributor overall to this project, so I'd love to give him a corresponding official title. I think a predominance of supporting replies to this nomination by other WikiJournal Council members serves as a consensus. Let's give 6 days to gather entries before deciding whether we have consensus in this.
Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

 Comment - I should mention here my thoughts on the role of the council (which has been relatively minor so far). Essentially, I think it should centralise implementation of the discussions held on this page and reducing email load for the individual journals. Currently, topics relevant to all WikiJournals are emailed to all editorial boards, which can contribute to email overload of editors mainly interested in subject-specific roles. The Council could centralise some of the tasks, especially forwarding the proposal to be a full sister project, interactions with the Wikimedia Foundation, any necessary admin as a publishing house (e.g. application to OASPA). At least one member of each editorial board should be on the council, plus anyone else with an interest in these topics. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:52, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Could you please give a link to the list of members of the WikiJournal Council? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:30, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

The list (and some further information, and how to join) is described at: Meta:WikiJournal_User_Group#WikiJournal_Council. You are free to comment on this topic even if you are not currently a member there. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:39, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Sylvain Ribault, I missed adding the Meta: before the link, so now it's corrected. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:29, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC).
• Support --Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 14:22, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support --Daniel Mietchen (discuss • contribs) 13:44, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 11:23, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Result: Thomas elected as Chair. I've updated the WikiJournal_User_Group#WikiJournal_Council page, also with differences in roles compared to editorial boards. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:38, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I needed to remove James Heilman from the WikiJournal Council, though, since his participation in the Wikimedia Board of Trustees makes him ineligible for this position. I let him know that he is more than welcome to participate by other means though. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 18:55, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Learning Quarterly: June 2018

From Meta:Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group:

L&E Newsletter / Volume 5 / Issue 16 / June 2018
Learning Quarterly

Frontpage:
#WikiWomen
#WikiEduAsia

Stay tuned
blogs, events
& more!

A program in the spotlight:
Karvachar’s WikiClub, when getting knowledge is cool

Leave your mark on Meta!
Inspire New Readers campaign, and AffCom elections

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:45, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Comparison to and competition with other open-access journals

I browsed other journals, like Wiley, OMICS International, and Elsevier, whose content is released under various Creative Commons licenses. Moreover, I've downloaded a few PDF documents into Wikimedia Commons. I'm thinking how WikiJournal is different from other journals in several (if not many) ways, like open peer review, having a MediawWiki sotftware, licensing, and so on. How would WikiJournal fare, compared to other open-access journals? Would WJ attract many academics? Would academics go to other journals, especially ones whose licenses are a little bit more strict than CC BY? Can WikiJournal compete against other journals? If you like, I would describe more how WikiJournal is different from other open-access journals. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 09:01, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I think indeed that would be an interesting page, perhaps as a subpage of meta:WikiJournal User Group. Please let me know if you have a draft ready, and I can then help revising it. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 10:40, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree. It's an interesting niche. I wrote a bit about some of the emerging ideas for this paper. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts, since I'm giving a talk on the topic to the AOASG in a few weeks. In academia, I think CC-BY is still the most often used of the creative commons licenses. One thing that's been interesting is that publishing material that's previously appeared in Wikipedia forces use of the extremely uncommon CC-BY-SA which joutnals are often reluctant to use. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:10, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I created WikiJournal User Group/Comparison to other journals as a rough draft. Please feel free to contribute. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 08:37, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Good overview! I made some changes at the licensing section. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment and the changes. :) I also added the lead and some more examples. Maybe I'll add in another table to list more publishers. By the way, if WikiJournal is established as a stand-alone project and becomes more successful, the most affected will be (I predict) OMICS International, PeerJ, and PLOS due to publishing costs, but I'm unsure whether authors would be concerned about peer review transparency. Nonetheless, WikiJournal publishes articles for free, so the three are all I can think about. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

The page that I created is tagged as "draft". I thought about removing the "draft" tag, but the "Transparency" section is very small because I have been unsure why peer reviews should be transparent. I would like some help please before I remove the "draft" tag, but this is not yet a precedent to adding the page as part of the menu header. Thanks. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Great work, George Ho! I added some at Transparency_of_peer_reviews, removed the "draft" tag, and linked it from the About-pages of each journal. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 03:08, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Mikael. Can the page be added to the "Resources" menu? --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 03:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Update:Removing upper limit of board members

The boards of all WikiJournals are currently supporting a decision to remove the upper limit of the number of board members (which is currently up 20). We believe this will benefit by a greater participation and increased diversity. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:52, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

After a vote at WikiJSci (Talk:WikiJournal_of_Science#Vote:_Editorial_board_size), the board size limit is now removed for this journal. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:07, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Version of record

Published articles need to have a stable version of record: this is necessary in order to fit in the existing publication system. Which format should this version have, and how to generate it, are less obvious.

Do we need PDFs?

The easiest way to get a version of record is to have a non-editable clone of the article at the time of publication. Compared to a PDF, a clone is harder to print, but it has the advantage that it requires almost no extra work. So there is no opportunity for introducing errors when doing the conversion, and no proofreading is required. Apparently Scholarpedia does not generate PDFs.

Is there a compelling reason to generate PDFs?

How do we generate PDFs?

Let me enumerate a few possibilities:

1. MediaWiki -> Word -> PDF
2. MediaWiki -(Pandoc)-> Latex -> PDF: I could explore this possibility, maybe not in time for the first issue.
3. MediaWiki -> PDF as in Wikipedia: looks inadequate, in particular there is no table of contents.

Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 12:19, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd say that we probably do need to generate PDFs, since they're still a very common way that academics store papers (at least in biology). and well handled by reference managers. I agree that the "download a PDF" option is currently inadequate due to its handling of templates, figures, and tables. Even some automation of the first steps of PDF production would help, even if ideal image placement and sizing had to be done manually. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:35, 4 June 2018 (UTC) PS: I've added a couple of links in your flow above

I agree we will need to continue generating PDFs, and some manual work will still be needed even if we find a way to make it more automatic. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I think PDFs will be required - it's just a standard we will be expected to meet. Auto-generation is unlikely to be feasible; agree with Thomas' comments above. Maybe some manual effort can be cut off the process, but I doubt it'll go away entirely. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 08:47, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Integration with Wikidata

WikiJournal is mentioned in the ScienceSource proposal, and now that that has been approved for funding, I'd like to get a discussion going on how we might move this forward. We've also just published an editorial in the PLOS Topic Pages series, wherein we invite suggestions as to how Wikidata could be brought into play there as well. --Daniel Mietchen (discuss • contribs) 19:27, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

@Daniel Mietchen: I enjoyed the PLOS editorial. I think that academic journals can be a logical route for information to be added to Wikidata. There are a few non-exclusive mechanisms as I see it:

1. automatic extraction of data from articles via ScienceSource.
2. manual addition of data by article authors to accompany a prose article (e.g. I've long intended to convert the images in this article to Wikidata).
3. manual addition of data by article authors with no accompanying prose (basically a peer review of the dataset added)

The second two options benefit from being able to include items that machine reading would miss, or are entirely absent from the prose of an article. However it can be quite a bit of additional work compared to the first option. A key component would be convincing authors of the value of WikiData, which is intrinsically less visible than Wikipedia. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Role of the Council versus the Boards

As started in the discussion about Thomas as Chair, we also need to specify what are the roles of the WikiJournal Council versus that of the individual boards of each journal. I think of the WikiJournal Council as more of an administrative body, dealing with for example financials, while the boards are more focused on topics related to their particular fields. Individual members of the editorial board need to have more profound knowledge of the subject of the journal, while those of the WikiJournal Council can simply be interested in the overall well-being of the WikiJournal project. Anyone interested in both of these aspects is welcome to apply to both. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia-integration of articles published in WikiJournals

Principles

Some WikiJournal articles radically revise their corresponding Wikipedia articles. They are then formally and independently reviewed, which gives them some standing, but (as yet) no special position as Wikipedia articles. The intention is that the revised text should be used to revise the corresponding Wikipedia articles. This could be done by the WikiJournal authors, if they feel able to do this and are willing to take the time; by WikiJournal board editors; or by any Wikipedia editors who feel minded to make use of the resource. The situations differ:

• Authors could be considered by Wikipedians to have a (mild) conflict of interest, though this will have been explicitly declared by virtue of WikiJournal publication, and comes with an implicit seal of approval from the Wikijournal concerned. They will often not be experienced Wikipedia editors, and will often not be specially interested in Wikipedia publication (which does not 'count' for academic purposes) once they have achieved their goal of WikiJournal publication. From their point of view, publishing on Wikipedia is a profitless act of public service, whereas WikiJournal publication should be to the benefit of authors, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the public alike.

• WikiJournal board editors may similarly be considered by Wikipedians to have a (mild) conflict of interest, though again, this will have been explicitly declared by virtue of being listed on the WikiJournal board.

• Wikipedia editors will usually be conflict-free. If they see fit to mine a WikiJournal for materials, they will use the materials, possibly piecemeal, for any article they choose, at any time (not necessarily promptly), and not necessarily for the article corresponding directly to the WikiJournal article.

I am not sure that there is any big problem with any of these routes. It may be sensible for authors or WikiJournal editors to put (WikiJournal author) or (WikiJournal editor) in an edit comment or on the Wikipedia article's talk page. My tuppence worth. Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 07:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

These points are well thought of. I would support a requirement to declare WJ editorship on editor's user pages, and WJ authorship and editorship in publication-related edits to connected articles. Undeclared COI is one of the most consistently problematic areas on WP, and it is very easy to generate bad blood and controversy that way. Let's be proactive here. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 08:41, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Interesting points! I think authors should be invited to do the inclusion, since they are most familiar with how to express the information. Still, indeed, this constitutes a potential conflict of interest, so I've added at the "Wikipedia inclusion" section of the Editorial guidelines that they should note this in the edit summary: [12]
Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:16, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree. I think that the key is clear statements in the edit summary. We should probably include a url or wikilink for at least the first edit summary (e.g. "Adding/Updating section XYZ from [[v:WikiJournal_of_Science/Spaces_in_mathematics]]). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:07, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree, and I added this example to WikiJournal_User_Group/Editorial_guidelines#Wikipedia_inclusion. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 03:28, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Technical issues

Integration of [13] into [14] was done on 11-12 June 2018, with contributions by 3 WJS editors. Initially there was a lack of coordination, which led to some work being lost. (Moving figures before moving the text wholesale.) Beyond copy-paste, the work consisted in:

1. Deciding which parts of the Wikipedia article to keep, when they were not included in the WJS article (Basically, this section)
2. Reformatting the code for Figures from the WJS template to Wikipedia syntax
3. Resizing Figures
4. Adding the {{Academic peer reviewed}} template in the References
5. Adding a few Categories at the end
6. Moving a Figure from Wikiversity to Commons (Having it at Wikiversity caused the Figure not to be displayed)
7. Removing w: prefixes in links (Tidier, but not strictly necessary)
8. Replace [[xyz|xyz]] with [[xyz]] (Tidier, but not strictly necessary)

(Please complete the list if something is missing)

Some of these steps could possibly be automated. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree, and I added this to the Editorial guidelines (with some generalization to work for all WikiJournals): [15]. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:18, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for codifying this. Steps 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 should be automate-able. I don't have the coding skill to do it, but we could ask somewhere in phabricator to see if a tool could be designed. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:52, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, it would be great if we could automate at least some of the steps. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 03:29, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Two relevant discussions on Wikipedia

There are a couple of WikiJournal-relevant discussions occurring on Wikipedia. Linking here for the record, but people are free to contribute to the discussions if interested.

1. A user talk page discussion about the concept of WikiJournals - Several concerns and criticisms discussed about the format
2. A village pump discussion about expert review - Specifically relating to the BMJ, but relevant to this project.

Eventually we should gather up key discussions that have been held on Wikipedia about WikiJournals so that we have an easy index somewhere. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:56, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree: We should gather the discussions for future meditation and contemplation. Discussing the discussions is optional.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 09:24, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

The first discussion shows that the idea of WikiJournals as reliable sources is far from being accepted. In particular there are the points that the editorial board is not made of renowned experts, and that some submissions are handled by non-specialist editors. This is due in part to being new journals and having broad scope; but maybe we should revise how we recruit editors. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:52, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I think you're right that editor recruitment should evolve as the journal matures, especially now that the board now covers most of the key skills and experiences needed to run the journal (key academic fields, editorial/publishing experience, librarianship, wiki experience, OA-projects, soc. media). What're your ideas on how best to focus any further editor recruitment? My thoughts are that we focus on recruiting specialist associate editors that can help when articles are submitted outside of the board's main expertise, but who don't necessarily want to receive all the board emails. We could also try to attract some 'big names' to the editorial board. I think that academic legitimacy will also be much improved once we are indexed in scopus, pubmed and Web of Science. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:37, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I think we'll be able to attract more subject expertise if we continue to keep administrative hassle to the WikiJournal Council and this talk page, rather than to individual journal boards, so that the journal boards can focus on their article submissions. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 04:07, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with both of you: we need editors who are well-known in their fields, so the recruitment should now insist more on this aspect and less on the 'wiki' or 'open' aspects. These editors' workflow should be made as easy as possible, with the help of the wiki-oriented editors. To attract them, I would be tempted to use one-on-one persuasion of people I know, taking advantage of conferences for example. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 07:49, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment at Wikipedia:

Based on the discussion being held at a users talk page, a discussion has been started up at the reliable sources noticeboard (a more logical location). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Application as sister project

Council ping @Diptanshu Das, Mikael Häggström, Felipe Schenone, Guy vandegrift, Part, Taketa, Daniel Mietchen, and Marshallsumter:

The application to be a full sister project was first proposed in 2016. The journals have grown markedly since then. I think it would be good to contact the Sister Projects Committee and ask them to comment on the proposal (spcomlists.wikimedia.org). At the very least, it will be good to have some feedback from a WikiMedia perspective. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:06, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that's a good idea. In the meantime, I've been in touch with the Meta:Affiliations Committee about becoming a Thematic organization; see subsection. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Mikael Häggström for summing up the items below and for your contributions in shaping WJM. Thanks T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo) for the contributions you have made with respect to WJS and WJH, and for shaping the direction of progress of WikiJournal as a whole. I think we should definitely ask the Sister Projects Committee to evaluate and provide us feedback on how WikiJournal could become a sister project. In case they point to any further requirements, we would be happy to fulfill them before we finally re-apply formally. Diptanshu 💬 11:31, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Application as thematic organization

I've now prepared an email for the Meta:Affiliations Committee, responding to their reqirements. Feel free to make and/or suggest changes to it before I email it. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Here is a description of how WikiJournal fulfills each of the mentioned criteria: Legal structure: The project is governed by the WikiJournal Council It has adopted its own Bylaws. It is a registered non-profit organization (in Sweden, Organization#: 802511-9275). Records of activities are archived in its online discussion forums, mainly: Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group Talk:WikiJournal_of_Medicine Talk:WikiJournal_of_Science Talk:WikiJournal_of_Humanities The editorial boards and associate editors have expertise in each area: WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Editors WikiJournal_of_Science/Editors WikiJournal_of_Humanities/Editors Their expertise is shared with the Wikimedia movement, in the form of processing and approving article submissions, whose content can be used to improve articles across Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia supportive mission: The mission of WikiJournal is to publish scholarly works with no cost for the authors, apply quality checks on submissions by expert peer review, and make accepted works available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity. [16] This is in alignment with that of Wikimedia. WikJournals is open for everyone to contribute. Thematic focus: Scholarly journals that apply academic peer review to their content. Critical mass of active Wikimedia contributor involvement: 50+ total members in the editorial boards, in addition to authors and peer reviewers (see links to editors above) At least two years of activities: The project has been a User Group since May 31, 2016: Meta:Affiliations Committee/Resolutions/Recognition WikiJournal User Group Its reports on activity and financials are up to date, see: Meta:WikiJournal User Group/Activity report May 2016 to Dec 2017 Capacity, or planned capacity, to meet the future expectations: We are a dedicated group of volunteers who will continue to welcome newcomers to the projects. There is no absolute limit to the potential capacity of our activities. We understand and will abide the requirements and expectations of thematic organizations. Best regards, Mikael Häggström On behalf of the WikiJournal User Group

Thanks for putting this together Mikael. I agree with its contents. In the Wikimedia supportive mission section we could also mention that material from the project is also commonly integrated into other Wikimedia projects (especially Wikipedia and Commons). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:42, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. I've now sent it in for review, with the addition of "The material is then integrated where appropriate across Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia." Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:33, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

A new type of editors?

This is a rough proposal for how to deal with editors who are renowned in their fields, but are not necessarily experienced with Wiki projects, assuming we manage to recruit such people.

Tasks

These editors would be in charge of inviting peer reviewers, recommending changes to authors, and recommending (or even deciding) that articles be accepted: the scientific side of things. They would a priori not be involved in technical issues or in Wikipedia integration. They could in principle do all their work by email.Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Recruitment

Someone, typically an editorial board member, convinces a renowned scientist to agree in principle to join the journal. That someone writes an application in order to convince the board (including members from other fields) that the scientist in question is indeed eminent. A vote may take place.Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps notability would range from a Wikipedia article to a Nobel laureate for example, with renown involving prizes awarded perhaps. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:54, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that engagement of renowned editors would be very valuable - specifically, the contacts and network. The journal group's reputation should build on the articles, transparent peer review, and auditing by independent organisations such as COPE. However, people being people, the reputation of 'prestigious' affiliated editors also acts as an endorsement, and may be important for the reputation in the eyes of some. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Naming

Cannot be an 'editorial board member' or an 'associate editor': not the same tasks and recruitment procedure. 'Senior editor'? 'Member of the editorial college'? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Another possibility would be to also rename what are currently "associate editors" to "junior editors" or similar to make the naming more immediately obvious. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:38, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

'Distinguished editor' might fit the bill. Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 13:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm alright with senior/junior editors, as well as 'distinguished editor'. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 06:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Announcing WikiJournal submission of a Wikipedia article on the Talk Page header

Here are the two reasons for doing posting an announcement in the WP talk page's header after that article has been submitted to a WikiJournal:

1. It disseminates knowledge about the existence of WikiJournals to the WP community.
2. It might help us recruit referees hesitant to click a link to an unknown site.

Personally, if I were being recruited as a referee via email, I would pause to verify that the link to https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Science is correct. But the talk page at w:Talk:Surface tension could be verified by going through Wikipedia.

I understand that we need to tread lightly with the WP editors, and also avoid WP:COI's with the them. But a strong selling point in the recruitment of referees is the need to make WP articles more credible. The WikiJournal is in a curious position because many who like WP are suspicious of the elitism of traditional outlets, while the those who favor the traditional journals have issues with the credibility of WP. I believe that we can recruit large numbers of reasonable people from both camps.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

And a third reason for posting an announcement: implicitly warning that another version of the article exists, which can be edited, and which may one day be copied back to Wikipedia. The hope would be that some editors suspend work on the WP article, or even better work on it at WJS, thereby reducing potential conflicts when merging the two versions. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 19:07, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

...Which reminds me w:Template:In use. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 19:44, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea, either as a talkpage header like this template, or as a comment like this talkpage entry. We might need to also make clear that there is no intention to take ownership of the page, or discourage any other editing. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 03:37, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Not only should we make it clear that we are not taking ownership, we should praise the editors for writing such a good paper on an important topic.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:42, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I support this, but I don't think it needs to be a mandatory step for all submissions. I added to the editorial guidelines that "It is also recommended to mention submission at the talk page of the Wikipedia article of the same topic if such exists already." [17]. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 09:40, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

A quirk on reviewer anonymity

In the guidelines' section on anonymity, I wonder if we should add the option for a reviewer to be initially anonymous, and reveal her identity after the article is published.

I have not heard of such a procedure before, though. Can someone see potential problems with suggesting an initially anonymous reviewer to reveal her identity after the review process is complete and nothing bad has happened? Would many people respond positively? Could this incite some reviewers to remain initially anonymous even if they would have been inclined to be non-anonymous?

An option would be to do it without announcing the possibility to reviewers beforehand. (Meaning: write it in the guidelines but not in the invitation email.) Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:17, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The policy of not informing the reviewers that they may later announce their identity is has already been implemented in the Bell's theorem article, where reviewer number 3 released their identity after the paper was accepted. I am uncertain as as to which policy is best, but one advantage to the current system is simplicity. Telling a person that they may later reveal their identity is giving that person one more thing to cope with as they try to perform a complicated task. It is almost universally known that secret identities may later be revealed, and even discussing the possibility of later revealing one's identity may "spook" a potential referee.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 22:14, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

OK, interesting. Then I would be inclined to abandon the idea. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 18:51, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

An additional note is that it is always possible for the peer review coordinator to contact a reviewer after publication and ask if they'd consent to having their identity revealed (possibly after an embargo) even if it isn't a specific point described in guidelines and email templates. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:06, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

A DYK liaison

Would anyone be interested in helping out with writing the occasional DYK for newly-published WikiJournal articles? It'd be good to get some representation on Wikipedia front page when articles get integrated into Wikipedia. I've also asked over at the DYK talk page. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:21, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

• [18]--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Checking submitters' identities?

When a submitted article is based on an existing Wikipedia article, shouldn't the submitters have to disclose their Wikipedia aliases? They could allow us to check their Wikipedia identities by posting some standard message on their Wikipedia user pages.

An alternative would be to avoid taking a position on authorship, by having 'submitters' rather than 'authors'. This would prevent us from giving credit to authors. But maybe this should be allowed as an option: there could be cases where authorship is too distributed, or unverifiable (IP edits), etc. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

So far, we have been checking Wikipedian author identity via the w:Special:EmailUser function, but your idea is particularly useful for users that haven't signed up with a contact email address. If they also claim a particular affiliation, we've so far emailed their faculty email address to confirm. However something should definitely be added to the editorial guidelines. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:46, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Meaning-changing edit of published article

An edit to by the ShK article by this user added new information (above the level of spelling and formatting corrections) and so has been reverted with a explanation in the edit summary and on their talkpage.

This is not a common occurrence, but may become more so as traffic to the journals increase. We could consider getting someone to write a bot to help with monitoring or reverting edits to published pages that change more than spelling or formatting. Alternatively, published works could be locked or semi-locked, but this would prevent users from editing errors (example). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:32, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Tricky. I don't think a bot would do a reliable job of distinguishing between formatting and content edits. And as the number of published articles increases, keeping an eye on this will become more and more difficult. - I believe locking published articles would be rather sensible; at that point, all the trivial stuff (formatting, spelling, grammar) should be signed off on, and everything else goes beyond what should be done to a peer-reviewed article post-publication. I suggest correction of factual errors should be done via discussion followed by, if necessary, official errata. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 09:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Additionally, even with locked articles, there can always be a 'request edit' function if errors are spotted (e.g. as effectively done here). I agree that corrigendum, errata, or full versioning is preferred for larger updates, equivalent to that done in other journals (COPE guidelines). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:58, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we offer the submitter a chance to play a role in this -- not as an obligation, but an offer to grant the author long-term control over a wiki. As a submitter to WP articles in the past, I have been on occasion disappointed to see what happened to a section long after I stopped editing it. Wikibooks has a feature that informs me by email if somebody changes a page that I have worked on. Making this an offer but not an obligation to the submitting editor/author might incentivize contributions to the WikiJournals.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

What we need in order to be considered a journal in the traditional sense is a stable version of record. We already have a stable PDF, and it would be logical to also have a prominent link to the corresponding MediaWiki version. If we have that, I do not see the harm in letting the article evolve, so long it is clear that the modified version is not a 'published version of record'. This would be an interesting experiment in post-publication collaborative editing. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:29, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Merge all journals into one

Some time ago I proposed this idea, but it didn't gather consensus. Yet I'm still convinced this is a good idea, and there's many more voices now, so new arguments for and against may arise. I encourage you to read some arguments for and against this proposal, contribute any new ones, and return to this page to leave your vote and opinion. Cheers! --Felipe (discuss • contribs) 22:49, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

answered, on the talk page of the link you've indicated (it seems several individuals answered at the linked page instead of here)--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 00:26, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

My vote would be on keeping them separate. Diptanshu 💬 06:50, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Budget proposal

Hello WikiJournal participants,

Please have a look to check if any further changes are needed for the budget proposal for 2019:

• Meta:Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal_2019

Also, please endorse at the bottom if you think it is alright. I will submit it to the grant committee when we feel it is ready.

We still have the funds for social media outreach. Perhaps after we've hired a technical editor I may get time to join in creating online posts to promote.

Best regards,

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 10:07, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support well done--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 14:18, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

It's now officially proposed. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:13, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Budget proposal

A draft of a budget proposal for 2019: Meta:Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal_2019

The main new thing is funds for hiring a technical editor for the project, as described at Meta:WikiJournal User Group#Technical editor. I think the most appropriate way to go is to hire a "technical editor" primarily among ourselves (boards and associate editors), but I think we should simultaneously look at MediaWiki-experienced freelancers such as at upwork.com. It will also be much easier to administer the compensation of one person (at least initially) than for multiple editor-in-chiefs and editors. I'm also thinking that person will begin editing with a limited budget, and the result will be evaluated to make a decision of whether to proceed in the same manner. Anyways, we should get the funding before making any decision about which particular person to hire. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 18:36, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

yes, technical editor may be a good idea--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 14:40, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Dedicated pages on vital issues?

I can see at least two issues that are vital for WikiJournals, that have probably not been satisfactorily solved so far, and that could benefit from long-term discussions, where the accumulated experience would be valuable. These issues are:

1. How do we recruit reviewers? This is vital for any journal, but it is especially difficult for broad scope journals unless the editorial board is very large, and we have the additional particularity of publishing encyclopedic review articles.
2. Who should be the authors of submissions from Wikipedia? Is it always appropriate to have authors, rather than (say) 'corresponding contributors'? Can a journal be considered an academic journal in the traditional sense if some articles do not have authors?

In both cases, we may eventually need to resort to a range of options that go beyond what is currently allowed by the editorial guidelines.

These issues may deserve more than discussions on this Talk page. We may need to collect suggestions, accounts of experiences with past submissions, links to relevant material, etc. Maybe we could create a dedicated page (with its own Talk page) for each issue of this type? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:35, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

for #2 point, Id think 'author(s)' is better than corresponding contributor...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 01:07, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

The current guidelines for authors, at Publishing#Attribution, is that "Content drawn from Wikipedia or its sister projects must list all contributors as co-authors. This is done by naming the main contributors to the article as normal, and including an "et. al." link to the full contributor list, by pointing to a list generated by Xtools." It is possible to make updated to this phrasing there if we have other suggestions for it. There should be someone who is the author of the work, even if only having contributed a small part of the article. The author role still means having responsibility for the overall accuracy of the article, and to make amendments or comments on the peer reviews. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:43, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I fear that the issue is potentially more complicated, and that the existing rules will have to adapt and evolve. What happens if the main authors do not agree between themselves? If two texts based on the same Wikipedia articles are submitted, simultaneously or not? If some authors wish to remain anonymous? Can we have Wikipedia pseudonyms in the list of authors? Which authors are allowed to submit? What if an author wants her name on the paper after it has been published? What are the rules for adding her name, and in which position in the list of authors? Authorship is already a delicate issue in academic journals, and it is even more complicated in WikiJournals. We cannot solve all the potential problems right now, but we need to collect ideas and experience. This is why I propose a dedicated page. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 12:22, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I think both a 'frequently asked questions' page and an 'open questions' page could be useful. The FAQ page could be linked to from the 'About' page of each journal and be a list of possible questions and responses. The Open Questions (possibly the FAQ talk page) could be ongoing questions and be linked from the editorial guidelines. Being conscious of not increasing workload too much - both pages should work ok even if they are not very actively maintained (and could possibly summarise some of some of the points that come up on this discussion page). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:54, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

I would be happy with an Open Questions page. But this needs not be the Talk page of anything, as having its own Talk page might be useful. On the other hand, an FAQ page might duplicate information from other pages (such as Editorial guidelines), unless we remove these other pages. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:03, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I've created a page for WikiJournal User Group/Open questions. We can use it to try to summarise the issues and possible solutions. I've just given it a draft organisation, but if you think there's a better way to format it, feel free to change it up as it evolves. Once it's a bit more populated, we might place it in the 'resources' tab of the WikiJournal top menu template. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 05:46, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Peer review forms

Given the positive reactions for the peer review form (both by editors and reviewrs), I've made it the default for submitting peer reviews. The previous default was to directly add the review to the discussion page which was unpopular with most reviewers, who have no wiki experience.

All form submissions can be viewed by editorial board members (via link in the relevant google group). For each submission, the EiC of each journal is notified by email, and they can then forward it the relevant peer review coordinator to post to the discussion page and notify the author. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:01, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Great work, Thomas! Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 11:39, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: I propose that two new fields be added to the form.

• In case the author opts for a non-anonymous review, the author's name would preferably be linked to an online profile of the author. The author should be enabled to provide a link they prefer. An 'authorlink' field can be added for the same.
• Furthermore, the author should be able to specify their credentials that they would like to be listed on the review. A field to specify the same would be useful.

Updating the document accordingly should be helpful. Diptanshu 💬 13:29, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Implemented (although we will have to be careful not to let the form length creep upwards too much). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:45, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

PDF file hosting location (local or commons)

Currently we upload PDF versions of articles locally (example). Would it make sense to migrate them to Commons? Uploading to Commons is slightly easier than local uploads, however I don't know if there is some incompatible Commons policy. The nearest example I've seen is this PLOS article on how to edit Wikipedia. Not particularly vital either way, but any opinions welcome. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 03:06, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Commons will put files up for deletion if they are not considered within its scope even with a commercial-free license. There are many additional reasons that can also produce deletion, see File:Vasyugan Swamp2.jpg, for an example. It might help if someone on commons regularly can keep an eye on them. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:25, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Calendar merge

Several of the items in the WikiJMed calendar will be identical for the other journals. Since it's not particularly cluttered at the moment, I've merged them into WikiJournal_User_Group/Calendar. We can split again if they start to get full, or very divergent. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:04, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this merge. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 14:19, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Interwiki links

Links in WikiJournal articles are typically to Wikipedia and so have to be inserted using interwiki links ([[w:link|link]] → link). I've asked over at the MediaWiki helpdesk to see if there's anyway to change the default within a page or page section to just link out to Wikipedia as default. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:09, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Although I've not got a perfect solution, for the moment I've made a template ({{Default_interwiki}}) that is a pretty efficient way to convert all links to point to Wikipedia. Just add {{subst:Default_interwiki| and }} at the end and the template will go though and replace all the links. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:24, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

ISSN registration location

When applying for an ISSN for WikiJHum at the US library of congress, it turned out that all journals in the WikiJournal User Group have to be registered at the same location (even though we are online and international). The USA was decided as the most logical location, since there will likely always be a US resident on one of the editorial boards to receive post in the rare instance that physical post is necessary. The EiCs have contacted the Swedish and US offices to move the ISSN registrations for WikiJMed and

• WikiJournal User Group requesting recognition as based in US for publication purposes
• WikiJournal of Medicine: requesting move from Swedish to US office, retaining registration as 2002-4436
• WikiJournal of Science: already registered at the US office as 2470-6345
• WikiJournal of Humanities: Applied for by Frances Di Lauro, provisionally 2639-5347

T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 22:40, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

The US and Swedish ISSN offices have now confirmed that the registration locations have now been moved to unify them all in the US Library of Congress. All ISSNs remain the same. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:37, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Great! Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Annual activity report

The WikiJournal User Group's annual activity report has been compiled:

• meta:WikiJournal User Group/Activity report 2018

Feel free to add anything that I've missed. I've also sent an email asking if we can move the reporting date (currently July) to December so that we can combine it with the journals' yearly financial report. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:21, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I have contacted the WMF to ask if our annual report date can be changed to be lodged in December so that it is in sync with our funding grant report (2017 example). Several other user groups seem to use the same report for both so as to reduce duplication and splitting of information. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:44, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Given the extensive overlap, I have merged the annual report into the annual grant report. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:45, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Academic journal or peer-reviewed encyclopedia?

I have better expectations for the (sub)project and voted in favor of it at Meta proposal discussion. Recently, I've seen published articles adapting from Wikipedia articles, like WikiJournal of Medicine/Rotavirus, WikiJournal of Humanities/Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and WikiJournal of Science/Peripatric speciation, which either rarely or does not use first-person narrative pronouns, like "I" or "we". Contrast those with other articles outside the project, like this one and that one, which includes those pronouns, like "we".

Typically, an encyclopedia is not peer-reviewed. I searched for peer-reviewed encyclopedias and found out that they exist, e.g. Scholarpedia, International Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Oxford Research Encyclopedias. I made a comment at Talk:WikiJournal of Science (but in a somewhat different form) about the goal of this project.

I can't remember whether an encyclopedia project that would allow original research was proposed; I just couldn't find it properly at meta:Proposals for new projects. Nevertheless, I also wonder whether the (sub)project can be split into two projects: one resembling (pure) academic journals and another resembling peer-reviewed encyclopedia. If that's not the case, maybe I've been mistaken. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 12:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

There is quite a lot of peer reviewing going on in Wikipedia as seen at Wikipedia:Peer review. Indeed there might be a place for a project where all articles must have undergone peer review. It might be difficult to find enough activity to keep it self-sufficient, though, and there is a risk that it ends up like largely inactive like Citizendium, which had a similar aim in becoming an encyclopaedia built through academics with credentials. WikiJournal, on the other hand, draws interest by its close relation to Wikipedia, such as gathering tens of thousands per views per month from images and content that can be integrated into Wikipedia articles, and I don't know right away how a separate peer reviewed encyclopaedia could have the same advantage. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:11, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Still, I don't know how long the editorial board or peer reviewers can continually approve articles adapted from Wikipedia by authors. BTW, en-WP's Peer review process is not mandatory; it's utilized usually to improve quality of articles into resembling Featured and Good Articles. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 23:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

You're right that traditional paper encyclopedias were typically not peer reviewed, and instead relied on the authority of the authors. In part I think this was just because the workload would have been too great. One of the benefits of the journal model is that it can drip feed articles one at a time into Wikipedia, since an encyclopedia with 100-1000 articles is not particularly useful, but having a small and growing number of Wikipedia's articles brought up to that standard is (w:Category:Wikipedia_articles_published_in_peer-reviewed_literature). That way, any publishing rate for the journals is relevant and sustainable (though higher is beneficial for things like PubMed indexing). For review articles, often the stylistic differences are greater than the content differences (2016 journal review, 2014 wikipedia equivalent) , so I'm keen to keep a mix of articles adapted from Wikipedia (eg), ones written de novo that then go into Wikipedia (eg), and ones never intended to go into the encyclopedia (eg). I've done some updates to the information on the right hand side to try distinguish the different types, but could maybe automate some categories, like how PLOS has a list of all its Topic Pages. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:25, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Performing peer review of existing Wikipedia articles is also useful for the journals as they establish themselves because it has a lower lag time (because the article is already written). Conversely, the turnaround from contacting a potential non-wikipedian author to them submitting an article can be up to a year. As the boards ramp up our invitations to new authors, I expect non-wikipedian submissions to become the large majority over the next couple of years. It's also a demographic that I think the journals serve particularly well, since they're people who have subject expertise but would otherwise probably not contribute to Wikipedia. I've made the relevant tracking categories that should be automatically populated by the {{article info}} template:

• Category:Articles integrated into Wikipedia‎
• Category:Articles adapted from Wikipedia
• Category:Articles not integrated into Wikipedia‎

To be honest, I'm surprised that I'd not thought of it before. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:55, 6 November 2018 (UTC) → ↓

New board member's perspective

I'm a brand new editor/board member, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that I am encountering the WikiJournal endeavor "fresh", without prior knowledge of the WikiJournals, and without any preconceived ideas of what it should be.

I love the concept and I am willing to devote time and energy to the WikiJournal of Medicine as well as the overall project. However, ...

I've been thinking about colleagues to approach with the idea of writing an article for WikiJMed. I started asking myself some questions.

• How will I describe the journal?
• What page on en.wikiuniversity.org should I give them to learn more about the journal?
• What questions should I anticipate?

What would my colleagues think?

I realized that I should flip the roles and imagine that I had been asked by a WikiJMed editor to consider submitting an article. I had to pretend in my mind that I didn't know anything about the journal. I wrote down my initial impressions and questions. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on the context) I'm imaginative and can easily adopt another persona.

Professor Fictum Scriptor shares his thoughts and impressions

So here are the impressions and questions generated by Prof. Fictum Scriptor after I asked him about writing an article:

• What would the journal look like if there was a printed version? Cover? Masthead?
• Is this a real journal? The articles are interesting, but they don't look like journal articles.
• Is this really a way to get scholarly types to write stuff for Wikipedia? I mean, I can do that anyway if I want.
• Don't ask me to write a scholarly journal article if what you really want is help with Wikipedia articles.

Keep in mind that I asked Prof. Scriptor to "tell it like it is" and "don't pull any punches", so he obliged. I sent him a bottle of his favorite single malt and thanked him for his feedback.

Some answers:

• Who cares?
• So what?
• You can, but do you? We're trying to give incentives, we'll see if that works.
• Good point. We could be more Wikipedia-centered.

Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 10:36, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

* Who cares? - Potential contributors might. Also, despite the dramatic changes over the last 15 years or so in how we consume journal articles, I suspect that most medical professionals still conceptualize a "journal" in a visual, articles-bound-together-like-a-magazine sense. Of course, I could be wrong, or perhaps older people visualize a journal in the print-version sense, but younger medical professionals do not. I'm one of the older folks, although I have adapted to new technologies more readily and earlier than most of my colleagues. But I still think of a journal as having a cover, masthead, list of editors, etc. - all the "front matter" info. I stopped subscribing to print journals by 2005, but I notice that almost all psychiatry and psychology journals still have the "look and feel" of the print versions.

* So What? - It depends on the journal's priorities. If we mainly want to attract current Wikipedians, then it doesn't matter. If we want to attract potential authors who are not involved with Wikipedia, then it might matter a lot.

* You can, but do you? We're trying to give incentives, we'll see if that works. - If we want to attract new editors who will contribute to ongoing improvement of biomedical articles, then your question is relevant. But if that is the primary goal, we should say so up front. Right now we present WikiJMed as a scholarly journal featuring transparency, no fees for authors, more flexibility regarding article content, etc. If our primary goal is to improve Wikipedia articles, we are not making that clear. A lack of clarity will alienate many potential authors.

* Good point. We could be more Wikipedia-centered. - I think WikiJMed is already very Wikipedia-centered. If the consensus is to make it even more Wikipedia-centered, then we should make that crystal clear on all "front-facing" web pages, in interviews and presentations, on social media, etc.

I do not mean to denigrate all the hard work you and others have put into the journal thus far. I think my remarks might have come across that way. My intention was (is) to stimulate discussion about the journal's priorities. I am presuming that if new volunteers like myself cannot discern the journal's goals, identity, priorities, vision, etc., then potential authors, editors, supporters, partners, etc., will also be perplexed.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 19:22, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the elaboration. You have a very good point that more clarity is needed. I would argue that we do not need to publish original research, as this is a lot of work, and better done elsewhere. The core mission is peer-reviewing Wikipedia, an easily understandable idea. Maybe we should focus on doing that well. This would simplify the communication, editorial guidelines, workflow, etc. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:09, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your reply. Although I have my preference, if the consensus is to focus on peer-reviewing Wikipedia, I'm still onboard. :O)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 21:37, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Really interesting points and discussion. My preference has so far been to be flexible and try different things to see what works. I think publishing review articles that can replace Wikipedia articles will always be a key focus (especially from non-wikipedian authors), since it makes the most of the uniqueness of the on-wiki format. To what extent we also try to do other things may vary (e.g. case studies, meta-analyses, teaching aids). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:44, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are peer-reviewed

I agree that Wikipedia articles, particularly the good ones, are peer-reviewed, whether there was a formal request for peers to review an article or whether an article developed through the usual bold, edit, edit, revert, edit, bold, consensus, edit, ... collaborative anarchy article development process. Thus, we already have peer-reviewed encyclopedia articles on Wikipedia.

Umm... There should be :w:; the links are broken or something. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 21:18, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Yikes! I forgot where I was... Thanks George! :O)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 21:40, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome, but shouldn't it be :w:Wikipedia:? It looks annoying to type, but that's how they work. Also, "Wikipedia:" is a namespace. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 23:25, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Have corrected links (either wikipedia:wikipedia: or w:wp: works). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:11, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you both. Wikimedia is a continuous learning process.... ;o)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 04:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

But Wikijournal not only peer review Wikipedia, they also give credit to authors. Moreover, although Wikipedia does have mechanisms for reviewing articles, in practice not enough academics participate, and the resulting quality is often low. See our experience with the Good Article on Surface tension. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:24, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Ah, that's an excellent point Sylvain Ribault. Thank you.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 04:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I vote for WikiJournals that resemble pure academic journals

Consequently, drawing on George Ho's excellent point, I favor WikiJournals that resemble (pure) academic journals.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 10:08, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

In general, I think the journal types that the WikiJournals most closely resemble are review-focussed journals such as the Nature Reviews X series crossed with community-driven journals like PeerJ. We've so far been very cautious in processing original research, since those often require more specialist board member knowledge to process. I suspect that will be constantly revisited depending on what articles are submitted. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Bylaws review by AffCom

Hi all,

As part of the review for becoming a thematic organization, the Meta:Affiliations Committee got some questions or concerns regarding our bylaws: WikiJournal User Group/Bylaws. We need to address the following:

(1) Article IX allows the board to amend the bylaws as it sees fit without participation/approval by the broader membership (and, indeed, without any requirement to notify the members at all). This potentially allows the board to completely change the governance model (e.g. get rid of elections and make the board self-selecting) with no warning or way to prevent it. How would you address this? (2) Article IV, Section 4(e) automatically makes all registered Wikiversity users who edit WikiJournal pages members. There is no provision for a user meeting that criterion to end their membership (either voluntarily or because they leave the project); in practice, this will mean that the membership will include an ever-increasing number of former editors, which will make quorum requirements based on a percentage of membership (e.g. Article IV, Section 4(b)). How would you systematize this issue? (3) There are no procedures for how any of the member-initiated processes (e.g. Article IV, Section 4(b), Article VII, Section 3, etc.) actually work; in other words, how do members make petitions, who receives them, who is responsible for initiating the corresponding votes, etc. How would you address these? (4) It appears that the legal organization applying under the WikiJournal name (802511-9275) is distinct from the legal organization which runs the WikiJournal of Medicine (802505-7095), but it is unclear what the legal relationship between these organizations will be and which one would actually be recognized as a thematic organization. What is your say about this? (5) The are currently three Journals under Wikijournal: Medicine, Science and Humanities. It's not clear or specified in the bylaw to what extent of knowledge category the entity aims to operate in or whether it is an open ended ambition. Do you have any thoughts/principles on this?

It thus seems that we need a few changes to the bylaws. Once we know how to phrase them, I propose that we hold a vote to amend the bylaws such as follows:

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström: Thanks! I'll also try to go though this/next week, since it may also be sensible to A) simultaneously address some of the recent ideas reasise in the sections above and B) unify the journal bylaws in the same way that the ethics statement is unified so that there is only one version to update and avoid accidental or minor deviations. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:01, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Responses and amendments to WikiJournal bylaws

(1) Transparency of amendments

At ARTICLE_IX_-_AMENDMENT, change to "These Bylaws may be altered, amended or repealed and new Bylaws may be adopted by a majority of votes of the Administrative Board, counting at least 20 days after a written notice has been given to the following forums with intention to alter, amend or repeal or to adopt new Bylaws:

• The internal email list of the Administrative Board
• The main public email list of WikiJournal
• The main online Discuss page of WikiJournal

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

As a former member of the editorial board of WikiJournal of Medicine, I have felt that the board members (as well as other participants) should adhere to a Code of conduct and that the internal discussions of the board members (unless they are specifically confidential) should be publicly visible and citable. I have raised the issues Talk:WikiJournal User Group#Code of Conduct and Talk:WikiJournal User Group#Public citability of board discussions (as above) and feel that these issues are especially relevant in the context of consideration by the AffCom. Diptanshu 💬 19:26, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Ten days can be quite short. Should we decide major changes to our bylaws in a hurry? What if someone is on holiday? Why not allow say for 30 days or 1 month? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:19, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree 10 days may be a rushing it a bit, but at the same time, 30 days may be rather long if we happen to find a serious flaw in it. Perhaps 20 days is the most appropriate? Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 13:55, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

(2) Quantifying electorate

The practice of eligibility to vote by account activity is similar to that of the Board of Trustees by the Wikimedia Foundation (Board_of_Trustees#Information_for_voters), but in time it will indeed be very difficult to keep track of their number in order to calculate percentages mentioned in IV.4b regarding when a new election shall be held:

• "An election shall be held if supported by a majority vote of all Administrative Board Members or by a petition supporting a new vote from greater than 20% of the total people in the groups specified in paragraph (d) combined."

I suggest we remove this paragraph, since we do (yet) have a multitude of candidates just waiting to get into the board as soon as there is a chance. Rather, we make a new election upon the submission of a candidate as described in the subsequent section, and thus the current 4b paragraph currently has no purpose.

Also, while we are doing a revision, I suggest that we remove the maximum number of administrative board members, similarly to what we did for individual journals.
We should also specify the preceding section (Section_3._Appointment_of_journal_representatives, to say by a majority of votes instead of majority vote.Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström: Article VII section 3 also needs to be revised to "by a majority of votes". OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that it already says so. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 08:04, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Agree to remove the maximum number of board members. Some journals have thousands of Editors and this seem very much in the wiki spirit. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:19, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

(3) Petitions

At Article VII, Section 3 I suggest that we add "...after at least 5 days of voting, following an entry at the the main Discuss page of WikiJournal by any registered Wikiversity user. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

(4) WikiJournal vs Individual WikiJournals

WikiJournal User Group is the project that should be recognized as a thematic organization. I'll think of ways to phrase the legal relationships between the projects. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

I propose that the thematic organization WikiJournal be labeled as the 'publisher' of the WikiJournals (respective journals) viz. WikiJournal of Medicine, WikiJournal of Science, WikiJournal of Humanities, (or the subsequent journals to be included eventually,) each a different entity in itself. The thematic organization WikiJournal is operated by the WikiJournal User Group which includes all the participants of WikiJournal, in some form or another. Diptanshu 💬 19:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I think further distinction between WikiJournal and its individual journals is warranted at:

• ARTICLE_I_-_NAME: Second sentence being changed to: "Individual WikiJournals" are subject-specific journals accepted by WikiJournal., and implementing this wording across the Bylaws.

Also, I suggest the following content at Section_3._Organization:

A) WikiJournal is the publisher of Individual WikiJournals

B) WikiJournal is responsible for uniformity of editorial procedures, as well as for the technical infrastructure of Individual WikiJournals.

C) WikiJournal administers the financials of Individual WikiJournals, unless having approved an Individual WikiJournal to handle some or all financials independently.

D) Each journal in the WikiJournal group may have its own legal organization. Each journal in the WikiJournal group may have bylaws of its own, as long as they are compatible with these bylaws.

E) (Unchanged:) A journal in the WikiJournal group has full powers over all its pages and editorial proceedings. Before having adopted bylaws, the consensus among active journal participants decides in matters related to that journal.

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:07, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Name of publisher or overall project

I agree with these ideas and I like Diptanshu's proposal to use WikiJournal as the "publisher". --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:19, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Currently WikiJournal User Group is listed as the publisher of each journal (e.g. in ISSN and DOAJ) in addition to it being the community of users. Is there a benefit to changing that to WikiJournal being the publisher? 'WikiJournal' also might be used as a general descriptor of using a wiki to publish an academic journal, so if we need an entity distinct from the WikiJournal User Group, then something like WikiJournal Publishing Group might be more appropriate (equivalent to the NPG). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk

Although a vote back in 2016 made it very clear that we will call ourselves WikiJournal [19], it is still possible to have extensions thereof for the overall project. I can see at least 3 somewhat separate aspects of WikiJournal, depending on what external relations we are referring to:

• The registered non-profit organization, currently registered as WikiJournal. This is what I am using when declaring income to the Swedish Tax Agency.
• The project as part of Wikimedia Foundation. Currently, the project is officially named WikiJournal User Group [20], but with these changes of bylaws we are moving one step closer to becoming a thematic organization, with the option to choose more freely what name we want. So, we should also consider what will eventually look best at Meta:Wikimedia_movement_affiliates#thorgs.
• The project as a "publisher", since it is presumed in for example external indexing sites that every journal has a "publisher". This made more sense when journals were usually represented by some kind of scientific society, but is still a necessary formality.

I think we should have one single name for all the three purposes above, where the Wikimedia Foundation one will take effect after we become a thematic organization. For the "publisher" part, expanding our name to WikiJournal Publishing Group would make a more clear distinction between then overall project and individual journals. Yet, the publishing activity is already given by the "Journal" in "WikiJournal", so WikiJournal Group would be enough in making that distinction clear. Still, I prefer simply WikiJournal since I think simple is better, and I think it works well for all the three listed purposes. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 11:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

WikiJournal seems to me simplest and best, as Mikael says. Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 12:22, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I favor WikiJournal for all uses, not only because it's simpler and easier to remember, but also to further establish the "brand". The arguments given above offer some reasons for using different names, but I see no compelling reason yet. Until then, I think that multiplying names confuses more than it helps avoid confusion. At least it does for me! --Felipe (discuss • contribs) 13:07, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I too favor WikiJournal. It is simple, direct and to the point. Siarus1074 (discuss • contribs)

I would agree with WikiJournal for the simplicity. Smvital (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I also prefer to keep it simply as WikiJournal. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Good points. I support the simplicity and flexibility of 'WikiJournal'. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:05, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

This legal question might have already been addressed, although I could not find it searching a few different ways. Have we applied for a Trademark for "WikiJournal"? If not, do we need to do so? Wikiversity is a trademark. Should Wikiversity be the publisher?   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 16:03, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

  - Mark D Worthen PsyD, The situation is that since the project is hosted on Wikiversity, all trademarks need to be applied to by their legal team. We requested that they did that (as far as I can recall about a year ago), but they were not willing to do it then. After these bylaws updates, we should go ahead and make WikiJournal a thematic organization, because I think that will be enough to convince them to register WikiJournal as a trademark. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:04, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

(5) Scope

I intend to reply that we are an open-ended ambition, in that participants may start journals in other subjects if they deem the current ones not covering their area of interest. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes but there should be some approval process for new journals, perhaps also a proposal with 30 days of discussion and then a 30 days voting period? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:19, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Indeed it is necessary to specify the procedure, but I think we should be able to do it faster than 30 days. It is still possible to protract the process if we think it is necessary. So, I suggest an expansion of Section_2._Inclusion_or_rejection:

• Inclusion or rejection of journals to be part of WikiJournal is decided by a majority of votes of the The Administrative Board of WikiJournal, counting after at least 20 days have passed since a public notice of the election has been made at the talk page of the main page of WikiJournal.

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 23:15, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Criteria

ARTICLE III.1 Journal selection criteria is currently slightly different to the "pillars" listed at meta:WikiJournal User Group. These should probably be synchronised. I think that the version in pillars is the better of the two, since 'openness' and 'copy allowance' are combined in a way that is more normal for defining OA and 'engagement' better describes the aim of 'editability'. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:42, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree. I also added to those pillars that we should require two peer reviews per article in order to set a uniform standard. The journal criteria will thus be as follows:

• No cost for authors to have their works published
• Open access for anyone to read, adapt, and distribute without cost
• Peer review of all articles before publication, by at least two knowledgeable persons for the subject at hand
• Transparency, with peer reviews and article discussions being open for everyone
• Engagement, with anyone free to share ideas, contribute to, and edit the journals (but changes to an article's meaning require a new peer review)

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 07:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Bylaws of individual WikiJournals

I've made a template of the bylaws of WikiJMed that can be adapted to WikiJSci and WikiJHum as well: WikiJournal User Group/Individual WikiJournal bylaws. I've implemented this at WikiJMed: WikiJournal of Medicine/Bylaws. It will thereby be easier to amend the bylaws across journals. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Vote counting for board members

Since we appoint board members individually rather than as a one great vote for the entire board, we should adapt the bylaws accordingly at Section_3._Appointment:

• An Editorial Board Member is elected by a majority of votes, counting after at least 7 days of voting by the electorate as specified in the subsequent section.

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 03:05, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

The alternative would be "...receive consensus from the electorate after at least 7 days of voting" to reflect that there is also commentary and discussion? In practice, I think that the actual implementation of either wording functions the same. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:33, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

While comments and discussions practically serve as a major process in accepting board members, I think it is best to keep the bylaws to strict vote count, since we then have a system to fall back on in case we do not reach an agreement. Practically, comments and discussion then still function to give a better informed vote by the electorate. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 07:52, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Quantifying electorate

Just as the section for WikiJournal above, I suggest that we remove the following section at WikiJournal User Group/Individual_WikiJournal_bylaws#Section_3._Appointment: "An election shall be held if supported by a majority vote of the Editorial Board Members or by a petition supporting a new vote from greater than 20% of the total people in the groups specified in paragraph (d) combined." Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Financials

Since WikiJournal will be dealing with the financials, and the relevant paragraphs are given in its bylaws, I suggest these sections can instead be changed to the following:

ARTICLE VIII - WIKIJOURNAL Section 1. Organization A) WikiJournal is the publisher of Wiki.J.___. B) WikiJournal is responsible for uniformity of editorial procedures, as well as for the technical infrastructure of Wiki.J.___. C) WikiJournal administers the financials of Wiki.J.___, unless having approved Wiki.J.___ to handle some or all financials independently. D) Wiki.J.___ may edit all its wiki pages, including those describing editorial procedures, without the need for approval by WikiJournal. Section 2. Dedication of Assets The property of is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and no part of the funds allotted by WikiJournal to shall ever inure to the benefit of any Editorial Board Member or to the benefit of any private individual other than compensation in a reasonable amount to its contractors for services rendered. Section 3. Dissolution Upon the dissolution or winding-up of , the resultant assets remaining after payment, or provision for payment, of all debts and liabilities of shall be distributed to WikiJournal. If this is not possible, the resultant assets shall be distributed to Wikimedia Foundation. Section 4. Loans No loans shall be contracted on behalf of the and no evidence of indebtedness shall be issued in its name unless authorized by a resolution of the Editorial Board.

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Minimum and maximum board size

This is not directly related to the new comments, but I would still like to propose that we remove the section on board size for WikiJHum and WikiJMed:

• "(a) The number of Editorial Board Members of Wiki.J.Med. should be kept at a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20."

We did this for WikiJSci, and I don't think we miss it. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:24, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Details in name

Also, while we are at it, I think at ARTICLE I - NAME that we simplify This organization shall be known as to The name of this organization is. I also think we can remove the sentence "If the project moves to a separate sister site, the board may vote on the option of changing the name", since this is basically a remnant from when we moved it from "Wikiversity Journal" to the more definite "WikiJournal", and leaving it doesn't prevent us from still making such a decision in the future if we ever wanted to. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Community safety

Since we have the unfortunate incident recently, it is no longer a brainstorm exercise but a practical need to come up with community safety policies. Given our global reach and user base, there could be different interpretations and expectations on what is and what isn't acceptable. A code of behaviour should be established for all participants of the journal (on wiki pages, mailing list, etc.) and not just limited to those who are in the administrative board. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:39, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: you just echoed my thoughts. In case you did not notice, I have already suggested this at Talk:WikiJournal User Group#Code of Conduct. Feel free to participate in the discussion and to get a Code of Conduct implemented. This is really important. Diptanshu 💬 19:41, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Amendment notice to the boards

When the ARTICLE VIII - AMENDMENT of the ByLaws of the respective WikiJournals was formulated, anybody could send an email to wjmboardgooglegroups.com (or equivalent). It is no longer the case. So, the clause is no longer valid. An alternative method to reach out to the board members should therefore be suggested or the clause should be amended suitably. Diptanshu 💬 20:25, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I still think an internal board email still needs to be the moment that initiates the vote "countdown". After all, it is the board that is to hold the vote, so there's practically no point in initiating an amendment without engaging board members. So, anyone who has an idea to improve the bylaws can make an online wiki entry and/or email a board member to bring it to the rest of them. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 23:23, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

On the other hand, I do think it needs to specified that the execution of amendments counts after the notification:

• "These Bylaws may be altered, amended or repealed and new Bylaws may be adopted by a majority of votes of the Editorial Board, counting after at least 10 days after written notice is given to WJ__board@googlegroups.com with intention to alter, amend or repeal or to adopt new Bylaws.

Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 02:55, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Vote

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.

I will now go ahead and make the updates to the Bylaws pages, and then I will notify AffCom. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:37, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Double blinded vs open system of peer review

WikiJournals have a system of public peer review which is highly supportable. An open peer review system is where both the author name and the reviewer name (in case of non-anonymous reviews) is displayed during the review process. A couple of simple amendments to the peer-review process can help us in double blinding the process. This is important as there remains a possibility that the review process can get biased due to exposure of the identity of the author or reviewer. In case these neither of these are openly displayed till the review process is complete, or till publication, this source of bias can be avoided. This process is known as double blinding. Thus labelling the author as 'Anon till publication' while the identity of the reviewers too is witheld till publication (unless they choose to be anonymous reviewers anyway) will therefore make the review process Double blind peer review. I think that this is easily doable and supportable. @Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: please give it a thought. Diptanshu 💬 20:13, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

YES! We boost our credibility, and we'll be indexed by MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, etc. sooner if we implement a double blind review process. - I modified my opinion. Please see below.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 20:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiJHum is experimenting with it for the Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani article and WikiJMed for the Microlissencephaly article. So long as authors are able to anonymise their work and confirm their identity to the editorial board via the authorship declaration form, it should be possible to organise double-blind review. It can make peer reviewers harder to recruit, but it has plenty of clear benefits, so authors could make their own choice. Implementation would require an minor update of the authorship declaration form and an updated wording for the confidentiality clause to make it clear that confidentiality should be afforded when requested. Non-wikipedian authors would have to be reminded that they would need to pick a pseudonymous username. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:49, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I think it it a good thing to allow double-blind peer reviewing, although I think transparency should be the recommended process. I've added a note about this at:

• WikiJournal_User_Group/Publishing#Confidentiality, so that prospective authors can see it.

I've also added a "name" entry in the Authorship declaration form. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs)ã

Should the double-blinding be optional or obligatory? I propose that it be made a part of the standard procedure and not optional. Unless this is done, we would be unable to use the label double blind open peer reviewed. However, the user may be provided an option to choose to not to go for double blinding. In that case, the respective article would be marked with a category that implies that double blinding was not done for the given article. Diptanshu 💬 18:49, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Double blind peer review looks like a needless if not harmful complication. Publishing reviews, and possibly reviewers' names, is already supposed to reduce bias. I would not want double blind peer review at WikiJSci even as an option, but if some people are motivated to do the extra work, why not let them try. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 17:25, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Sylvain Ribault: You seem to indicate that there is a possibility of harmful complication involved. Could you please specify what exactly you suspect could go wrong? Furthermore, I feel that there is possibly an error in considering if some people are motivated to do the extra work, why not let them try. It is not the people motivated by the benefits of the process who would be taking up the extra work. It is the peer-review coordinators and the editorial board members who would just need to ensure that the identities are not revealed during the review process. After the review is complete and when the article is published, everything would be the same with the name of author and reviewer in place (in case of articles with anonymous reviews). Diptanshu 💬 13:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

I also strongly support double-blind peer-review, Diptanshu! It will improve the credibility of the journals and increase the capacity for indexing. I don't think reviewers would be less likely to volunteer. I'm not sure why things would become less transparent when the author's identity is removed. The highest ranking journals implement blind-peer review as a way of preventing the chances of bias. My only concern would have been around process but if it isn't too difficult to implement I would favour over it becoming standard rather than optional. --Fransplace (discuss • contribs) 04:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC) ↓

Thank you for your post Sylvain Ribault. You reminded me to ask myself, "Is there any research on this topic?" As you mentioned, there is, and it is informative. There are no clear-cut answers. There does seem to be moderate consensus that ...

• double-blind peer review should be an option, as authors who are younger, female, and people of color might receive less biased decisions with double-blind review;
• with double-blind review, peer reviewers are able to discern the author(s) of a paper some of the time (roughly one-third); they guess wrong with some frequency; and it depends on the field (narrow vs. broad), and the extent to which authors in a given field post working papers on sites like SSRN (Social Science Research Network) and the extent to which reviewers search the Internet trying to discern the author(s);
• post-publication peer review seems increasingly popular, although not adopted by many leading journals yet (we already have that built in to our model, I think);
• there is also some support for "open review", although I don't know if there's as much empirical study of open vs. single- vs. double- blind review models.

After reading the articles listed below, I am not as confident that double-blind peer review is the best option. I do not think it should be required. Our greatest strength might be post-publication peer review (although I'm not sure to what extent that is part of our model). I can see an argument for Open Peer Review, in which everyone knows who submitted an article, everyone knows who reviewed it, and everyone knows what the reviewers wrote and what the author(s) wrote in response.

At this point I favor giving authors the option to choose between Open Peer Review or Double-Blind Peer Review. I do not favor single-blind peer review because it is not fair to the authors.

Here are some citations from various perspectives (not an exhaustive list by any means):

• Bennett, K.E., Jagsi, R. and Zietman, A., 2018. Radiation oncology authors and reviewers prefer double-blind peer review. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(9), pp.E1940-E1940.
• Chung, K.C., Shauver, M.J., Malay, S., Zhong, L., Weinstein, A. and Rohrich, R.J., 2015. Is double-blinded peer review necessary? The effect of blinding on review quality. Plastic and reconstructive surgery, 136(6), pp.1369-1377.
• Darling, E.S., 2015. Use of double‐blind peer review to increase author diversity. Conservation Biology, 29(1), pp.297-299.
• Double-blind peer review. Nature Biotechnology. 2015;33:213. https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3173
• Guo, Y., Xin, F. and Barnes, S.J., 2018. The Fiction of Double-Blind Reviewing: Evidence From the Social Science Research Network. International Journal of Business Communication, p.2329488418803655.
• Kiliç, S., Baredes, S., Gray, S.T. and Eloy, J.A., 2017. Making the case for double-blind peer review in otolaryngology. The Laryngoscope, 127(9), pp.E332-E332.
• Okike, K., Hug, K.T., Kocher, M.S. and Leopold, S.S., 2016. Single-blind vs double-blind peer review in the setting of author prestige. JAMA, 316(12), pp.1315-1316.
• Osterloh, M. and Kieser, A., 2015. Double-blind peer review: How to slaughter a sacred cow. In Incentives and Performance (pp. 307-321). Springer, Cham.
• Pinholster, G., 2016. Journals and funders confront implicit bias in peer review. Science, 352(6289), pp.1067-1068.
• Rennie, D., 2016. Let’s make peer review scientific. Nature News, 535(7610), p.31.
• Teixeira da Silva, J.A. and Dobránszki, J., 2015. Problems with traditional science publishing and finding a wider niche for post-publication peer review. Accountability in research, 22(1), pp.22-40.
• Tomkins, A., Zhang, M. and Heavlin, W.D., 2017. Reviewer bias in single-versus double-blind peer review. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(48), pp.12708-12713.
• Vercellini, P., Buggio, L., Viganò, P. and Somigliana, E., 2016. Peer review in medical journals: beyond quality of reports towards transparency and public scrutiny of the process. European journal of internal medicine, 31, pp.15-19.

  - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 04:57, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

The option for double-blind review (author anonymity) been added as an option in the authorship declaration form by Mikael. Perhaps we can see what the demand from authors is over the next year or so and revisit the question? Since telling peer reviewers that we prefer their identity to be open in the contact email and reviewer form, the rate of reviewers requesting anonymity is down from 72% in 2017 to in 17% 2018. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 05:55, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Mikael and Thomas, I doubt if it serves the purpose. Although the option of author anonymity till acceptance of the article is an encouraging step, it will not increase the credibility of the review process. For example, you are not adding the checkbox for I would like the article to be published in unreviewed state. Giving this option would possibly encourage many authors to opt for it. So, are you willing to go ahead with it? If not, the double blinding can not be optional. It is either there, or not there, no middle path please. Diptanshu 💬 13:20, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Mark, for the resources on the subject, and for the comments of all. I agree with Thomas that we should leave the option open and review the issue once we see its effects. I think the option is highly appreciated by authors who are concerned of bias in regard to willingness of others to review the article, as well as the remarks in the reviews. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:59, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Mark for your inputs and resources. I would like to mention a simple scenario of a bias that can be eliminated by single blinding the name and affiliation of the author. If some professor has a grudge against a particular institute or student, they might deliberately harass the author during the review. This is well exhibited during book reviews wherein certain reviewers deliberately pull down ratings of really good books just because they do not think good about the respective author. Double blinding by also witholding the name of the reviewer helps by avoiding deliberate aggression or alike flowing in the reverse direction as they (the authors) respond to the comments of the reviewer. Thus, double blinding indeed should help in eliminating bias. As the articles get published, the entire details of the author and reviewer gets revealed in accordance to the choices mentioned. So, this is an issue of the journal standards. It cannot be optional. It is there or it isn't there. A middle path should not exist here. Diptanshu 💬 13:12, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree that if the author's identity is kept confidential until publication, then so too should the reviewers until publication (authorship declaration form updated). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Great! Diptanshu 💬 12:10, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: Could you please specify if double blinding has been accepted as a standard journal policy for the WikiJournals? I do not see it reflected on the sub-title of the headers of the respective WikiJournals. Diptanshu 💬 13:01, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Optional double-blind peer review is supported by the boards and will be implemented next month. A working group is preparing updated wording for the authorship declaration form and peer review pages. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:42, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation blog post - Five ways academics can contribute to Wikipedia

The blog post does not mention WikiJMed or our other journals, but gist of the post is entirely consistent with the WikiJournal mission. This a great post to share on your favorite social media platform! And remember to also Like, Share, Retweet, or Vote Up colleagues' social media messages about this Wikimedia Foundation post.

Five Ways Academics Can Contribute to Wikipedia

  - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Shared on my timeline as well as on relevant groups related to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Open Access and Open Research (moderator approval pending for most as of now). Diptanshu 💬 20:59, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

URLs

I've only just realized this, but you can put subpages after the www.WikiJMed.org, www.WikiJSci.org, and www.WikiJSci.org URLs e.g:

• WikiJSci.org/Publishing → https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Publishing
• WikiJSci.org/About → https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Science/About
• WikiJHum.org/Peer_reviewers → https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Humanities/Peer_reviewers

Can be useful for URL shortening to the main pages. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:03, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Great to know. :O)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:16, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know about this feature! Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:00, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I've been contacting our domain host about an error that's been popping up recently, were a random 5-letter subpage is appended. Others have ben experiencing the same thing (examples here). They don't have any answer other than "clear your cookies" which isn't really a solution. Still hunting fix ideas. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

@Evolution and evolvability: It looks like someone solved the issue OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:03, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Aha, good find! I'll ask on the colloquium as to whether this (or similar) can be implemented. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 03:26, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

I've asked about the issue at Phabricator here. There was a suggestion to direct the domain name directly to the relevant wikimedia server (though this is beyond my abilities) but might be one step closer to an intermediate fix until we can move away from godaddy as a DNS host. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 03:17, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Reviewers relations to editorial boards

I've clarified at WikiJournal_User_Group/Ethics_statement#Disclosure_and_Conflict_of_Interest that conflicts of interest includes prior relationships between people of different roles (authors, reviewers and editors) for a submission (and not just author-editor relations). Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 04:00, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Template for new board members

I added a template at the top of the application pages for new editorial board members, summarizing the procedure. Example for WikiJMed Talk:WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Editorial_board. I've also created a template, {{subst:WikiJournal accepted board member}}, that is to be copy-pasted to the bottom of each accepted application, creating a list of the technical tasks that need to be done for getting a new board member aboard, so that these tasks can be distributed among board members. It also emphasizes that any current editorial board member can execute the acceptance of a new board member. This is in accordance with our bylaws, and I find this very useful for WikiJMed where I find myself not being able to always tend to these matters in a timely manner. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 04:04, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

As something to consider, we could also combine associate editor and editorial board applications onto the same page for each journal, so that there are only three pages to track, rather than six. the different position applications are now colour-coded and clearly indicated as to which type they are applying for. Could be combined with Board member re-elections to keep everything together? T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I've managed to get the template to transclude whatever points are written in the Editorial guidelines so that we only have to keep one location updated! T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Great thanks, Thomas! Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 07:54, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Process checklist for removal of Board members

Hello all, I was reflecting on previous posts and I realized we do not have a process or a checklist to follow for when Board members are no longer on the Board. This would be good to have an outline for such a process for closure and security, regardless of why the person was removed. This would include checking a certain list to see the access each person had, and where (i.e. social media accounts). What do you all think? Best, Jackiekoerner (discuss • contribs) 18:19, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Good point. Indeed we also need the equivalent process list for adding a new editorial board member! I've added what I think are the relevant points here: WikiJournal_User_Group/Editorial_guidelines#Adding_and_removing_editorial_board_members. Anyone can edit it if I've missed anything. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:27, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes! Love it! Thanks for starting this. Jackiekoerner (discuss • contribs) 16:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Peer reviewer second view of article

As Mikael just did an update of the tracking number system for articles in review, I realised that we've been asking reviewers by email whether they want to see the article again after authors have responded to their comments. I've now fixed this by adding a tickbox to the end of the peer reviewer form. That way if reviewers only had minor comments they can opt to not require contact again (to slightly reduce email load and increase processing speed). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:55, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

"Journals" and "Resources" tabs missing on mobile view

I noticed that the "Journals" and "Resources" tabs are absent from the mobile version of the template page. It's also noticeable at the resource page. What can be done to fix the issue? --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 04:16, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

@George Ho: Huh, it used to work. It's an issue with using any kind of collapsible element to make a dropdown menu. In mobile view, they are always expanded and overlap, obscuring other elements. So, in mobile view I added a function to hide them and instead show them as a heading (which basically acts as a collapsible element in mobile). I'll have another look at the {{WikiJ top menu}} templates at it and see what has changed. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I've now had a go at implementing a workaround on WikiJMed pages so that the links will appear on mobiles even though they aren't dropdown menus. It's not particularly elegant, but it's just about functional. If I don't spot any problems during the next day, I'll add it to the others. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:02, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I've implemented the same solution at {{WikiJ top menu}}, {{WikiJMed top menu}}, {{WikiJSci top menu}}, {{WikiJHum top menu}} so that links are available on mobile. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:01, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Ha! I've now implemented the solution properly without the workaround. We now have the option to place any text inside <span class="nomobile">...</span> and <span class="onlymobile">...</span> to control what text in shown on either interface. In the case of the menus, dropdown menus on desktop and just links on mobile. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:05, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Right now, I don't see those tabs on mobile view as before. BTW, what to do with the "About" tab, which links to a Meta-wiki page? --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 22:17, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Hmm... Now I can see those tabs. Though they aren't dropdown menus, them being buttons would suffice for now. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 02:19, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The template should be stable now. I think they'll have to be plain buttons for now on mobile view, since I think all collapsible elements don't function on mobile. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:37, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

It has also been pointed out that the author list was misformatting on mobile. I've now also fixed this by the same method of <div class="nomobile">...</div> and <div class="onlymobile">...</div>. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:25, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Learning Quarterly: November 2018

L&E Newsletter / Volume 5 / Issue 17 / November 2018
Learning Quarterly

Frontpage:
#CEInsights18
#GenderEquity

Stay tuned
blogs, events
& more!

A program in the spotlight:
Editatona: Writing women back in history

Leave your mark on Meta!
AffCom corner and Wikimania Poster session

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

2018 Affiliations Committee call for candidates

This is an update from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee.

The Affiliations Committee – the committee responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups – is looking for new members!

The main role of the Affiliations Committee is to guide groups of volunteers that are interested in forming Wikimedia affiliates. We review applications from new groups, answer questions and provide advice about the different Wikimedia affiliation models and processes, review affiliate bylaws for compliance with requirements and best practices, and advise the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees on issues connected to chapters, thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups.

The committee can include up to fifteen members, roughly half of whom are selected every twelve months for staggered two-year terms. Those joining the committee during the current process will serve a two-year term ending in December 2020.

Key skills

Being a part of the Affiliations Committee requires communication with volunteers all over the world, negotiating skills, cultural sensitivity, and the ability to understand legal texts. We look for a healthy mix of different skill sets in our members, including the following key skills and experience:

- Willingness to process applications through a set, perhaps bureaucratic process.
- Readiness to participate in political discussions on the role and future of affiliates, models of affiliation, and similar topics.
- Availability of up to 5 hours per week, and the time to participate in a monthly two-hour voice/video meeting.
- International orientation.
- Fluency in English.
- Ability to work and communicate with other languages and cultures.
- Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Knowledge of different legal systems and experience in community building and organizing are a plus.
- Skills in other languages are a major plus.
- Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus.
- Strong track record of effective collaboration (such as evidenced skills at facilitation, mediation, negotiation, and so forth) are a major plus.
- Willingness to use one's real name in committee activities (including contacts with current and potential affiliates) when appropriate.

We are looking for people who are excited by the challenge of empowering volunteers to get organized and form communities that further our mission around the world. In exchange, committee members selected will gain the experience of supporting their world-wide colleagues to develop their communities as well as personal development in guiding organizational development, facilitating affiliate partnerships, and professional communications.

Selection process

As a reflection of our commitment to openness, transparency, and bilateral engagement with the Wikimedia community, the 2018 member selection process will include a public review and comment period. All applications received by the committee will be posted on Meta at Affiliations Committee/Candidates/December 2018, and the community will be invited to provide comments and feedback about each candidate.

At the end of the public comment period, the applications will be voted on by the members of the committee who are not seeking re-election, taking into account comments put forward by the committee's members, advisors, Wikimedia Foundation staff and board liaisons, and the community. A final decision will be made by mid-January 2019, with new members expected to join later that month.

How to apply

If you are interested in joining the committee, please post your application on the nomination page and send an email announcing your application to affcom@lists.wikimedia.org by 31 December 2018. Your application must include the following information:

- Your full name and Wikimedia username
- A statement describing your relevant experience, skills, and motivation for joining the committee.
- Answers to the following three questions:

1. How do you think affiliates work best together to partner on effective projects and initiatives?
   
2. What do you see as the role of affiliates in the Wikimedia movement in the next three years?
   
3. What do you feel you will bring to the committee that makes you a uniquely qualified candidate?
   

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me and/or the committee as a whole. We are happy to chat or have a phone call with anyone about our work if this helps them decide to apply. Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you are interested!

Best regards,
Kirill Lokshin
Chair, Affiliations Committee

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Affiliations Committee, 06:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Verifiability of items

Split from previous point to respond specifically to this issue... unfocussed, and I suggest probably unverifiable in several of its items (how do we decide if someone is being insightful? It's a matter of personal opinion). The Wikimedia code of conduct is much more like what we should have, and it's certainly available for us to use. Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 13:41, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Dear Chiswick Chap, I would point out that 'being insightful' is an attribute meant for the EiCs. You have correctly pointed out that it is not verifiable. This point is not meant to be verifiable or judged. If the EiCs are not insightful, the journal is bound to suffer. This is almost analogous to leadership. I do not think that you would oppose EiCs demonstrating leadership qualities. Leadership is not a verifiable quality, yet essential on the part of EiCs. I hope that you would agree. Diptanshu 💬 14:46, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The insightfulness is itself unverifiable. I don't think it desirable to ask for unverifiable attributes of anybody or anything. Argument by analogy merely introduces further concepts to the discussion, making it more complex but without resolving the matter under discussion. I oppose. Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 15:10, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I reviewed the following policies and found parameters that are not really verifiable.

Wikimedia Foundation Code of Conduct

1. Treat other people with respect - Respective is not a verifiable parameter. It is subjective. Nevertheless, it is indispensible.

1.. aim to be honest and ethical in their dealings with each other - Essential, but what are the parameters to verify that it is actually in place?

Wikimedia Foundation Code of Conduct of the Board of Trustees

1. Work professionally - Essential. But do parameters need to be defined? Can ALL parameters actually be defined? But is it verifiable? May be.

1.. ..respectfully, ..according to the highest ethical standards, ..strong relationships - Verifiable parameters? Are parameters defined for each of them?

4. Act with care - Is care a verifiable parameter? Very important clause nevertheless.

I think that it would be really good if the parameters of a 'Code of Conduct' are verifiable but that is rather a secondary consideration. Nobody is trying to pull down somebody else by citing that they have not adhered to this clause and here is the parametric proof that you are not compliant. Rather, a Code of Conduct forms the common platform on people would stand together to work in unison. Point me if I am wrong. Diptanshu 💬 04:43, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Introductory comments by Mark

• Thank you for your work on this Diptanshu--and for sending me an email asking for my feedback. (That's an effective method for soliciting feedback or peer review.) :-) ... QUESTION: I have read COPE's Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, in the past and I read it again today. You indicated that COPE requires that we develop our own Code of Conduct, in addition to agreeing to follow COPE's Code of Conduct. Is that correct? I ask because I could not find such a requirement on the COPE website.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 20:43, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Introduction to Questions raised by Mark

I don't think any of these questions represent areas of urgent concern, but I figure it's better to ask questions when they occur, as opposed to relying on my memory. ;o)

My questions are about the text in italics. Thanks!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Mark, I will try to address the issues as best as I can. Diptanshu 💬 14:19, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

1.2 Code of Conduct of the Board members ... 4. Commit to transparency. ... Make all Board records available publicly, unless they should be private.

This item is identical to the discussion at Talk:WikiJournal User Group#Public citability of board discussions. To avoid unnecessary duplication let further discussion take place as a part of the point below.

Where do we (or where will we) differentiate between public and private records? In other words, how do I (or any participant) know that a record should be public or private?   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

My proposal is:

• A Wikimedia mailing list be created specifically for the participation of the board members of the respective WikiJournal. The membership would be restricted to the board members only. However, as in meta:Affiliations Committee#contact-us, outsiders would be able to write directly to the group. Outsiders would be free to view the discussions as in this, this, or this, with the proceedings fully transparent visible to public as in case of that of Wikimedia board.
• The ease of participation of the board members will remain exactly the same as on current date. As of today, they participate by writing emails to and responding to emails from a google group email. After the updates, they would do it in exactly same way by replacing the @googlegroups.com email address with a @lists.wikimedia.org email address.
• The board email id on googlegroups would remain active but its use would be limited to only the issues which come under the purview of the confidentiality guideline which is still to be formed.
• Unless submission related issues or issues like double blinding specifically require the issues to be confidential, all other issues are to remain public. However, explicit guidelines on confidentiality requirements are still to be defined. Diptanshu 💬 14:19, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree that we should aim for greater transparency. The majority of board emails pertain to organising peer reviews and possible author invites, which will have to remain confidential for the time being. However strategy / ideas / policy etc discussions can be moved on-wiki as much as possible. Possible downsides of introducing another mailing list are that the wrong ones end up used accidentally. It would lead to three mailing lists per journal plus one for wikijournals as a whole. A better solution may be greater use of the journal discussion pages for strategy and summary of email chain discussions. A downside is that wiki discussion pages are aweful to use, however we may be able to get FLOW installed (either on selected pages on Wikiversity or if WikiJournals become a sister project. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Dear Thomas, I appreciate your point that having yet another mailing list might be a burden. Rather, what I propose is that:

• The current board-specific email list @googlegroups.com email address be replaced with a @lists.wikimedia.org email address. This is to act as the default list.
• This will initiate a confusion about what to do with the sensitive/confidential emails. In that case, only those can be posted on the board-specific @googlegroups.com email address, or some other fresh email list that has 'confidential' appended to the name. That should clear any confusion about where to post what.
• A policy document can be prepared about what exactly is to be deemed confidential, and what not. Let us reserve it for now.
• The mass email list pertaining to wikijournals is an announcement list as of now and there should not be any confusion with that. So far, WikiJournals have not been able to strategically utilize the involvement of enthusiasts who are outside the board (that includes the associate editors).
• I am unaware of 'FLOW' and would have to look it up. However, people here prefer mailing lists and therefore that might not be a substitute but a value add-on.

In short, if executed properly, I doubt if there would be any confusion at all. Mental bias to stick to the existing system is an entirely different issue altogether and my proposal is unable to cater to it. Diptanshu 💬 04:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

WJM Board email list 2018

Dear Thomas, with the year coming to an end could you please give us the exact figure on number of discussions that have taken place in the year (a month by month figure would be more preferable but can be avoided if inconvenient). This can easily be done by opening the homepage of the board specific google groups and counting the number of threads manually (assuming each thread to be an independent discussion). I guess that there would be many. I would be glad if you could also give us the figure about how many among them relate specifically to submissions (assumably confidential) and their editorial consideration. In case you are busy, may be you can involve some other board member who is not so taken up at the moment. Delegating the task should not be hard. Do let me know in case you think that I am asking for too much details. Diptanshu 💬 07:15, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

From 2018-05-30 to 2019-01-19 there were 78 email threads on the WikiJSci board mailing list. 34 contained confidential information, 16 contained information that was summarised and made public on the relevant discussion pages, 14 contained information that could sensibly be publicly summarised but wasn't, 14 contained trivial notifications (such as new notifications of new editor applications). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

The boards are currently aiming to meet via conference call once per month (with a likely reduction in frequency later in the year). Minutes of these meetings are being published here. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:57, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo) for the information on the nature of email transaction between the board members of Wiki.J.Sci in the given time span. This is slightly different from what I had asked for. I had asked how many of them concerned article submissions while you have listed what you have considered confidential information. Nevertheless, that indeed gives an idea. I am providing herewith the screenshot of search results for wjmboardgooglegroups.com from my own mailbox showing the list of email transactions between Wiki.J.Med board members between 15 January 2018 and 21 December 2018. The list of sender and participants has been clipped because some members might not like to have the information revealed. This list of the topics of 100 emails is marked to show that only 6 of the emails (6% - marked in red) are pertaining to submitted articles and that 9 others (9% - marked in black) can loosely be considered confidential. In fact, it needs to be considered what exactly is to be classified as confidential and how exactly they can be left out if the list if the list were to be public. If the issue regarding the revelation of the public identity of the board members can be sorted out, and if double-blinding of identities of both the authors and reviewers is accepted and arranged for, with the participation in discussion on submitted articles being limited to board members only, it may perhaps be discussed/argued whether even the threads concerning editorial decision on the submitted articles can occur in a publicly listed group. Regarding the handful of emails that contain sensitive information, I think they would be rather easy to deal with if we have guidelines in place. Diptanshu 💬 11:35, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo) Could you please elaborate the details of the nature or segregation of the items that made the 34 emails confidential. I mean to ask what exactly did they contain. Also, could you specify how many of these were related to specific submissions and for others that do not meet this criteria, what sort of information did they contain? Diptanshu 💬 13:25, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

1.3 Code of Conduct of the Editors in Chief ... 4. Maintain transparency. Keep processes open unless confidential.

As above, we should provide some differentiation or explanation here, or perhaps reference another document that explains which processes are confidential.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

As per discussion for the preceding point. A separate guideline indeed needs to delineate which issues are confidential and which are not. Diptanshu 💬 14:23, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Quality control: Issue raised by Mark

1.2 Code of Conduct of the Board members ... 6. Maintain standards. Have quality control measures in place.

Do we have these now, or do we need to develop them?   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

We have some. A lot many need to be developed. This Code of Conduct guideline is an attempt to do the same. More is needed. Diptanshu 💬 14:25, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Quality control is more in the field of the editorial guidelines and publication ethics. I think that this document should focus on interpersonal interactions so as to avoid duplication, but should definitely include the relevant links. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Y Done Sounds good to me. :O)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 05:04, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Civility guide

I think it is probably reasonable to have some sort of civility guide, since WikiJournals are trying a very community-driven way of being a publishing house. One thing I think will need to be reflected is that participants are volunteers, and their time availability will vary as will their primary area of engagement. For a journal, there are vital or time-sensitive tasks so it is sometimes necessary to compel someone else to act. However this should be in proportion to the context. It will also be good to reduce participant burnout. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:14, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Record of trimmed bits

There are a few items that I think are over-specific for a CoC, or more relevant to bylaws or publication ethics. I'll list them here in case people prefer to re-include them in the CoC. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:35, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

• Develop mechanisms for authors to appeal editorial decisions
• Apply for funding when needed
• ...including the Conflict of Interest Policy (was in section also listing following publication ethics policy)
• Adopt systems for detecting plagiarism

I didn't notice that anything had been trimmed, so that tells me it was a good trimmin'. ;-) (What you (T.Shafee) write makes sense.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 05:07, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Concerns regarding self-serving nature of the draft

While there is a need to further strengthen the code of conduct, I cannot support it at this moment on the grounds that it was laid out by the editor who was found to be rude and incivil towards other WikiJournal participants. It's quite ironic that the person suggesting to amend the code of conduct was the same individual who was already found, by WikiJournal community, to have violated Harassment and discrimination of the existing code of conduct. I fear that a lot of his involvement is self-serving. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:04, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, there is nothing personal about ones' contributions to collaborative and open access projects. So, I humbly request you to avoid judging it by who proposed the improvisation and whether the improvisation is actually credible. If you are apprehensive that this improvisation is 'self-serving' you need to justify how exactly it could serve my personal interests instead of that of the greater WikiJournal. I would humbly request you to be practical and to be able to look at the greater picture. Diptanshu 💬 12:01, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, thanks for beautifully illustrating an example of the significance of double blinding (screening the name of the author and reviewer during the review process). You affirm that your review has been affected by your anticipation about the author. @Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: please take a note. Diptanshu 💬 12:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, you are perhaps worried about conflict of interest (COI). In fact, you might not realise but your act of opposing the proposal also counts as a COI since you were a major contributor to the act of labelling me, proposing my removal and also in voting for it. I understand that you are only trying to be over-cautious and have nothing against me or the proposal. Moreover, I am no longer the only author of the document. Please check the edit history of the document and you will find that the document has been evaluated by two independent credible editors and they have cumulatively made more edits to the document than I have. You too are free to review the document (I strongly insist) and make amends that you feel justified. But please do not summarily reject the proposal based on a parameter outside those of concern. You might not realise but it could count as discimination (judging a book by its cover is an act of discrimination and should be avoided). Diptanshu 💬 12:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Avoid accusatory language

"Avoid accusatory language" is a case in point: If someone, just to pick an example repeatedly harasses other participants, then it is necessary to point out the inappropriateness of that behavior. Putting "avoid accusatory language" would give the person who is misbehaving a chance for wiki-lawyering against such justified censure. And putting "accusatory language" in the same category as "hate speech" makes thing that much worse. Similar "Avoid any intention to harm, derogate, or destroy someone's creation, prestige, reputation or self-esteem. Avoid statements that are not constructive or can be hurtful." - that conflicts with the need for clear words, and for setting boundaries, in case of someone misbehaving. And contrary to what is written here, I believe it is an important function of the board to step in on occasions where it is necessary. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Dear Markus, in case you wanted to indicate that I have tried to 'repeatedly' harass other participants, I would humbly request you to provide the evidence (here) that such a thing has happened at all. I am not aware of such a happening. My words had been harsh to one participant at one point of time but on realising that I did apologise and that too with full ingenuity. What I was not ok with is that it had given the justification to certain members to be rash to me on such a ground. My reluctance to accept this made things worse. I did notice a number of irregularities on the part of a number of board members and I did not want that to go on. That was the impetus for me to create a 'Code of Conduct'. I was certain that had such a 'Code of Conduct' been in place, those members would not have been able to show those unacceptable behaviors and no fuss would have resulted. I may be wrong but I have felt a certain degree of aggression in your words. Perhaps you can soften down a bit (more).

Markus, I would request you to spare 3.22 mins of your time in checking the Reviewing Expert tip video https://publons.com/media/academy/videos/tips/M4_Ethics_Hames.mp4 (if the video does not play, you can click the download button on the lower right). It stresses upon the use neutral non-accusatory language while reporting probable misconduct. It is possible that some of the existing editorial board members are unaware of this ethical consideration. Diptanshu 💬 14:02, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

While my example certainly was inspired by cases I have witnessed, including but certainly not restricted to several inappropriate e-mails from you, I was making a general point that I believe to be valid. Please do not try to make this about you personally; that would be quite inappropriate in and of itself. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 15:20, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Inappropriate e-mails from me? Please care to furnish them. I did include you in the recipient list when I sent out emails to eminent external persons when I requested them to review the 'Code of conduct' document that I had prepared. The emails were also copied to the EiCs and they would know if there was anything inappropriate in those emails. Please care to substantiate your claim. Else, this is accusatory and therefore unsupportable. @Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: please take note. EiCs, please care to clarify your stand on the act being accusatory. If it is ok with you, I would care to ask COPE if it sounds ok to them. Diptanshu 💬 15:52, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

"[I]nappropriate e-mails" refer to those e-mails that played a part in the run-up to your proposed removal from the WikiJournal of Medicine (WJM) editorial board, in short: to the same incident that you yourself have referred to elsewhere in this discussion. But again, I was making a general point, not addressing your case specifically, and would welcome any comments you have on my more general argument. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:28, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposed removal did not occur due to me sending any inappropriate emails to you but since discussing it would deviate from the original issue in discussion, I would leave the issue. All I would add is that any amount of inappropriateness you detect on a participant's behaviour (speaking generally) does not give you the right to be accusatory. There are better ways to convey the point you want to raise.

Coming to the issue of why a code of conduct is needed, I have already discussed it in response to a question raised earlier by Mark. If you have any issues, please raise it there. If you need to know if the participants need any code of conduct at all, I guess the answer does is obviously an yes. Let me add that the commotion that lead to my removal would not have resulted if a Code of conduct was in place (and if people followed it). In the given event, my act of responding authoritatively to Kai (based on her tone which I considered inappropriate) gave others the freedom to respond authoritatively and in unsupportable ways. I have seen their attitude to continue and this affects the overall culture at WikiJournals. Having a Code of conduct (and people following it) will ensure that people act in ways that are supportable in accordance to the culture of WikiJournal and Wikimedia movement. Diptanshu 💬 01:14, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I think it is best to discuss the issues of a CoC separately to the board dismissal case. As to the inclusion of an 'accusatory language' clause, I think that it would likely be counterproductive to discourage people from pointing out harassment when observed. I think that a more useful approach is to focus on the reporting framework as in e.g. the Mozilla CoC framework. As to the dismissal, I think it has been discussed in sufficient depth to know where the different participants stand on it. I hope that a CoC that outlined expected behaviour would prevent such cases arising in future, and at least provide a framework for dealing with it (expanding on the existing reporting system that was used). The dismissal was determined to be the result of your actions in emails, not to the those of the others involved. Any further discussion of that element can be done in a thread separate to his to prevent the perception that a CoC is being written to exonerate you. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:51, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Thomas, let me give a representative scenario. If I said 'you are selectively avoiding addressing the issues I raise' I would have been making accusatory comments, same as 'I accuse you of selectively avoiding addressing the issues I raise'. Now, the evidence has not yet not been considered in such a case and so if I jump to conclusions I could possibly be wrong. Instead, if I say, 'I am apprehensive that the issues I raise are not being answered', I have raised the point but have not been accusatory. Your response and/or evaluation of evidence would be enough to clarify if the claim is valid. Using accusatory language automatically creates an impression that the prior assumption is true/correct, especially because the person making the assumption is assumably credible, and because people are usually busy, they start looking from the point where the assumption was made, essentially stepping into the bias and taking it forward. The Wikipedia principle 'Assume good faith' or my proposed 'avoid accusatory language' work in the same direction to avoid the negative bias that gets inadvertently introduced. An accusatory perspective says 'guilty till proven innocent'. 'Assume good faith' or my proposed 'avoid accusatory language' says 'Innocent until proven guilty'.

Use of accusations also have a defamatory effect. This defamation might not 'always' be acceptable. Furthermore, there should have been no problem if accusations essentially meant that they were correct. Most often accusations go without evidence base and promote mob-like behaviour in the process. The accusations need to be investigated first and there remains a chance that the accusations are found to lack a sound basis. If still it is felt that it is ok to be accusatory, WikiJournal and/or its accusatory participants should remain prepared to be sued. Use of accusations thus can give rise to the possibility of things backfiring. I think that you would accept that the given event has created additional botherations for you or the other board members that you would possibly have not faced had it been otherwise. In fact, you can face even worse if it is felt that it is ok to 'accuse'. I stress upon the role of 'fact finding and not fault finding'. Diptanshu 💬 13:19, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Forgive and forget

Split from previous point to respond specifically to this issue... "Forgive and forget" falls into the same category. Why? Creating an atmosphere in which participants can participate in discussion without fear of harassment could require that, say, a serial harasser be banned for a prolonged period of time or, if the behavior persists, indefinitely. Actions have consequences, and an indiscriminate "forgive and forget" would enable serial harassers to persist in their misbehaviour. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Markus, you might have realised but I have faced repeated unacceptable behavior from a number of board members following one unacceptable action of mine (for which I have already made amends and have humbly apologised). Perhaps you have not realised but I have taken care to promote an interview wherein more than one of the board members who exhibited such unacceptable behaviour were contributors. I did it by 'forgiving and forgetting' because that was in the best interest of the project I love. It was dismal when I did not see the same on their part and when they continue to act in hurtful manner. It is interesting that they rather choose to call me a 'repeat harasser' without even being able to reflect upon themselves. This should not be the case. Forgive and forget is an accepted principle on Wikipedia. I think the considerations should be the same here. Diptanshu 💬 14:14, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Please do not misrepresent the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Forgive and forget is an essay, that is, the personal opinion of one particular editor. As it stands, it is neither a Wikipedia policy nor a guideline, and there is nothing to indicate it is a generally "accepted principle," as you claim. I am also dismayed to note that your work on a Code of Conduct seems to be, to a significant degree, an attempt to impose guidelines that you will then specifically use to attempt to vindicate yourself vis a vis board members whom you believe to have wronged you. I am still waiting to hear a convincing reason why we should spend time on, and introduce, a Code of Conduct; this would be an example of a particularly unconvincing one. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 15:20, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I admit that I was wrong in stating Forgive and forget to be a policy. However, as I know, although this principle or rather essay, is authored by a person, it is followed by many. I think that it is inline with Wikipedia principles and helps in averting a battleground mentality. I could be wrong. Diptanshu 💬 02:03, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Take responsibility

Split from previous point to respond specifically to this issue... I could not find most of the statements of the "Take responsibility" item, which is supposed to be either from the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, in either source. Please remove the misleading underlining, and restrict the underlining to those parts that are indeed found in those sources. I also find putting the exhortation to participate and volunteer as much as possible in a Code of Conduct unusual, to say the least. The degree of participation of an individual contributor will depend significantly on his or her external circumstances. We should not censure those who, due to their external circumstances, have less time than others. This wording comes close to that kind of censure. What I would like to see added, on the other hand, is an exhortation to keep things brief, and to respect others' limited time. Precisely because time is limited, voluminous e-mail discussions, e-mails that are not strictly necessary or are sent to a broader target audience than necessary should be avoided. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Markus, thanks for taking the time and pain to read through the document, for critically evaluating it, and for taking the time and pain to write down the issues. Before I answer your concerns I would like to hear the opinion of @Chiswick Chap, Markworthen, and علاء: on the issues you have raised. However, in case you have missed, in addition to Take responsibility which is the 4th clause/point of Code of Conduct of WikiJournal participants (the scope of which automatically extends to the editorial boards as well as the EiCs), there is Be accountable which is the 13th clause/point of Code of Conduct of the Board members. Diptanshu 💬 13:30, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Participate in as many discussions as possible

Split from previous point to respond specifically to this issue... In fact, on the part of the board Code of Conduct, "Participate in as many discussions as possible" is counterproductive for a similar reason. On the contrary, people should not participate in discussion just for discussion's sake. They should participate when they have something to say. This is not about who can chalk up the highest word-count in discussions. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Markus for pointing out. I did not mean that members would participate in a discussion just for discussion's sake. I just meant that they should participate in as many discussions they found relevant to their scope. Could you please help in rewording it so that it can effectively convey what I meant? Diptanshu 💬 14:23, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Support all stakeholders in the Wikimedia projects

Split from previous point to respond specifically to this issue... In some respects, the current Code of Conduct seems much too broad. E.g. "support all stakeholders in the Wikimedia projects" - why, when this is about WikiJournals? That seems to be *much* too broad for what is needed for the WikiJournals. This kind of unrealistically broad scope actually weakens such a code of conduct. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Markus, your point is valid. Please help in suggesting a better representation that can be accepted. Inviting others to put in their inputs. Diptanshu 💬 14:28, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Ensure freedom of expression

Split from previous point to respond specifically to this issue... When it comes to "Ensure freedom of expression", I am not sure why this is brought up in this particular context. Serving as a bulletin group, or newsgroup, is not a purpose of the WikiJournals, and certainly not a purpose of the supporting infrastructure of mailing lists and discussion pages. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

External review

Review by Dr. Harinder Pal Singh Kalra , Vice Chair, International Steering Committee, UNESCO-facilitated Global Alliance for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy (GAPMIL); Member of the Advisory Board, Open Access Indonesia (OAId); General Secretary, Indian Association of Teachers of Library and Information Science (IATLIS); Governing Body Member, Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres (IASLIC); Member of the Working Group, Open Access India (OAI); and Professor and Head of the Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Education and Information Science, Punjabi University, Patiala 147002 Punjab (India)
These assessment comments were submitted on 16 Jan 2019, and refer to this previous version of the article

The Code of Conduct developed by you is broadly ok, but a few points are suggested for your consideration:

1. At a few places, there is some repetition and the points need to be simplified, particularly in the Code of Conduct of the Board members

2. The sub-headings should be "Code of Conduct for ---" rather than "Code of Conduct of ----"

3. The order of sub-headings Code of Conduct of [for] --- should be in reverse order, starting with --- Editors in Chief, then ---- Board Members, and then ---- Participants.

4. There should be a mechanism for reporting violations of the code.

5. In spite of all the issues raised in naming of WikiJournal, I think the term Wiki in the title of the journal is inappropriate, more so because it is the starting word. Other ways need to be explored for informing one and all that tech and other support for starting this and other Wiki journals came from the Wikimedia Foundation.

With best wishes.

Harinder

Conflicts of interest: None declared

Response

Dear Dr. Kalra

Thank you for taking the trouble to review the document. I am forwarding your response (along with) to the editors in chief and other associated persons for their consideration.

Thanks again for your cooperation.

Regards

Diptanshu

Thank you to Kalra for these notes. We have now also engaged the WMF community safety team along with a working group from the joint editorial boards to produce the next draft of a CoC over the coming months (meeting notes). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:18, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Public citability of board discussions

The board members of the respective journals serve an important purpose of taking strategic decisions on issues pertaining to the journals. This is identical to what board members of various organisations do. Under normal circumstances, the board members meet from time to time and each time the 'minutes of meeting' are documented so that they can be publicly cited. The board discussions on WikiJournal boards is therefore equivalent to the 'minutes of meeting' of the board discussions of a public body and therefore need to be citable. However, on WikiJournal boards the discussions take place through closed googlegroups and the contents of such discussions are not publicly citable. So, apart from the participants of the discussions (the board members) nobody else knows if the decisions were neutral or biased. If need be, there is no clear policy about how such discussions can be cited if necessary. I had earlier proposed that the discussions be shifted to a wikimedia mailing list of which only the board members of the respective journal would be part, but the board members have not been eager to do so since they have become used to a particular way of communication. Perhaps they failed to realise that just the email address for sending the mails would change, the rest would just remain the same. However, there are certain issues that need to be kept in mind before a strategic decision is made. I will mention them below.

• Wikimedia way - Wikimedia groups are essentially open and collaborative. WikiJournals being hosted on Wikimedia platform, the same should be applicable to them. Transparency pertaining to the board discussions is therefore very essential unless a specific confidential issue is being dealt with. Even in such a case, there should be a clear policy on the matter.
• Confidential issues - For issues wherein it might not be appropriate to disclose sensitive information publicly, a tag of confidentiality may be attached to the subject of the respective threads and they may be selectively posted on the closed googlegroups till additional features are developed to meet the purpose on Wikimedia mailing lists (possibly would require the status of a sister project first).
• Real names vs pseudonyms - In contrast to Wikimedia usernames which can be pseudonyms, usually the board members are needed to furnish their real names and credentials. Nevertheless, if they want, the real identity can be kept confidential. In such a case, regarding the public citability of the board discussions, a clear policy needs to be delineated about norms of referring to each person.
• Change of names - In case a person subsequently wants to be known by a different name, the same may be approved publicly by the EiCs, making sure that the new name does not overlap with that of an existing user.
• Accountability - Each member must be accountable for the statements they make. Theirfore, their statements should be obligatorily attached to the name of the person (may even be a short-name or abbreviation, but uniquely defined for the person beforehand). I think that one person should not be able to use multiple names but a clear policy needs to be defined.
• Rights - The respective persons are the authors of each statement they make on the board discussions at the respective WikiJournas. Open licensing is supposed to apply to each such works of authorship when it occurs on the Wikimedia platform. So, I doubt if they should be allowed to restrain any statements made on WikiJournal boards from being publicly cited. Nevertheless, as stated in the previous statements, the statements made by a particular person should be attributed to the respective name/pseudonym that person is pre-decided to bear.
• Citability and 'other' people in question - Irrespective of other arrangements, a board member should be able to cite their own communication if they need to. If the discussion involves other people, using their pre-determined name should automatically clear the requirement of any permissions from the respective persons. On the other hand, if a board member needs to cite the communication of some other person, they should be free to do so as per the reasons above.
• Archivability and future availability - The decisions and discussions of the board members today should be archivable so that future participants and/or board members may be able to look up the discussions if need be. This may only be partially feasible if the discussions remain outside the scope of Wikimedia platforms.

I welcome a discussion and policy determination on the matter. Diptanshu 💬 18:21, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

I agree that participants should post online whenever possible, and I'll try to do so myself. It is also possible to link to email entries in the public groups. Board emails, on the other hand, will practically need to be assumed to be meant for the recipients only, and confidential to even other email lists. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 10:14, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Mikael, if the abstract of a paywalled article is available to be read freely, I would need to ask whether you would consider such a publication to be Open Access. I guess that the answer would be a no. In such a case, I hope that you would understand that the operations of WikiJournal (boards) in the present condition cannot be considered as transparent as in Open Access. In other words, it does not seem to share the philosophy it embodies.

Mikael, could you please explain how the operations of the editorial boards is supposed to be different from the operations of the Wikimedia Foundation board? Contrary to your belief, they are committed to transparency and their operations are clean and auditable by any external person. If you think that the board operations need to remain under a veil, and if you feel that board members should not be held accountable for what they do and say, please care to justify your stand. You may perhaps differ with me, but I feel that the discussions on WikiJournal boards essentially comes under two categories, ones that contain sensitive information of some sort, and the ones that do not. In case of the latter I see no reason for those discussions not to be transparent. I think that public accountability would ensure that the board members behave responsibly and that would be in the best interest for the project. A clear policy can be defined (can be an internal policy) about what can be considered sensitive information and not to be shared publicly. I am apprehensive that without public accountability the WikiJournal project would lack the credibility to eventually become a Wikimedia sister project.

In the rare event that an editorial decision is challenged (which should be permissible in accordance to the guidelines of COPE), Mikael, if the board discussions are non-transparent, how would you let permit the matter to be escalated to the next level, whatever be the next level?

Mikael, I see no board participation in the above discussion. Could you please explain the reason? In case you feel this discussion to be unimportant for the operation of WikiJournals, please feel free to say so. If you would think the discussion not to be unimportant, please clarify why the board members are not with you in this matter.

Mikael, I assume that you have made the above comments in your personal capacity and not in your official capacity. Please care to discuss with the other EiCs (and may be the boards as well) and provide a joint stand on the matter. Feel free to answer the other questions (as above) in your individual capacity. Diptanshu 💬 17:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: and @Ozzie10aaaa:, I would like to hear your stand on the matter. Diptanshu 💬 17:15, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: In case Mikael is currently unable to answer the above, the other EiCs can definitely answer. In case they too cannot, perhaps their assistants can take up the task. Diptanshu 💬 13:31, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Just a note to say that this is still on the radar. It may be a while to get round to whilst other aspects are being discussed first. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:26, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström, Evolution and evolvability, and Fransplace: Perhaps the matter is still on radar. Perhaps it is not. I do not know how to make sure. So I thought of asking. By the way, irrespective of whether the matter is on radar, I would like the EiCs to jointly try to answer the questions I had raised for Mikael (as above). Diptanshu 💬 06:54, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I do not doubt that the EiCs (and the rest of the boards) are busy but I am keen to learn what exactly keeps them busy? In this section T.Shafee has indicated that "The majority of board emails pertain to organising peer reviews and possible author invites, which will have to remain confidential for the time being." I might be wrong but as I understand, there are a handful of submissions, each of which are being dealt with by a particular peer-review coordinator. This should leave most other board members free to participate in the discussions here (on-wiki). But I see very limited activity. May be that they are participating in other discussions (not directly pertaining to specific submissions) within the closed google group(s). In such a case can these discussions not take place transparently on a wikimedia mailing list as I have indicated in that section? Diptanshu 💬 06:54, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Excepting the answers to the questions above please let further discussion occur at Talk:WikiJournal User Group#1.2 Code of Conduct of the Board members ... 4. Commit to transparency. ... Make all Board records available publicly, unless they should be private.

Thomas, could you please try to answer the questions I had raised for Mikael. I would be glad if you try to answer ALL of them. Diptanshu 💬 13:02, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Thomas, just to check whether you had responded somewhere else and I did not know. Or may be it was missed. Or may be it is still on the radar. It is ok if you are occupied with other things. In an email to select private recipients you had said that responses to my queries are not ignored. I would also like to believe that in another email thread to private recipients my call for action involving this issue was not conveniently ignored. Diptanshu 💬 12:02, 22 March 2019 (UTC)