(Note, link is dead: goes to deleted first version of your comment?)
I love the kind of journal you're talking about. Like, maybe, PLoS? the Open-Access Public Library of Science (http://www.plos.org/)
I adore both their principles and what they've done, and how creatively people can use it. Full disclosure: I use it for teaching, such as showing online environmental philosophy students new research on bonobos and baboons that shows that bullying and warfare are *not* our only genetic inheritance. Here's how NY teachers created a multimedia, multi-level lesson plan (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20040413tuesday.html?searchpv=learning_lessons) from The New York Times's article on how baboons stopped some bullies, and the PLoS-Biology articles it draws from.
That particular research is fandom-related, actually, as it compares our purported evolution for self-interest and combat to our equally strong, if overlooked, evolution for cooperation - which fandom's "gift economy" demonstrates. TV and film examples are even the lead-in for the Primer Essay accompanying the research article -- another great PLoS feature. (http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020101)
PLoS Primer Essays would be the sort of thing I hope TWC might consider some parallel to. Somewhat like a good editor's introduction in a book, they are well-written background or overview/review pieces that accompany research and theory articles which might otherwise be so technical in language that they are inaccessible to most readers. Something like this could be very helpful in TWC for those who don't follow (or don't like) the typically dense lit-speak and cultural theory terminology beloved of fandom academics. (As an academic, I use dense idiom too, though the jargon in my field often can't help me penetrate the favored rhetoric and styles of aca-fan-scholars.)
Those 'overviews' or Primers would make TWC articles more usable to news media, as well. It's this feature, I suspect, that has made so much of PLoS's science the darling of newspaper science reporters. It's "pre-translated." ( Here they even blog about their betting on which new article the media will fan the most (http://www.plos.org/cms/node/292).
PLoS blogs, discussion and annotation features, ratings, and trackback make it more fun to use. (I notice, looking at it quickly, that their comments headers include "competing interests" as part of the poster info.)
The OA and good writing also leads to tens of thousands of downloads for some articles, like last week's "Nigersaurus" story. It was on NPR and TV, and all over the internet: PLoS found google links to 583 news reports and 1,855 blog posts (http://www.plos.org/cms/node/291). Now that's impact.
I haven't heard anyone loving the way their comment feature is structured to be separate from the article (http://www.plosone.org/annotation/getCommentary.action;jsessionid=244C680915EE2469702DA93DE3931A08?target=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001230), however. They also have "Reader Response" (letters and replies) but it's separate from both the articles and the comments! (http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=read-response&past_days=360)
Hopefully y'all will share some further details of the journal's online look and format soon. A PLoS editor has one interesting recap of their experiment so far online here (http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020025).
no subject
I love the kind of journal you're talking about. Like, maybe, PLoS? the Open-Access Public Library of Science (http://www.plos.org/)
I adore both their principles and what they've done, and how creatively people can use it. Full disclosure: I use it for teaching, such as showing online environmental philosophy students new research on bonobos and baboons that shows that bullying and warfare are *not* our only genetic inheritance. Here's how NY teachers created a multimedia, multi-level lesson plan (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20040413tuesday.html?searchpv=learning_lessons) from The New York Times's article on how baboons stopped some bullies, and the PLoS-Biology articles it draws from.
That particular research is fandom-related, actually, as it compares our purported evolution for self-interest and combat to our equally strong, if overlooked, evolution for cooperation - which fandom's "gift economy" demonstrates. TV and film examples are even the lead-in for the Primer Essay accompanying the research article -- another great PLoS feature. (http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020101)
PLoS Primer Essays would be the sort of thing I hope TWC might consider some parallel to. Somewhat like a good editor's introduction in a book, they are well-written background or overview/review pieces that accompany research and theory articles which might otherwise be so technical in language that they are inaccessible to most readers. Something like this could be very helpful in TWC for those who don't follow (or don't like) the typically dense lit-speak and cultural theory terminology beloved of fandom academics. (As an academic, I use dense idiom too, though the jargon in my field often can't help me penetrate the favored rhetoric and styles of aca-fan-scholars.)
Those 'overviews' or Primers would make TWC articles more usable to news media, as well. It's this feature, I suspect, that has made so much of PLoS's science the darling of newspaper science reporters. It's "pre-translated." ( Here they even blog about their betting on which new article the media will fan the most (http://www.plos.org/cms/node/292).
PLoS blogs, discussion and annotation features, ratings, and trackback make it more fun to use. (I notice, looking at it quickly, that their comments headers include "competing interests" as part of the poster info.)
The OA and good writing also leads to tens of thousands of downloads for some articles, like last week's "Nigersaurus" story. It was on NPR and TV, and all over the internet: PLoS found google links to 583 news reports and 1,855 blog posts (http://www.plos.org/cms/node/291). Now that's impact.
I haven't heard anyone loving the way their comment feature is structured to be separate from the article (http://www.plosone.org/annotation/getCommentary.action;jsessionid=244C680915EE2469702DA93DE3931A08?target=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001230), however.
They also have "Reader Response" (letters and replies) but it's separate from both the articles and the comments! (http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=read-response&past_days=360)
Hopefully y'all will share some further details of the journal's online look and format soon. A PLoS editor has one interesting recap of their experiment so far online here (http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020025).