The Closing of an Open-Access Journal

[Reid Cornwell]

The open-access journal Innovate, published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University, is ceasing publication, Stephen Downes announced on his blog and a university spokesperson confirmed.

The peer-reviewed online journal focused on how information technology could be used to enhance academic, governmental, and business settings. It was started in 2004 by James L. Morrison, professor emeritus of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and had 76,282 subscribers from 271 countries.

In its last issue, Innovate had stories about creating learning environments in Second Life, approaches to develop quality assurance in online education, and a virtual learning space that allowed for three-dimensional representations of important archaeological sites.

The Closing of an Open-Access Journal
The Chronical of Higher Education
By
Ben Terris

[Reid Cornwell]

I don't know if this is true. I do know that Innovate is an important organ for communicating the impact of technology in education. IMHO, Jim has done an incredible job of making it a fine open-source for scholarly information. If it is true, it will be missed by one person for sure. ME!!

[Claude Almansi]

And by me too.

So sorry, Jim.

Claude

[Claude Almansi]

Oops, only after I posted the reply above, I saw Denise's Lets Top 1000! note:

"We are now the torch bearers for the mission and energy of the recently closed journal Innovate. The work of Ideagora will continue and we encourage all members to invite new members, submit articles and create a Ideagora of action. "

Good idea. Yet Ning networks have one disadvantage: they can't be backed up easily on a computer, and some have rather abruptly disappeared due to spamming activity that went unnoticed by administrators. On the other hand, a WordPress blog can be backed up more easily by administrators, and could be configured to reproduce the original interface of Innovate, as it can still be seen e.g. in this Internate Archive last mirror: http://web.archive.org/web/20080628051755/innovateonline.info/index... . This might be a solution for keeping definitive versions of articles being elaborated here.

Now if you are worried lest you might goof at first using the existing http://innovateblog.wordpress.com/ (which could be revived), you could make a draft blog for free to get used with the admin dashboard. I did that when I started collaborating to the Innovate blog, in order to know what exactly would and wouldn't work on it: http://almansi.wordpress.com, retitled "Bloglillon" for "Blog" and "brouillon", i.e. draft in French.

[Reid Cornwell]

I personal don't buy the notion of failure. On the surface Innovateonline looked like what should be a successful endeavor. It seems that notion is incorrect. I suspect that the demise is not related to the journal itself, but rather peripheral issues. We should conduct a candid post-mortem on the causes for the discontinuence. We should ask for Jim's input.

IMHO, none of the social networking technologies are set up to be an online journal. There are better solutions and alternatives. There is nothing wrong with the Innovateonline technology and a friendly takeover should be investigated. If for no other reason than to capture the goodwill that Jim built. In fact, Innovate is the successor to an earlier effort and technology.

The analysis of the demise will suggest the possibilities for the future.

[Claude Almansi]

A post-coma rather than a post-mortem, I hope. The cause seems likely to be credit restrictions.

I agree with you on social networking not being adapted to an online journal: that's why I suggested reviving the blog. Blogs are far more suitable for that. See The Huffington Post: it's a complex multi-author blog, but a blog all the same.

Now Innovate does not need that kind of complex, fancy layout. The categories/pages previously were:

Log In Sign Up About Contribute Issues Special Board Conferences Innovate-Live Webcasts RSS Contact Us Search

Presently, the only one still online is Issues.

If Innovate were to transfer to http://innovateblog.wordpress.com/ while waiting for either Fischler school or another academic institution to harbor it again, it would be fairly easy to either configurate the tabs at the top to mirror those of the original site the editors would want to keep in this transitional phase. Or to just create categories that could be listed on the right.

Moreover, WordPress allows conferring various levels of authoring, editing and publishing technical privileges to the several participants in a collective blog: See the WP Roles and Capabilities page. So really, it is also suited for a research journal like Innovate. At least as a temporary solution.

[Reid Cornwell]

I am not that familiar with Wordpress and its capabilities.

I am a editor for another journal and I was told about a journal software package that looked pretty good. I have the capacity to host massive database driven applicatios. Some of my colleagues are already talking about a open source publication. It's just talk right now. You are already my friend on the TCFIR blog. Marla Coffey is pressing to do something like this. Why don't you start a conversation with her on this. TCFIR-blog

Reid

[Claude Almansi]

I'm going abroad for a few days but will be back home on Wednesday: will see about TCFIR then.

Quickly: of course if you can host the site, there is no need to use WordPress. I only suggested it because the blog already existed.

As to open source CMS software: see http://www.comecivedi.ch : a cultural site built, written and managed by blind people. They first started with Joomla!, then moved to Drupal. Both are FOSS CMS softwares. My experience with each is limited to authoring, and a quick glimpse in the admin dashboard of a Joomla site. But either would be possible.

Best

Claude

[Reid Cornwell]

Claude,

I am only interested in this if we can take over where Innovate left off. I don't have time to build it from scratch. I talking about readership and history.

Reid

[Silvia Duchi]

Under Open Access philosophy, Redalyc aims to contribute to the editorial scientific activity produced in and about Ibero-America making available for public consultation the contents of 550 scientific journals of different knowledge areas: http://redalyc.uaemex.mx