ejournals small-group mini-project

Imagine the perfect ejournal

In groups of two, identify a real-life researcher--professor, doctoral student, post-doc--at UI or elsewhere, and informally interview her about her use of electronic journals. How respected or valued are they in her field? How do they compare to print journals? Has perception of them changed in the last few years? Given the opportunity, would she publish in one? What does she like or dislike about the ones she's used? Is she aware of cost or access issues that would make her use easier or more difficult than with print journals?

Now take that person's insight and combine it with your own. Design a ficticious journal in that researcher's field, using her background and insight, information from class, and examples from actual ejournals we've looked at. Make decisions about the features of this journal: pricing, access, preservation, data formats, timing of publication. Also think about what kinds of articles will be contained in the journal: for instance, general to the discipline or specific to a sub-sub-discipline, including material that's been electronically published elsewhere (preprints, archives) or not?

Then--there's always a catch--justify those decisions, keeping the publisher, libraries, and users all in mind. You should also justify features you decide not to include.

Your work will be judged not on the accuracy of your specifications, but rather on the features you choose to consider and on the justifications you provide. Some justifications may be simple ("this is the norm in the discipline") while others may be more complex. You should also provide links to sample ejournals, to show where recommended features have been employed elsewhere. There may be some feature specifications that are totally novel and not yet seen in these examples. That's fine too.

Now take these imagined ejournal specs and create a presentation of them, the equivalent of a couple of pages, in electronic, print, or combination format. As a group, present them to the class on June 21, in five to ten minutes.