Yet another scientific journal seminar

I have been giving seminar on electronic journal publishing since 2005 while I was still with Elsevier. The activity has become regular now, even though I am not with Elsevier anymore. The forthcoming seminar will again at Airlangga University, Surabaya (Indonesia) on June 4th and 5th, 2008.

The topic for the first day will be ‘Citation Index and Impact Factor’ while for the second day will be ‘The Marketing Mix in Scientific Journal Publishing.’ Actually the materials are improvements from similar topics from November 2007 seminar, with more materials included on the PowerPoint presentation rather than online. I also differentiate ‘marketing’ into ‘input marketing’ and ‘output marketing.’

Indonesian ISPs Blocking YouTube (and How to Get Over It)

To my disappointment, Indonesian ISPs at the end blocking YouTube and other sites hosting the controversial film ‘Fitna’ from the right-wing Dutch politician Geertz Wilders. A sign of lack of understanding of Indonesian officials (or should I call it stupidity and ignorance?)

My education sharing website - www.edu2000.org - is certainly badly affected since many of its contents are derived from YouTube contents. Why should we throw away the whole truck of apples for only one or two rotten ones?

Luckily using proxy server this issue can be easily solved. You just have to install one of the software connecting to such server (such as SlipStream which can be downloaded here: http://www.tqci.net/dialer/SS_Installer.exe and install the software. During installation, the software would ask for username and password, which is username and password provided by your ISP.

Fill them in and that’s it! Magically you enjoy YouTube (and www.edu2000.org) again.

Electronic Journal Hosting

I have been toying around with electronic journal hosting initiative for some time. Once we planned to set jurnaldigital.com with some commercial model, then the idea of Indonesian online dissertation and theses (similar with PQDT - ProQuest Dissertation and Theses).

None of them are easy. Both are challenges.

Indonesian scientific journals are published mostly by universities as part of their three pilars of function, and hence, very much for the sake of Higher Education General Directorate’s accreditation. This would include minimum printrun of 300 copies (yes! print!) with 300 subscribers (must have proof of receipt shown!).

Electronic journals? It’s just web site companion of the print version, at its best. Airlangga University has tried to go beyond that, but it still has a long way to go.

As for Online Dissertation and Theses, the main stumbling block is ownership of the papers. Libraries are not willing to let their dissertation and theses collection out of their premises. At best they give online access to the full texts using a special reader that would prohibit the files to be downloaded. This is the case with Petra Christian University, Surabaya. The others? You’re lucky to be able to browse the titles, but not the abstracts (let alone full texts).

At the end of this exhaustive search for some business model, we have decided to:

1. Postpone the Online Dissertation and Theses initiative and work with libraries in promoting OAI (Open Archive Initiative) instead. This would be in form of seminar, workshop or training for librarians or university’s IT personnels. Petra Christian University (Surabaya) and Atma Jaya University (Jakarta) has shown some interest and we may have the first seminar in January 2008.

2. Establish online journal hosting as a free service, as an extension to existing businesses. My colleague from Graha Ilmu Publisher will have http://jurnaldigital.com (which I planned to be in but not at the end) and myself will have Discovery Indonesia Journal Hosting (http://journal.discoveryindonesia.com). Both beta versions are available for browsing). I’m lucky to have my first hosted journal from Surabaya (Berkala Penelitian Hayati - Journal of Biological Researches) and soon another one from Bogor (Jurnal Teknologi & Industri Pangan - Food Science & Technology Journal).

Loosely related to this is my initiative for education materials hosting and sharing, which idea can be read from http://www.edu2000.org (Sorry folks! This site is Bahasa Indonesia only) and the archive of the late Neotek magazine (http://www.neotek.co.id). I might soon prepare a searchable repository for this archive. It might be part of edu2000.org initiative.

The book on book as visioned in 1932

There is an interesting posting at Eoin Purcell’s Blog:
http://eoinpurcellsblog.com/2007/08/19/information-the-long-now/

Those who think that we’re very modern and digital should think again. The old concept of currently digital publishing on the Internat has been visioned in this book on book which was published in 1932.

International Journal Management Training

I have just got confirmation today that I and my colleague from HK will be the speakers at the forthcoming seminar that will be conducted by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Higher Education. The seminar program will be held at Twin Plaza Hotel (Slipi, West Jakarta) on September 7-9, 2007 (Friday to Sunday).

The subjects will be about managing international peer-reviewer and business aspects of international journal publishing with some additional sessions on scientific English proficiencies. Most of the sessions will be conducted by my colleague, who has more than one decade experience in international journal editorial issues, while myself will only conduct one session on the business aspects.

We both worked at Elsevier prior to our current assignments. We have conducted several seminar/training sessions together, especially at the Airlangga University. This time our appointment at the general directorate level also come from our good friends from Airlangga University.

I will have the materials from the seminar available from this personal weblog site on due time. Hopefully it will be beneficial to anybody interested in scientific publishing issues.

business-aspects.ppt

JurnalDigital.com

Another digital initiative on digital journal in Indonesia.

After Airlangga University with its own electronic journal platform (http://journal.unair.ac.id/), now Graha Ilmu a privately-owned publisher has started another platform (http://www.jurnaldigital.com/main/). Graha Ilmu was first would like to join the Airlangga University bandwagon but eventually decided to have its own way.

While Airlangga University may have more contents (it has plan to include researches not only from the university but also other Indonesian universities’ journals), this private initiative may have more information about journal publishing itself. The owner of the platform has contacted me and it seems that my article will be one of the first be included at this new electronic platform.

Welcome JurnalDigital.com in this brave new world of digital publishing!