WikiJournal User Group/Open questions

WikiJournal User Group
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated

This is a summary of open questions for the WikiJournal format to consider as it evolves. Topics can be discussed at the main WikiJournal User Group discussion page and are summarised here as a centralised repository. These may guide updates and improvements to the editorial guidelines, ethics statement, and bylaws of the journals.

Encouraging submissions

Current guidelines

Authors are currently invited to submit in an ad hoc manner by individual editors. This is either by contacting academics working on a topic that is poorly covered in Wikipedia, or by identifying Wikipedia articles already of high quality and contacting the main contributors. Editorial boards also share a google doc of potential invitations.

Possible actions

Dropping messages on the Talk pages of selected Wikipedia articles, to encourage the authors to submit. Such messages may be based on this template. Or on the Talk pages of their main authors?
Advertisements have been placed in Wikiprojects in the past (example).

Finding peer 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. Reply rate from contacted reviewers varies from approx 4-20%.

Current guidelines

Current editorial guidelines are to contact potential reviewers who have expertise in the topic (e.g. via google scholar and JANE), with a suggested email template.

Possible actions

For some submissions, we could recruit guest editors who would invite reviewers. A guest editor would be an academic specialist of the submission's topic, but may not have a Wikiversity account: all tasks requiring such an account could be done by the regular editors.
We could emphasise "Wikipedia is most read source on topic X, please help bring it up to academic standards" rather than "please review this a paper on topic X" in the email subject.
Collaborate with other journals to 'co-publish' articles, where their editors assist in finding peer reviewers and we advise on Wikipedia-related matters.

Authorship of submissions from Wikipedia

Open questions

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?
What happens if the main authors do not agree between themselves?
What if some authors wish to remain anonymous? Can we have Wikipedia pseudonyms in the list of authors?
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?

Current guidelines

Currently, author names are listed for those who submit the article for peer review, and commit to addressing the reviewers' comments. The ethics statement recommends that all other contributors to the Wikipedia article are attributed as a list via an 'et al' link. Currently all articles need at least one corresponding author to submit the article via authorship declaration form.

Possible actions

Competing article versions

What does a WikiJournal do if two different articles are submitted on the exact same topic?

Current guidelines

Possible actions