Proposal: WikiJournal as a sister project

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

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WikiJournal User Group is a publishing group of open-access, free-to-publish, Wikipedia-integrated academic journals. <seo title=" WJM, WikiJMed, Wiki.J.Med., WikiJMed, Wikiversity Journal User Group, WikiJournal WikiMed, Free to publish, Open access, Open-access, Non-profit, online journal, Public peer review "/>

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.

WikiJournal
Proposed logo matches current WMF sister project styles uses 2014 WMF colour palette Current logos of user group and specific journals within the group Flat black version for small icons (including specific journals)
Status of the proposal
Status	under discussion
Details of the proposal
Project description	A site where authors can write their works directly online. The works then undergo independent scholarly peer review before being officially published in the journal. Currently hosted in Wikiversity: WikiJournal User Group, with the three journals WikiJournal of Medicine, WikiJournal of Science, and WikiJournal of Humanities. It is a way of bridging the Wikipedia–academia gap by enabling academics, scholars and professionals to contribute expert knowledge to the Wikimedia movement in the familiar academic publishing format that directly rewards scholars with citable publications. Initial publishing formats include: Reviews (many integrated into Wikipedia), Original research, Case studies, Images/galleries. See also: General landing page | About Wiki.J.Med. | About Wiki.J.Sci. | About Wiki.J.Hum.
Is it a multilingual wiki?	Many language versions
Potential number of languages	Initially English, eventually many
Proposed tagline	Open-access peer-reviewed academic journals with no publication costs.
Proposed URL	Current: hosted within Wikiversity with links from: www.wikijmed.org www.wikijsci.org www.wikijhum.org Proposed: wikijournal(s).org / journal(s).wikimedia.org / journal(s).wiki.org / j.wiki
Technical requirements
New features to require	A number of unique features will be useful: Updated and prioritised technical requirements list at this location Original technical requirements list It should be possible to categorize users as authors, editors, and/or peer reviewers. Separate namespaces for articles yet to be peer-reviewed, equivalent to Wikipedia's Draftspace, e.g. Draft: or Preprint: or equivalent. (Currently stored in category and as list) Some way of automatically numbering figures with [[file:...]] formatting (currently done in the {{fig}} template). VisualEditor-compatible insertion of cross-references to figures Possibly have the option to make certain pages viewable by only author and specified editors, to allow re-submission to other journals if rejected by a WikiJournal (Currently, confidential works emailed to submissionswikijmedorg). However most journals now accept submissions from preprints. Preferably there should be an option to have restricted viewer access to some files, discussions, and user identities (e.g., anonymous peer-reviewers). Simple on-wiki forms for users with no wikimarkup experience, and automated editing post-wiki: submission of articles ready for review (google form) submission of peer reviewer comments (google form) submission of editorial board application (markup) Automated features based on wikidata and/or bots synchronisation of article info template on main and talk pages of the tracking sheets when reviewer comments submitted metadata-submission to crossref of accepted articles addition of accepted articles to the current volume&issue XML annotation of articles in the JATS format addition of published articles into Wikidata transclusion/import/export with Wikipedia formatting of accepted articles into a specific PDF format (currently done manually via copy-paste to a DOCX template, which is then saved as a PDF. Another option could be to use the WikiMedia infrastructure as a content sink and generate on demand other formats like docx, odt, LaTeX from the wiki syntax (e.g. via PanDoc or MediaWiki PDF-export function). Requires e.g. two-column layout, inject logos, header styles etc. Manual tweaking of automated starting produced pdf would be ideal. Synchronisation to the latest version of the article would be ideal. Ideally we would like converters to wiki from DOCX and LaTeX so that articles can be more easily submitted. Specific left menu items Namespace-specific formatting Namespace-specific default interwiki links (for articles, wikilinks should point to Wikipedia by default)
Development wiki	Preliminary technical tests at https://wikipediajournal.com/Main_Page
Interested participants
Participants (editors, authors and peer reviewers) as of 2019-05-15 Authors: 172 (counting template) Editorial boards: 62 (counting template) Associate editors: 15 (counting template) Peer reviewers: 70 Additional on-wiki participants: approx 5-10 Total: approx 300-350 Editorial boards and associate editors WikiJournal Admin board Estimate of editors active in any given month: ≥5 edits per month on-wiki: 25 ≥5 email to mailing lists: 25 Monthly conference call meeting: 10 Notes: 1) a lot of work currently has to be done off-wiki. 2) Almost all peer reviewers only ever contribute once. 3) Many authors also only contribute once when depositing an article and once when responding to respond reviewer comments. Readership from DOI-clicks in line with typical academic journals (800 per article).

Scenario

1. Many Wikipedia articles lack information (especially on complex topics)
   • Although GA and FA involve editorial review of content, there is little formal review from outside experts
   • Lack of quality images
2. Lack of contributions from academic community
   • Wikipedia is often viewed with suspicion by academics
   • Academic authors often seek more recognition than provided in the history tab
   • Writing in Wikipedia is sufficiently unfamiliar to be a deterrent
   • Original research cannot be published on Wikipedia

Possible solution

The Wikipedia community and the academic community can be converged and unified through a journal initiative under the Wikimedia banner. The journals needs to adhere to international guidelines and standard procedures, in addition to being open-access and editable by all. WikiJournal can provide a prototype based on which journals for various themes and subjects can be built on.

This involves two broad aspects: The background structure and the journal contents.

Background structure

Background structure comprises:

• Journal policies: This can be customized based on the journal theme and subject, but would be common overall.
• Templates: Specific templates need to be designed for each journal. These templates would probably not be relevant to any other wikiproject.
• Technical parameters:
  • Unlike other wikiprojects, the journal project calls for specialized logins as authors, editors and/or peer reviewers.
  • We need to consider the possibility of one individual having multiple capacities, and the specific capacity being specified for an edit.
  • Custom PDF-rendering facility.
  • Possible on-wiki storage of confidential information (e.g. anon peer-reviewer identities).

Journal contents

• Anyone would be able to make a submission. Specification of legal name and contact details might be required.
• The submitted preprint contents would undergo a public peer-review by external experts and considered critically by an elected editorial board before accepted into a journal's mainspace, or rejected.
• After acceptance, the editing capacities for the article would be restricted.
• A permalink in the form of Digital Object Identifier or DOI would be awarded to each article after publication.
• A citation format for academic publications would be specified.

Present situation

Three journals are currently published by the WikiJournal Publishing Group:

• WikiJournal of Medicine (est. 2014) for medicine and biomedicine (ISSN 2002-4436)
• WikiJournal of Science (est. 2018) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (ISSN: 2470-6345)
• WikiJournal of Humanities (est. 2018) for humanities, arts, and social sciences (ISSN: 2639-5347)

WikiJMed was the original WikiJournal, and was the template for the subsequently established journals with broader scope (further info at WikiJournal of Medicine/About). Based on this initiative, WikiJSci (previously "Second Journal of Science") was developed in 2018 and was soon followed by WikiJHum. A composite WikiJournal User Group was formed in 2016 to overlook the development of such journals.

Proposal

A wiki that is open for everyone to contribute, at the same time with the features of scholarly journals in that the published works undergo independent peer-review by subject experts before publication. The authors are clearly credited at the top of their articles, making it more attractive for researchers and scholars to contribute. Articles are indexed and citable. Works may include images and reviews that are supported by secondary sources. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sister projects can subsequently use material from these publications.

Why separate Wikiproject

• An internal discussion revealed a consensus for a move to a separate Wikiproject.
• It calls for custom structure that would probably not be required by other Wikiprojects.
  • Certain types of users would need to specify their real names and contact details.
  • Login types might need to be specified.
  • Custom templates.
• Better visibility and awareness. The current journals have limited viewership possibly due to lack of awareness across Wikimedia users.
• Grant requirements would follow a definite prototype.
• The scope is unique. This uniqueness needs to be identified.
  • A separate link as another sister project will enhance its visibility to Wikimedia users and therefore enhance participation and impact.
• The scope does not exactly merge with:
  • Wikiversity: Although there is partial overlap in relation to open research, the scope of WikiJournal goes beyond that. Academic publications are not necessarily same as open academia, open educational resources or learning projects.
  • Wikibooks: Academic publications are not necessarily same as open-content textbooks.
  • Wikipedia: Although Wikipedia is most read information source, it is often not given the credibility it deserves. While a few journals have started taking Wikipedia seriously, it still cannot claim the academic recognition that WikiJournal could claim, not least because Wikipedia article text is not guaranteed to be stable.
• Impact metrics may not be applicable to any other wikiproject and may call for additional support from Wikimedia labs.
• Translation to other language wikis would call for standard protocols, unlike any other sister project.
• It is essential for journals to be enlisted in various databases and to follow various international protocols. A single repository for all such journals will help in minimising the problems of separate listing in such databases or central bodies.
• Established academic journals may set up spaces within such a project to implement similar reviews.

Alternative proposals

Articles that mention the format
Masukume, G; Kipersztok, L; Das, D; Shafee, T; Laurent, M; Heilman, J (November 2016). "Medical journals and Wikipedia: a global health matter". The Lancet Global Health 4 (11): e791. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(16)30254-6.  Shafee, T; Mietchen, D; Su, A (August 2017). "Academics can help shape Wikipedia". Science 357 (6351): 557–558. doi:10.1126/science.aao0462.  Shafee, T; Masukume, G; Kipersztok, L; Das, D; Häggström, M; Heilman, J (August 2017). "Evolution of Wikipedia’s medical content: past, present and future". JECH. PMID 28847845. doi:10.1136/jech-2016-208601.  "Health Libraries - Wikipedia-integrated publishing: a comparison of successful models" 26 (2). Health inform. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.27470.77129.  Shafee, T; Das, D; Masukume, G; Häggström, M (2017). "WikiJournal of Medicine, the first Wikipedia-integrated academic journal". WikiJournal of Medicine 4. doi:10.15347/wjm/2017.001.  WikiJSci Editorial board (2018-06-01). "The aims and scope of WikiJournal of Science". WikiJournal of Science 1 (1): 1. doi:10.15347/wjs/2018.001.  "WikiJournals: A sister project proposal", Wikipedia Signpost (2019)

WikiJournal as a publishing house

WikiJournal as a publishing house I am a little confused about how a WikiJournal project would work: would other users be allowed to come along and edit already published research? Would it be like Scholarpedia where you need credentials? Rather than make a separate project as such, maybe "WikiJournal" could be a regularly-published periodical or a publishing imprint that has stable versions of articles that have been collaborated on at Wikiversity. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:13, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

As summarized at the structure of WikiJournal of Medicine, anyone may edit pages, even published ones, but substantial edits to the main text of such articles would be reverted. Instead, users should then make a separate draft, and have that draft peer reviewed as well. Peer reviewers must be experts in the subject, but authors do not necessarily have to be. Collaborations at any site with a permitting license may be submitted. Mikael Häggström (talk) 19:16, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

WikiJournal Public-Private-Versioning and Dynamic Paper Management in a Wiki

For a Journal the concept of Public-Private-Versioning could be used to facilitate a community based paper development (the community could contribute during the evolution of the paper - transparent history of the evolution of the paper, and private versions are created by a reviewing process (see Open Community Approach).

Furthermore a KnitR-Backend or SageMath-Backend for Wikiversity papers can be used for statistical and/or numerical analysis of data for the paper (see KnitR in Wikiversity). --Bert Niehaus (talk) 15:11, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for the delayed reply! I think the project would need some feedback on the best overall architecture to use behind the scenes (what can be done directly with mediawiki, and what can be third-party) so long as they interface well. One limitation we've had, for example, is that reviewers have to submit comments via a google form because there is not yet visualeditor in talkpages, and anonymous editors need to privately register their identity and affiliation with the editorial board. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:19, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

Additional discussion at the talkpage

1.  Support. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2016 (UTC) Editor-in-chief, WikiJournal of Medicine
2. Disagree with split I don't see why it's valuable to split this from WV--this is perfectly within its scope. In fact, it is one of the real triumphs of that project and splitting it off would probably be to the detriment of that site. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:52, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

   Having Wikiversity lose WikiJournal might be a huge loss to you, Justin. However, all's not lost for Wikiversity, and there is still hope for Wikiversity. Indeed, Wikiversity has English courses, like v:English as a second language, most of which needs further improvements. Recently, I had to help one of users who utilized his poor English writing skills at English Wikipedia. To help him improve his English skills, I had to direct him to v:English and b:English. I received thanks for helping him. Therefore, Wikiversity may be needed for users who want to improve their English writing skills for English Wikipedia. Don't you think so? --George Ho (talk) 05:44, 26 June 2017 (UTC); edited, 05:54, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

   @George Ho: Honestly, it seems like your English is better in the months that I've seen you posting across WMF sites. I definitely believe that there is potential in Wikiversity but I just don't think this should split from it. We'll see how it goes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:50, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

   Thanks for complimenting my English. ;) --George Ho (talk) 05:54, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

3.  Support A journal needs specific tools. Having it as its own sister site would be ideal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:00, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

   I continue to strongly support this project. This is an effective method of bringing in knowledge to our movement. This may also have potential for oral knowledge from indigenous peoples with a less robust publishing tradition.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

4.  Support Very promising proposal --Athikhun.suw (talk) 00:52, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
5.  Support I agree with the split. I don't think it belongs with Wikiversity at all, which is for courses and curricula. It makes more sense to me, if anything, that it should be part of Wikibooks, as that is a place for publication of original scientific works. The process for a journal paper is different than a book however so I agree it should be separate. As for the project in general, I think the wiki approach to writing a scientific paper is potentially really great. I know PLOS has their own internal wiki for writing Topic Pages, which are review papers that are written and then eventually transferred to Wikipedia. Non-review papers, however, don't really make sense as part of Wikipedia, so it makes sense to develop them on their own wiki. Mvolz (talk) 17:44, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
6.  Support (finally after changing my mind three times: I never oppose a reasonable request if it has the support of the community --Guy vandegrift (talk) 23:06, 3 June 2019 (UTC)) Disagree with split (Changed vote to neutral with the understanding that the real question is whether the wiki hosts confidential or "private" conversations) Original text: Keep in mind that I speaking from the biased perspective of a Wikiversity Custodian who is only marginally involved with this WikiJournal project. One reason Wikiversity would want to host the journals is that the software developed for WikiJournal could be useful on Wikiversity. An example of such software might include confidential communications between editors and referees that are held on-wiki (instead of on a remote user group). I have no idea whether Wikimedia is willing or even able to host such confidentiality, but it would also allow students and authors to collaborate privately. Also, Wikiversity would be interested in hosting student-run journals. I concede that the prospect of amateaurish student-journals might not be appealing to board members, and fully understand why the board might wish to separate from Wikiversity. If the board chooses to split, I will support that decision. --Guy vandegrift (talk) 01:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

   Confidential talks are currently held on a Google Group, which can be used for students and authors even if WikiJournal is split from Wikiversity. Likewise, students have at least the same ability to start journals after a split. Mikael Häggström (talk) 12:57, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

   Allowing for confidential conversations on a Wikimedia sister-wiki would be a major departure from protocol. The wiki that does it will need an independent governing body for each journal or organization that uses it. Someday, it would be nice for universities, laboratories, and journals to have such capabilities. I am neutral about the current proposed split if the confidentality is not included: Without the confidentiality option, I see neither a reason for the split, nor any harm done by splitting away from Wikiversity. But if this new wiki is created with confidentiality options, it will likely recruit university and laboratory-based journals that wish to utilize this option. The question of whether to allow this confidentiality option is likely to go to the top levels of the Wikimedia corporation...Perhaps what we really need is for Google groups to host discussions in wikitext.--Guy vandegrift (talk) 19:03, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

   @Mikael Häggström: The private option is already availablae at https://wikiversity.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page--Guy vandegrift (talk) 16:46, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

7.  Support The scope is unique and can extend to a number of domains. Specific tools needed. Access rights need to be different. It is also important to have the option of certain pages not being publicly accessible such that press embargo for unpublished articles do not get violated and yet editors or peer reviewers get to work in wiki format. Diptanshu^Talk 12:21, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
8.  Support I definitely agree with this. If it does air how would the three statutes you mentioned be done? Would peer reviewer, editor, and author have different edit rights or be purely decorative, and would you have to apply for them? Iazyges (talk) 04:55, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

   Good questions, Iazyges. I see no reason for editors to need any particular edit rights, and readers without any account should be able to edit too, even published works under certain conditions. I think the author role is also rather decorative, since it's the quality of their works that matter. I think the peer reviewers should need to apply, so that we know they fulfill the criteria. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:55, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

9.  Support per DocJames--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:59, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
10.  Support Because an open access journal is very different from WV and WB. --Netha Hussain (talk) 09:03, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
11.  Support because I'm looking for a project like this to publish some ideas. --Felipe (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
12.  Support - If this happens, I can read well the promising journal articles by academics. Though I can't write well the stuff, I can be a good reader to this. --George Ho (talk) 22:20, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

    Belated post-vote comment: I recently read peer reviews on scholarly articles and was amazed by comments and responses. I am also intrigued by the peer review templates, like v:en:Template:editor's comments and v:en:Template:Response. I fixed a usage error recently, so I wonder whether the project can adopt either the templates or some software similar to MediaWiki's Support Desk or something like Wikinews's Comments (like this example). Honestly, I found the templates less convenient for peer reviews, so I figured that some discussion software would be a better improvement. --George Ho (talk) 09:34, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

13.  Support -Richard923888 (talk) 15:39, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
14.  Support - there is no reason why a separate journal cannot continue to link with WV but there is immense potential that cannot be achieved by remaining a sub-project. Green Giant (talk) 15:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
15.  Support - This proposal has evolved and improved significantly since first proposed in 2016. The flagship WikiJournal of Medicine exemplifies what the project can achieve (see 2017 editorial). Starting up within Wikiversity was useful to incubate the project and prove that such a novel format is even feasible. Becoming a sister project would further support the initiative by adding legitimacy, support, and extra control of sidebar contents etc. There would remain a strong focus on generation, improvement, peer-review and re-integration of high-quality content into other WMF projects (especially Wikipedia), and a WikiJournal sister project would maintain strong ties to the other projects. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:03, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

    I should note for transparency that since my original support vote, I'm now Editor-in-Chief of WikiJournal of Science, and I chair the administration board. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

16.  Support Great proposal!--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 06:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
17.  Support For reasons adequately described above. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
18.  Support Great proposal with value for the academic community. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 17:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
19.  Support more than that it is exactly what i had in mind because the lack of open source credited material is recurrent fact on wikipedia and it will expand wikimedia scope. --167.63.49.24 02:52, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
20.  Support - Seems like a reasonable proposal, I don't see why it shouldn't at least be given a try. I think the challenge will mostly consist of getting experts in various fields to peer-review, but that's not impossible to do. InsaneHacker (talk) 06:27, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
21.  Oppose they don't need an entire sister project. It has to stay in WV.this user voted 2x, therefore have struck one vote--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:29, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

    Strong oppose to separate login. Just add the obligation to fill an informations tab in Preferences to allow contributing CreativeC38 (talk) 10:19, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

    @CreativeC38: Why does it have to stay on WV? You don't think there's any merit whatsoever to having it as a separate site instead of a subpage on WV in terms of presentation, attracting experts etc.? InsaneHacker (talk) 00:24, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    Also, the "oppose" and "strong oppose" vote are yours. I'm informing readers to avoid misleads. BTW, sometimes you feel that Wikiversity won't be the same without WikiJournal. However, Wikiversity has been Wikiversity, especially without WikiJournal. Also, it has some good lessons for others to read, like v:English. --George Ho (talk) 03:48, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

22.  Support - I think it is to Wikiversity's detriment that WikiJournal find a separate home, however, it does seem to be a better approach for WikiJournal itself, and it should attract more users to the wiki community. I trust that WikiJournal will encourage academics to develop lessons and courses supporting their work at Wikiversity. -- Dave Braunschweig (talk) 21:49, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
23.  Support I think WikiJournal would have better chances to develop and to engage with expert communities if it were a sister project. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 17:38, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
24.  Support I agree my previous speaker. Good point -- DerFussi 06:12, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
25.  Support Per others. -- Thennicke (talk) 23:23, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
26. Comment I propose to lessen the requirement to first make the article available in wiki format. Consider my case: I wrote a book (i.e. a very long article) in PDF format (generated from LaTeX) with my original research in mathematics and make it publicly available under an open license. I have a trouble publishing it, because journals don't publish 380 pages articles and book publishers refuse to publish a book which is already available online. I want to allow me to submit the PDF file and be reviewed in WikiJournal project. Note that converting PDF into wiki markup would be a hard work, and this way it would be needed to update after each change in my book (e.g. when I add a solution of a conjecture or correct a typo). --VictorPorton (talk) 23:44, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

    @VictorPorton: We definitely hope to implement some easier ways of importing LaTeX, DOCX and PDF submissions on the submissions page. That will likely require help from the WMF's dev team. Currently, the main conversion option is probably Pandoc. We have had people submit as docx files, and the journal editors have manually reformatted for wikimarkup, but that's not a scalable solution. Note that currently only Wiki.J.Med. is accepting original research, whist the other journals starting up are focusing on review articles (at least initially) since these are 'safer' options for building the journals early on. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:55, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

    It seems that we will never (or at least in near 50 years) have a good automated conversion from LaTeX to wiki. I propose not to convert but to allow the author to upload a PDF file and publish in the wiki just a link to author's files, not the article itself in wiki markup. --VictorPorton (talk) 12:33, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

    We also need some reasonable policy about updates of already published articles. For example arXiv allows to upload more than one version of an article. (This is especially important with articles building a theory rather than proving a single result.) We need it too. Probably every change should be peer reviewed. Or we can trust authors that they improve their materials over time not make it worse. --VictorPorton (talk) 12:39, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

    The downside of if we were to have only a pdf version and no wikimarkup version, is that it would make it hard to integrate material into other Wikimedia projects (one of the current main goals of the journals). However, this is not set in stone, so could change. As for multiple versions - I agree with the need for more specific guidelines (it happens not to have come up yet). In addition to the history tab record of all edits during drafting on the preprint server, my expectation is that anything that changes content of a published article would have to be re-reviewed to retain legitimacy. Indeed I can imagine that people could publish updated 'versions' of a review article, as already happens for textbooks. I'd suggest more in-depth discussion be on the main WikiJournal discussion page. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:51, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

    Anyway my book won't be completely copied to Wikipedia. So to convert the entire book and every its part into wiki markup format is just largely useless work. If we need to publish some part in a wiki, we can convert parts of the book or article on as-needed basis. --VictorPorton (talk) 22:03, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

    Hello, Victor. Here is v:en:WikiJournal Preprints, which has instructions on sending PDF files via email and provides email address for those wanting to send PDF files. --George Ho (talk) 02:15, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

27.  Support This sounds like "a hidden gem 💎" situation where something good is hidden in something else, people who would be interested in this but otherwise not in the Wikiversity might be able to see this sooner if it weren't "hidden away". --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) (My global lock 😒🌏🔒) (My global unlock 😄🌏🔓) 11:44, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
28.  Support Very important project. Ammarpad (talk) 14:45, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
29.  Support This proposal has a unique scope, and would have been the only WMF project to seem trustworthy for referencing by most of academics. In addition to the potential features listed on the top, this project would require much stricter internal procedures and hence Wikiversity does not fit in its current form. --Strange quark (talk) 13:30, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
30. Support I'm ready to give a hand for french version of this sister project. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{French native speaker, sorry for my dysorthography} 20:28, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
31.  Support NMaia (talk) 09:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
32. question(comment) we have 26 signatures above plus journals which have been added[1] and [2] ...so where are we in terms of the process of this proposal?(how much longer)thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:27, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
    • @Ozzie10aaaa: yes, previously comment has been from people who happened to come across the page. The Sister Projects Committee suggested the gathering of contributor data and to make sure that people in different projects are aware of the proposal, so I have placed some notifications around a few areas in wikipedia, wikidata and mailing lists. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:31, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
33.  Support Reboot01 (talk) 13:47, April 25, 2019 (UTC)
34.  Support Splitting it could really allow greater participation in WJ from outside stakeholders. StudiesWorld (talk) 10:20, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
35.  Support interesting proposal and splitting can make the arrangements much better! --Alaa :)..! 04:29, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
36.  Support as article author - (Michael Stear) 131.172.248.203 04:30, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
37.  Support as article author - (Kholhring Lalchhandama) Chhandama (talk) 06:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
38.  Support - (Fiona Mackinnon) 49.180.152.237 04:57, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
39.  Support - Learnerktm (talk) 06:23, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
40.  Support as article author - (Andrew Z. Colvin) Azcolvin429 (talk) 06:35, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
41.  Support as article author - Boris Tsirelson. WikiJournal evidently is very different from (the rest of) Wikiversity. Tsirel (talk) 07:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
42.  Support - as article author - other WV articles I've read have little to do with those of WJ. However, I can understand the concerns raised here[3]. FunkMonk (talk) 07:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
43.  Support as article author - (Abdulmutalab Musa) Laamiido (talk) 07:39, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
44.  Support as article reviewer - (Gregor Stiglic) 100.8.28.171 10:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
45.  Support as article author - (Lauren Gawne) 14.203.84.11 10:38, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
46.  Support as article author -(Ozzie Anis)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:57, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
47.  Support as article author - Andrew Dalby (talk) 11:15, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
48.  Support as article author - I vote FOR WikiJournal to become a full 'Sister Project' of Wikipedia. (Deepesh Nagarajan) 14.139.128.17 11:46, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
49.  Support Dank (talk) 12:23, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
50.  Support Richard Nevell (talk) 12:49, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
51.  Support - FULBERT (talk) 13:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC) - For journals to be taken seriously as academic and peer-reviewed contributors to knowledge, they need to appear solid and independent. Wikiversity is a wonderful idea, though it is not as useful as a dedicated space for open, peer-reviewed journal work. I believe that having a dedicated project space may also allow for some dedicated resources and visibility. This is consistent with the Wikimedia strategy to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge through knowledge as a service and knowledge equity.
52.  Support as article reviewer - Niclas Borinder 81.227.107.149 13:37, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
53.  Support We have some details to sort but yes, for the spirit of it all and for committing significant resources to advance this idea in the immediate future, I support. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:10, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
54.  Support as article author - Dudley Miles. I have found the project valuable in getting reviews by academic experts to raise the standard of an article. Dudley Miles (talk) 14:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
55.  Support - Jacknunn (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2019 (UTC) This project has huge potential to bring peer-review to Wikipedia and have clear integration into the most famous Wikimedia project. Wikiversity has huge potential - but to speak frankly, it is not a University- The Open University is, and was very ahead of its time and one day, Wikimedia might partner or create something similar under this name. For now, it is not a University, and so is confusing to people not intimately familiar with Wikimedia projects (99.9999% of humanity). Even if it were a proper University, most universities create separate affiliated publishing houses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_presses). I think simplifying this project as much as possible - that is 'creating peer-reviewed Wikimedia content using the familiar publishing norms of established peer-reviewed journals' is a good start, one that Wikimedia can build on and improve in alignment with the founding principles of the foundation. Project S is coming, let's be ready to meet it with a great front end and and even better back one! :)
56.  Support Thank you for this well thought-out proposal, which addresses many limitations that have been identified over the course of the last few years. There are great benefits in separate sister project status, and honestly I don't think WV is a very suitable place for the journals to remain at at this point. --Elmidae (talk) 14:40, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
57.  Oppose Various "technical requirements" violate the Founding principles, especially the second one. While I understand the reasons, I don't think that such a project should be part of the Wikimedia "wiki family"; academic publishing works primarily through the reputation of its authors and publishers while Wikimedia projects work mostly on the basis of the dedicated interest of number of editors (both casual, sporadic, one time and regular ones) irrespective of their qualifications and trying to put both of them together isn't going to work due to the culture contrast. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
    • that 'culture contrast' has existed for many years, a journal of this nature would only be a positive...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:12, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

      Yeah, and we've had problems with it. I don't disagree with the existence of such a project, I object to making it part of the Wikimedia family. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:25, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

    Comment This is a feature, not a bug. The founding principles are not divinely given universal desiderata for all online collabotation. To me (both as an academiac and Wikipedia editor) two things have been clear for years:

    1. that NPOV and omnieditability are deleterious for scientific publishing, where it is imperative to let a case to be made before subjecting it to critique;
    2. that a very large number of people wish contribute original research online, and are frustrated by the fact that even quite elementary observations are not welcomed anywhere within the Wikimedia ecosystem (let alone on Wikipedia itself).

    This means that while the existence of this project would greatly benefit the Wikimedia movement, whether it should be run by Wikimedia is a separate question, one that comes down to how much the "elites" are willing to face the fact that ~all Wikimedia projects are dependent on scientific publishing, which very much does not run on Wikimedia principles. I would be quite happy to partially "jump ship" to an entirely new organization and wiki environment geared for a different type of collaboration. This has an obvious critical-mass problem though, and starts being only tangentially related to this exact project proposal. (Due to this deep-set conceptual tension, I have opted to not contribute to Wikiversity; hence I do not have enough of a dog in this race to currently clearly lean on either support or oppose.) --Tropylium (talk) 17:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

    Good points! I believe it is possible to run such a site within th Wikimedia movement, even if a bunch of people often confuse the tool with the goal. The goal isn't to use a specific process or software, it is to provide free knowledge to the world. — Jeblad 12:24, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

    One additional note is that the journals currently specifically only require the external peer reviewers to have subject-specific credential. Authors have ranged from professors to students to people unaffiliated with any university. There is also currently the option of double-blind peer reviewing which may further address this. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:10, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

58.  Oppose, per Jo-Jo Eumerus. - SchroCat (talk) 16:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
59.  Support as article reviewer - Jennifer Dawson JenOttawa (talk) 16:05, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
60.  Support as a Wikijournal contributor. One of the reasons I support this is that a journal would let us go farther than writing for an encyclopedia. Often, Wikipedia policies such as NOR (no original research) hinders our ability to be academic. For example, the article I was honored to submit, Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies, isn't comprehensive because there are no sources to fill in some aspects of the topic. Although I'm not an academic expert, my experience as a WP editor of this article and others like it has made me into an expert about Dr. Angelou. I'd like to see the mission of the Wikijournal expand to allow original research, in order to expand the comprehensiveness of topics. In that way, we can improve upon the academic nature of WP and fill in the gaps imposed upon us by WP policies and procedures and the gaps that are out there in academic literature. Figureskatingfan (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

    Comment Agree. The same problem with Wikipedia in the (quite far) topic - mathematics. Wikipedia's principle is "to inform, not teach/explain", but readers really need explanations and examples, which often leads to violations of the "no original research" norm, and frustration on both sides, readers and editors. WikiJournal is able to complement Wikipedia with explanations and examples using expertise. For example, my recent submission (explanatory essay) "v:WikiJournal Preprints/Can each number be specified by a finite text?". Wikiversity admits original research, but does not restrict it by peer refereeing, which is a completely different story. Tsirel (talk) 05:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

61.  Support - (Tseenster) Tseenster (talk) 23:43, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
62.  Oppose primarily per Jo-Jo Eumerus, with the added caveat that according to mw:Template:Page security extension disclaimer, MediaWiki was not written to provide per-page access restrictions, and almost all hacks or patches promising to add them will likely have flaws somewhere, meaning that the technical requirements violate not only founding principles but also the very way the code for MediaWiki is designed. * Pppery * _{has returned} 00:39, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
63.  Support - Benoit Rochon (talk) 01:36, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
64.  Support - as one of the few new projects that I have seen that makes sense. This one just fits. --Philippe (talk) 01:59, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
65.  Support - Wade Kelly Mrkellar (talk) 06:00, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
66.  Support - Steven Chang Gixibyte (talk) 06:40, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
67.  Support - Rwatson1955 (talk) 07:27, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
68.  Support as article author - (Ignacio López) Munguira (talk) 08:04, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
69.  Support Mardetanha ^talk 09:08, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
70.  Support.--Vulphere 09:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
71.  Support - (Niall O’Mara) Ngdomara (talk) 09:57, 3 June 2019 (UTC) support
72.  Support as article reviewer - Herbert Haller
73.  Support - this project has a lot of potential and it makes sense to give it the resources it needs to grow. Simon Cobb (Sic19 ; talk page) 13:34, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
74.  Support - Amy Fountain AmyFou (talk) 14:31, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
75.  Support - Arfon Smith 128.177.88.206 14:50, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
76. Question: – I assume any new journals are going to incubate within this project, right? (I don't see us being equipped at Incubator to get involved.) StevenJ81 (talk) 17:08, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

    @StevenJ81: - I think the best way would be for new journals to incubate within the project, since it would include some specialised tools, templates and experience to facilitate this. Conceivably, it would also be a location where established academic journals could set up a space to implement a wikipedia-integrated wing of their journal (similar to how PLOS currently has topicpageswiki). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:09, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

    @Evo&Evo, thank you very much. If this goes forward, I'm happy to share my experience managing incubation, but I am relieved that this is not going to be our responsibility at Incubator. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:45, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

77.  Support - This is a solid proposal with a healthy ecosystem of participants. Full-discloure, my wife among them. :) Opposing this based upon technical requirements is a distraction. People use tools other than MediaWiki everyday to support the movement. If we could, I'd rather folks use an open-source solution than have their work buried in some closed-source system owned by for-profit company. Besides, partial blocks exist in MediaWiki and extending that to other use cases is a strength of a flexible open-source platform. Not to get too into the weeds, but it's also commented as "preferred", not a do-or-die requirement for success. These are smart people and I'm sure they can get it done. :) So again, technical fiddly-bits are a weak argument to oppose and I'd rather see us make a strong argument to support a burgeoning new project. Ckoerner (talk) 17:51, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
78.  Support Yes, I find it helpful that wikijournal is it's own project sort of like how wikiversity is it's own project and not included into wikibooks. Wikijournal is a complex process and the peer review process isn't easy for an open project to do, yes, enwikiversity did a great job but I guess with more specific structure, it will be more conducive for academics to review journals which then will allow more growth. For this structure, I will hope it can be developed with wikiversity in mind (in some sense like OTRS can be shared with all projects - the tool and etc). I find it more useful for wikiversity to be solely focused in delivering modules, research and etc. Doing peer reviews and etc may be impossible for some wikiversities (mine homewiki is one of them at that moment). For where it is incubating, I will think maybe at enwikiversity at this moment. --Cohaf (talk) 17:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
79.  Support Need I say more? TheAwesomeHwyh (talk) 19:55, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
80.  Support Yes, they will run into a lot of technical problems, but why not try? ;D — Jeblad 20:16, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
81. Question: Will wiki contributors who are not scholars have an opportunity to contribute to the project? SelfieCity (talk) 00:29, 4 June 2019 (UTC) I now understand better per WikiJournal/Editors. I follow this with my vote below. SelfieCity (talk) 00:36, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
82.  Support The project. SelfieCity (talk) 00:36, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
83.  Support. Yes. This will contribute tremendously towards the open access movement. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:42, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
84.  Support. Project makes sense. Hiàn (talk) 01:20, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
85. Comment (@Mikael Häggström:) The name of the proposed sister should not use camel case; that is, it should be either "Wikijournal" or, perhaps, "Wikijournals" (following the pattern of "Wikibooks"). The existing sisters don't use camel case: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, etc. --Pi zero (talk) 03:14, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

    Comment Very much agree- it would very much annoy me if this were to become the only Wikimedia project to use it. TheAwesomeHwyh (talk) 17:40, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

86.  Support the scope of WikiJournal is clearly different to Wikipedia and will be a beneficial addition to the Wikimedia family as per above. DaGizza (talk) 03:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
87.  Support. I approve of the Wikipedia project and participate in it to some extent (though much more at Wikivoyage and Wikimedia Commons). However, what Wikipedia expressly lacks is peer-reviewed articles by experts. A free journal site where people don't have to pay loads of money to read cutting-edge papers on medicine and various other topics is an exciting idea and would be a great addition to the Wikimedia family. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:23, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
88.  Support - Dr Katherine Firth, La Trobe University 121.211.87.1 05:50, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
89.  Strong support — Improving the world's access to science may be considered one of the most important contributions the Wikimedia Foundation could ever achieve. With that being said, Tom Reller, Vice President of Global Communications at Elsevier recently said: "If you think that information should be free of charge, go to Wikipedia". Perhaps we should prove him right. — Bryandamon (talk) 06:48, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

    Hear, hear! Tsirel (talk) 08:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

90.  Support - user:lirazelf Lirazelf (talk) 07:23, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
91.  Oppose - I have an issue with "Although GA and FA involve editorial review of content, there is little formal review from outside experts", as if Wikipedia requires experts in fields to supersede our core values of being accessable to all. If it were that expert grammatical user that copyedited through articles, fine. But this seems more as though we'd have an editorial role which chinks badly with me. Lee Vilenski (talk) 08:18, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
92.  Support --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:29, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
93. Comment Has there been any comment by the WMF on Wikijournal becoming a new sister project? TheAwesomeHwyh (talk) 17:48, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

    @TheAwesomeHwyh: This is being done as a first step to be thorough in developing the project and gauging community opinions before presenting it to the WMF board of trustees via the current Sister Project instructions. However, note that current trustee User:James Heilman is aware of the project. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 14:04, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

94.  Support Rubbish computer (Talk: Contribs) 20:01, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
95.  Oppose this particular solution. Support in spirit. I think it's reasonable to have Wikijournals be a separate project from Wikiversity, but Jo-Jo makes very good points about our Founding principles that I don't think are adequately addressed. Wugapodes (talk) 20:51, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
96.  Oppose This proposal goes against our core values... Experts are placed on the same level as everyone else for a reason. This isn't true in every case, but some of their articles come off with an arrogant tone. Additionally, some of them try to shove their view down peoples' throats. Having different permission levels based on a piece of paper someone can hang on a wall is the worst thing that can happen. All kinds of editors are needed in order to create and maintain articles. Hurricane Noah (talk) 04:02, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
97.  Strong support - (Footnotefanatic) this would give the project due status and made it more visible and from there it can hopefully gather additional support from the academy & academics - open access to research and academic scholarship is vitally important and this is one way to do this Footnotefanatic (talk) 07:26, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
98.  Support - Nick Talley 1.129.111.129 09:56, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
99.  Support - This is not doing the same thing as Wikiversity, but is adding a major new capability, and benefiting Wikipedia in the process. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:42, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
100.  Support (as someone who is not already, but has considered becoming, involved) - Seems like a well-thought-out approach to bringing expert knowledge and writing into the Wikiuniverse. Not the same as Wikiversity. --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 11:44, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
101.  Oppose in the proposed form: "Preferably there should be an option to have restricted viewer access to some files, discussions, and user identities (e.g., anonymous peer-reviewers)." violated the ability of almost anyone to edit (most) articles without registration (Founding principles). Expecially if the acces to discussions should be restricted. But the whole seem to be a good idea! Habitator terrae (talk) 12:01, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
102. Question: (perhaps @Mikael Häggström?) I would hope to find all of the following addressed prominently and solidly, if this endeavor is being proposed as a standalone undertaking. I haven't seen them, thus far (have I missed them somewhere?).

     • (1) By what criteria are submissions to be reviewed?
     • (2) How, if at all, are submitting authors to be assessed/accredited, and how is their work documented, especially in the case of original research?
     • (3) How are the privileged users of each journal to be selected for accreditation (editorial board, reviewers, or whatever you call them)?
     • (4) How are journals to be created?

     Review criteria are first on the list because everything else may depend on them. On English Wikinews (for a pointed example), the review criteria are based on project-tailored wiki principles, and individual users accumulate earned reputation for their strengths-and-weaknesses in understanding, and implementing, those criteria. These earned reputations are then applied to (2) and (3), independent of any user's project-external credentials.

     The implications of (4), criteria for creation of new journals, depend on how much variance the journals may have in review criteria. With any publication regulated by an editorial board of some sort, there is some risk that the regulating body might go off the rails, undermining the publication's collective reputation; but a well-defined journal-independent set of review criteria may help to reduce this risk. --Pi zero (talk) 17:23, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

     @Pi zero: I'll try to be concise here by relying heavily on links, but I'm happy to discuss at greater length on the talkpage.

     • re 1) Submissions are reviewed based primarily on their content, referencing, style and (where applicable) ethical standards. Some requirements are journal-specific (e.g. WikiJMed has requirements around patient consent) More details at Peer reviewer guidelines & Reviewer publication ethical duties (adapted from COPE) & Process guidelines.
     • re 2) Submitting authors need not be accredited (many submissions have been from students, or people completely unaffiliated to any institution). If authors list an affiliation but do not correspond from an email account of that affiliation, then they may be contacted via that affiliation webpage to confirm identity. Requirements for work documentation is based on scholarly norms and peer reviewer assessment. More details at Author publication ethical duties (adapted from ICMJE).
     • re 3) Editorial board members and associate editors are selected by community vote and would have privileges to view anonymised/encrypted peer reviewer identities. Peer reviewers are selected on an article-by-article basis by a handling editor (peer review coordinator) and could request privileges in maintaining an anonymous/encrypted username only known to editorial board members and associate editors for that article (~25% of peer reviewer request hidden identity). More info at Bylaws for editorial roles.
     • re 4) Journals would be added via vote to the WikiJournal User Group after incubation which would provide assistance, crossref doi minting, and possibly COPE membership. Individual journals would need to apply separately for external accreditation (e.g. DOAJ, PMC, SCOPUS, Web of Science). Conceivably, journals gain accreditation via affiliation/partnering with an already established journal. More details at Journal inclusion bylaws & Journal startup instructions.

     Great questions. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

     @Evolution and evolvability: At least for now I'll stay here on the main page (rather than the talk page), as most of my remarks (questions and otherwise) bear directly on the proposal to make Wikijournals a wikimedian sister. (Note, as I remarked earlier, it's important the name should not use camel case.)

     • re 1) For the current discussion of suitability to a wikimedia project, I'm particularly concerned that the principles of review I see here don't appear (again, am I missing it?) to show the stamp of the wikimedia ethos. Taking again the example of English Wikinews (which seems by far the closest existing wikimedia sister, with review before publication, expert reviewers, and many years experience with the challenges of having those features in a wiki), en.wn groups its journalistic review criteria into five areas: copyright, newsworthiness, verification, neutrality, and style. Note especially that the practical treatment of neutrality is different for news articles than for encyclopedia articles. Presumably neutrality would take a different form again for Wikijournals. It's deeply worrisome to me that on the two pages you've linked, a string search turns up no occurrences of the string "neutral".

       While it is good to see some review guidelines delineated, from experience both on en.wn and as an academic peer reviewer, I'd recommend somewhat more structure, especially a Style Guide of some sort; en.wn has n:en:Wikinews:Style guide, which is deliberately short enough to be read straight through if a user is so inclined. Also note, specifying review criteria at a journal-independent level, especially for those aspects that should reflect the wikimedia ethos, should make the entire Wikijournals project infrastructure more stable.

     • re 2) I'm interested in how one determines the bona fides of contributors. As mentioned, en.wn systematically accumulates earned reputation of each contributor. Exactly because anyone can submit their work for review —which is part of the wikimedia ethos, after all— determining bona fides is a significant concern.

     [addendum: A relevant link: n:en:Wikinews:Neutrality.]

     --Pi zero (talk) 18:08, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

     @Pi zero: Thanks for the clarifications - it's very useful to have the insight of the wikinews project.

     • re 1) So far we have relied on the judgement of the authors and peer reviewers (mainly either experienmced wikipedians or experienced academics) to give balanced account of the current state of a topic. However to be more robust, it could be worthwhile to expand the Author Guidlines and Peer reviewer guidelines, possibly with some info adapted from the extensive PLOS reviewer resource, the Cell crosstalk post and/or the Springer review-reviewer guidlines. Most peer review guidelines focus on review of original research, so ensuring that there are also guidelines for review of review articles may be useful more broadly.
     • re 2) Currently the bona fides of authors is done via light-touch initial editorial review as to whether to organise peer review, after which it is mainly up to the peer reviewers to check the content (with deliberate efforts made to handle articles based on content&referencing, not author). Any stated affiliation/credentials is confirmed via faculty email address in the authorship declaration form. Although editors are typically long-term contributors, many authors and most peer reviewers only contribute once, so internal reputation from persistent activity necessarily isn't as useful a measure.

     T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:18, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

     @Pi zero: As part of addressing this and expanding the guidelines in general (per comment on this page), I've created a draft page here: v:WikiJournal User Group/Guidelines/Draft. I've also contacted the author of the Cell crosstalk post to ask for the their perspective, ideas and feedback. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

103. Looks like things have gone full circle; Wikipedia started out as a way for people to create articles to be peer-reviewed and inducted into Nupedia, and this looks like sort of the opposite, a journal for stuff to be peer-reviewed, and (among other things) get put into Wikipedia. That amusing anecdote aside I'll  Support this proposal. John M Wolfson (talk) 17:49, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

     Thank you for the amusing anecdote! Tsirel (talk) 06:45, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

104.  Support as article author - (Suzanne Cutts) 203.214.81.221 10:17, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

     #{{support}} as article author - (Please write your name here) ~~~~ <!-- To add your vote, just click "Publish changes" --> seems to be the standart vote, plaease precise. --Habitator terrae (talk) 11:30, 6 June 2019

105.  Support - I longer wait for such a project. Not against the founding principles, because they are just refer to Wikipedia. We can close for the new Project Wikispecies and Wikinews. - Marcus Cyron (talk) 19:09, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

     @Marcus Cyron: Please read also the introduction of the founding principles: "they are considered ideals essential to the founding of the Wikimedia projects" --Habitator terrae (talk) 12:15, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

     @Habitator terrae: - if I would answer this, it would need much too much room. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 13:47, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

106.  SupportEncycloABC (talk) 21:34, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
107.  Support the split. One reason to favor a new project might be to have more control over licensing. For instance, PLOS Topic Pages are currently drafted on a separate site to stay compatible with PLOS's CC-BY license. Perhaps an independent sister site could find policies to allow better compatibility. (Plus lots of other good reasons already mentioned). Quantum7 (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
108. I can't support yet. Please see my thread at the talkpage. Tony (talk) 10:48, 7 June 2019 (UTC) Please see the thread I started at the talkpage. Tony (talk) 02:28, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
109.  Support The split would support infrastructural integrations that could provide academics with incentives to participate. Jessica Polka (talk) 16:24, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
110. Comment As a side note (maybe this has already been suggested), what if WikiJournal was made a part of Wikipedia like it's a part of Wikiversity now? That would get it more attention than it currently gets. SelfieCity (talk) 17:05, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

     @SelfieCity: Apologies for the late reply. The current presence of WikiJournals on Wikipedia is at w:WP:JAN. The downside of moving the whole project over to Wikipedia is that I think the wikipedia community would likely object to the original research articles or article sections that the journal also publishes, even if not in mainspace. It also wouldn't solve the need for some specialist tools etc for the academic publishing workflow. Having said that, the branding review as part of the 2013 strategy may append "a Wikipedia project" to all of the sister projects anyway, which I' min favour of. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

111.  Support as associate editor in wikijournal of medicine I found it very useful if the wikijournals become a sister project. --Avicenno (talk) 21:05, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
112.  Oppose The proposed journals lack a clear profile in their respective subject fields. Also, Wikimedia is neither a publishing house nor an academic institution. It would not be attractive to scholars from any field to publish with WikiJournal. Wiki~ indeed is a rather poor name for an academic journal. As was mentioned in the discussion on Wikimedia-l, there already is a lot of poor "research" to be found on Wikiversity.--Aschmidt (talk) 15:45, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

     I am happy to publish in WikiJournals. Once one of these journals is pubmed indexed I imagine more people will be interested aswell. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

     Likewise, I'm happy to publish in WikiJournal. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:33, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

     Same with me --Mimihitam (talk) 10:11, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

113.  Support It will have a positve effect on scientists in the wikipedia community and the outside view of wikipedia (articles citable and fixed). The direct influence on the quality of content may be limited because I expect only a few (dozen ?) longer articles can be processed for each issue with your current capacity und so it will be on the whole a slow process (like scholarpedia). But the scientists "from the outside" are at the same time encouraged to contribute in wikipedia, for its part of your publication process (Post publication steps). To meet the foundation criteria it should be in principle possible for everyone to submit an article to the editors and it should be open for some sort of (regulated) review from the wikipedia community as a whole besides Peer Review. Occasionally some new observations (original research) come up in wikipedia by common wikipedians (for example, later career of en:Peter Hagendorf, mentioned but not so visible in the english version, for those fluent in german see the german discussion page), so there should be a possibility for short and rapid publication.--Claude J (talk) 08:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC) (de:Benutzer:Claude J).
114.  Support. —— Eric Liu_{（留言．百科用戶頁）} 08:11, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
115.  Support. - I am Davidzdh. 08:25, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
116.  Support, per nominator. --Leiem (talk) 09:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
117.  Support As a journal, the trajectory that the WikiJournals would take needs a different set of tools and being within WV may hamper this. Concerns expressed about the name, and the fact that there are many poor-quality and/or predatory journals out there are all valid. Having this as a sister project may attract better profile of people and resources from academia to shape this into a truely open-access journal. And other valid arguments per nom. Prashanthns (talk) 10:36, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
118.  Support a journal does need to have tools that are unique to it and be somewhat independant. I think it is good for Wikimedia to develop a professional journal. The world needs online quality journals and it will be a great opportunity for many to see and understand the process of publishing scientific material. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:48, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
119. Critical support. The idea is very promising, but I recognise the apparent contradiction with our founding principles. However, it's not the first time they're relativised to allow the existence of some kinds of projects under a more general scope of the founding principles. Leefeni^{aures audiendi audiat} 20:18, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
120.  Support as a potential author and reviewer and also as an organizer of WikiProject Limnology and Oceanography which attempts to improve aquatic-related Wikipedia content with contributions primarily from the academic community. I think having this journal stand alone as a sister project would increase the buy-in from the academic community for contributing knowledge. There is a lot of enthusiasm from academics for open access and free knowledge but many find contributing to Wikipedia not worthwhile given the constraints of their jobs (e.g. publishing). This sister project would help bridge the gap between academic models of publishing and contributing to Wikipedia. Jayzlimno (talk) 17:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
121.  Support. I support this proposal to help make the WikiJournals stand on their own as open-access publications and continue the evolution of the WM and WV founding principles. Smvital (talk) 06:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC) (Editorial Board member; WikiJournal of Humanities)
122.  Support. It is essential to support open research if we want diversity on Wikipedia and on all projects. iopensa (talk) 07:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
123.  Support Would help solve the problem that many people are using Wikipedia, but are unable to cite it for academic purposes. Mimihitam (talk) 12:12, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
124.  Support This project is doing well and needs its own home. Walkerma (talk) 03:41, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
125.  Support Hi, I do not have sufficient time to read everything in details to be completely aware about a new sister project issue, but I usually trust the wisdom of the crowd. :That's why I'm mainly support the idea. Furthermore, I'll share my own experience as French wikiversity administrator mainly working on the namespace research. That prove than searching and learning in our community was considered, in a certain point of view, as two different projects. Having search works outside of the main space have also some inconveniences ( web browser referencing , name space appearing on page title, pdf, feeling to be apart, etc.) as having research and learning activities (the only way to browse separately pages is using categories pages). Finally, I want to share my only fear concerning the creation of a new sister project wich is to loose fundamental DNA of wikimédia project :
     1. complete transparency, which seams clearly a lack in this editorial area but indeed very important concerning Scientific misconduct.
     2. absence of all kind of statutory hierarchy or elitism on governance and editorial aspect. Do not confuse with expertise, or skillfulness, I'm well talking about equality of rights between project users.
     3. freedom of choose in software and web space to be involved in all part of the project. Time after time google services, for instance, are taking more and more place in Wikimedia Movement. That's for me a lack of autonomy but also a risk to get habits in using for profit environment in a non profit movement and in the end forgetting the importance of non profit aspect. Of course we are all free to use proprietary software and services provided by rich companies having monopolistic trend, but please, don't make this choice an obligation for being fully part of the WikiJournal process. A question as example do I have to use this google group to be aware about all what's appening in WikiJournal editorial board ? Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{French native speaker, sorry for my dysorthography} 16:11, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
        P.S. Oh, I've forgoten... We had a debat on fr.wikiversity before deciding to create a Journal scientifique libre still in standby until now. If the sister project starts, it could be great to think about a multilanguages projets with translated pages and tools for transfering and including this French project.
126.  Support. Sounds like the currently existing WikiJournals are a success and authors are happy to publish in them. Giving such WikiJournals more visibility rather than hiding them within WikiVersity sounds like a good move to me.EMsmile (talk) 02:39, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
127.  Support.--Jusjih (talk) 05:31, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
128.  Support - 47.12.117.66 15:54, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
129.  Support - I am in support of efforts to bring academic work more to the public space. I support open access peer-reviewed literature and this sounds like a fantastic effort to make that bridge, Allison Lee. Allisonlee9 (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
130.  Support - As a long-time Wikiversity contributor, custodian, and bureaucrat and university academic, there are merits to Wikiversity as a place for cultivating learning and teaching materials and experiences and research projects, but open access peer reviewing and publication of articles is also needed. The Wikimedia environment currently lacks designated space for development and publication of open access academic knowledge. There is an important pivot currently taking place towards open access journal publication (e.g., Plan S), so this is an opportune moment to create a dedicated WikiJournal sister project. -- Jtneill - Talk 05:28, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
131.  Support. --Csisc (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
132.  Support This is a very worthwhile initiative. I recall various WMF efforts to shoehorn traditional knowledge from the Global South that has never been written down in reliable sources (e.g. oral citations) in a way that violates WP:NOR. WikiJournals is the proper way to do it. MER-C (talk) 17:07, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
133.  Support I become frustrated when I lack resources or research articles to write a Wikipedia article on a subject which is not researched well or the available sources are too old to be considered good. It will be very helpful for original research and filling the gap of resources we need for Wikipedia.-Nizil Shah (talk) 06:54, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
134.  Support Muhraz (talk) 07:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
135.  Support --___CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 10:49, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
136.  Support interesting concept, worth at least a trial phase. – Ajraddatz (talk) 17:33, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
137.  Support I think a Wikimedia academic journal would be great for academics and wikipedians wanting to publish their research. I have a few reasons for this support, which I shall try and outline here.
     1. I think that WikiJournal articles are very highly read, much more so than paywall restricted journals. My anecdote here is that I published an article in the WikiJournal of Medicine (Eukaryotic and prokaryotic gene structure) and I think it is probably my most read piece of work. I get a report from Researchgate every month and I think pretty much every month it says I had the most read piece of research in my institute (around 400 staff), solely due to that review in WikiJournal of Medicine.
     2. The mainstream academic publishing model is terribly expensive for authors and for readers as well. Authors pay businesses thousands of dollars to share their research in a niche journal that is financially out of reach for most people. Yes, open access journals exist in mainstream publishing, but in those cases even more costs are pushed onto the author. Scientific societies often run their own journals and encourage their members to publish their research in these paywalled journals, which is a great idea but costs a lot and in my opinion usually results in a very restricted audience for the work. The journals then pass on some of the publication fees to the society, which encourages societies to remain bound to the journal, a costly loop. I have experienced limitations on where and how my research can be shared because of financial demands, this should not be a problem in a wikimidea hosted journal. A wikimedia type academic journal project, as described here, could replicate all of the rigour of mainstream journals but allow anyone to share their research with some permanence, regardless of financial support. This would benefit academic and non-academic authors.
     3. Academia is slowly moving away from rewarding work shared in old and elite journals, and instead recognising authors who's work is widely shared and read. Wikipedia's topic pages are an example of this shift and I see in my own limited experience here that my work here was far more rapidly cited compared to my other works. I believe this is due to the trust in an open peer review process coupled with the high visibility of academic articles linked to wikipedia. Rohan Lowe (talk) 06:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
138.  Strong support. We really need bottom-up approaches to the creation and dissemination of scholarly knowledge (*not* just by "academics"). In the modern world, where Wikidata is the greatest Open store of validatable linked knowledge we need radical new ideas and technology and Wikimedia can play a large part. Disclosure: I am a retired academic. The academic "publishing" system is failing to change and in many ways is getting worse. Decisions are made by corporate publisher managers who have no contact with authors or readers. Although there are some excellent volunteer and society journals most of the structure is a priesthood. Knowledge only flows one way (publisher->reader) and the process creates non-reusable PDFs often only available a year or more after submission. There is no ownership by the readers and reviewers and authors (who are drawn from the same "community"). The system is grossly inefficient at all levels , obscenely overcharging, often based on false values (the "publisher-academic complex values reputation rather than knowledge) and neocolonialist. It's anglophone and discriminates against the Global South. It's resistant to new technology, forbidding new ways of publishing and has little concept of helping the reader. Wikimedia has pioneered many changes - inclusiveness, multilinguality, linked data and collaboration. All of these should be mainstream in knowledge dissemination and I promote Wikimedia as the world's best example of how to address these. An emerging Wikimedia "publishing" system (I'd look for a new term) would act as a major example of how to do things better. I support the effort that T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo) has put in forseveral years. Petermr (talk) 07:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
139.  Support. Seems a good idea! Enivak (talk) 13:45, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
140.  Support. I think it's a great idea. However, given some academic scholars conscious or unconscious bias towards Wikipedia, has anyone considered a removing Wiki from the name? I would modestly suggest Collaborative Journal of Medicine etc. This would ensure that the articles have a separate scope, whilst still improving Wikipedia, may address unconscious bias, and also may encourage more articles to be submitted as review articles by students and scholars, reviewing and critiquing primary studies. This would, in my opinion, allow the new project to be more widely cited and taken seriously as scientific publications. --E.3 (talk) 13:06, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

     @E.3: Interestingly, that was actually one of the suggestions in the 2016 name change vote! The sister project would likely need to have 'wiki' or 'wikimedia' in the title for consistency with the other projects, however the names of the journals are much more flexible. One thing I've come to appreciate about having wiki in the name through is that affiliation with wikimedia may be useful to highlight as a point of difference compared to the very large number of OA journals (many of which are predatory). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 08:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

     @Evolution and evolvability: fascinating and I would have voted that the highest same as you. I am very pro open access publication, especially in this format, knowledge for all. However, there is a tendency for researchers to publish in the highest impact journal possible in the field. As it is continually reminded to students in professional courses not to cite Wikipedia, are academics and students aware that they are not citing Wikipedia when citing the Wikijournals? And have there been many citations of the published articles so far to build journal momentum and encourage further submissions? I think if it was named the Collaborative Journals (a Wikimedia Foundation Journal) or the like, I'd be a little more motivated personally to submit here rather than elsewhere, and that's as a forward thinking pro-Wikimedia academic. I suspect some other academics may feel the same. --E.3 (talk) 15:36, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

     @E.3: I don't really have the answer to that, other than the attempt to address it is via the Academic_peer_reviewed template on wikipedia. The equivalent 'Topic Page' articles from PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics are very highly cited (mean >50), so the limitation is likely low awareness of the WikiJournals. It might also be worth more clearly promoting this category on Wikipedia, but that'd be up to the Wikipedia community. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

141. Comment How many votes will need to be added here before there is a chance of this project being created? SelfieCity (talk) 22:17, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

     @SelfieCity: A good question. Now that the Signpost article is out I think that all the major wikimedia demographics should have had opportunity to respond. The next steps are to create a more detailed and prioritised list of features and then contact the WMF board (and sister project committee, though that seems to be inactive). There will also likely be some discussion at Wikimania Stockholm. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

     OK, thanks for the information. What kind of time scale would you consider? SelfieCity (talk) 13:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

     @Selfiecity: The prioritised list should be ready by the end of July to be discussed in Wikimania Stockholm in mid Aug. After that, the timing of any further steps would be mainly up to the WMF board.T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 03:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

     Once again, thanks for explaining. Do you mind if I help with the list, when you all are ready? SelfieCity (talk) 01:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

     @Selfiecity: Absolutely, keep an eye on the talkpage as the de facto starting point. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:53, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

142.  Support No reason to oppose. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:48, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
143.  Support It's time for the Journals to come out of incubation. Acer (talk) 03:41, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
144.  Support A very similar idea has been on my mind for several weeks now, and I just found this project that closely aligns with my thoughts. I am in full support. However, here are a few additional thoughts to consider:
     1. Reasons the current academic publishing system needs to be revamped:
        1. Journals are moving away from print editions and are almost entirely electronic
        2. Currently, there is a limit on how much can be published since Journals only accept a certain number of articles and have page limits. There should theoretically be no limit on how much valuable information can be published in a given timeframe. Hence, in the future there should be no page limits and no limit on the number of articles
        3. Journals take year(s) to publish research, so the research is old by the time it gets out
        4. Review process is biased towards things that are interesting or that align with mainstream thinking
        5. Review process is subjective (easier to publish in Nature after you've already published in Nature)
        6. Research is already financed largely by taxes. Public should not need to pay to access results.
        7. The current system is buoyed mainly by the academic measurement system. If faculty were not measured on the rank and number of publications, the current system would collapse rather quickly.
     2. Features that should be part of a future academic publishing system:
        1. Anyone can upload anything (like Wikipedia)
        2. Need a standard format for articles (abstract, nomenclature, figures, tables, equations, APA, etc.). Also need a standard editing tool (html/xml/latex/word/overleaf, etc.) so that the files can be viewed online but downloaded as PDF. Make authors handle editing and formatting. Copy editors often introduce more errors than they catch. Allow dataset uploads, videos, etc.
        3. Open review (anyone can comment, but people can see your comments and you can see theirs. No blind reviews)
        4. Author has the ability to edit the article to update or fix errors, but the old version still exists and is viewable by the public.
        5. DOI assigned at upload
        6. Free to download and read. Perhaps charge to upload (very cheap since no editing/review is necessary). Only need enough money to support the cloud storage of the articles.
        7. Provide aggregate data-mining tools on the articles
        8. Authors can upload papers on any subject
        9. Automatically check for plagiarism
        10. Authors are required to use their real names and information and linked to something like ORCID (no hiding behind online user names)
        11. Must encourage reviewers to review. One option: Require a review of a certain number of other articles every time you upload an article. Each review you complete gives you a token. Once you have enough tokens, you can contribute an article of your own. The review is a series of questions, just like AirBnB or Amazon product reviews, to ensure academic quality. Reviewer responses will be public. I realize this sounds dangerous to open the review process to the public rather than to qualified reviewers. However, I think there are more pros than cons to this approach. Because the reviews will not be blind and will be open to the public, and because authors will be required to use their real names (not online user names that create a mask), this approach should improve the quality of the reviews and decrease the bias. Users will want to review papers on topics they are familiar with so that they don't make erroneous comments. Authors will be incentivized to put out good work and fix mistakes if a reviewer finds one.
        12. Searchable. Must have advanced search capabilities to limit search to specific authors, institutions, key words, etc.
        13. Must be decentralized - like blockchain technology - the database should be decentralized so that no single organization can control search results, etc. This keeps the power in the hands of the users.

     Just some thoughts. Doug Hunsaker 15:10 23 July 2019 (UTC)

145.  Support Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 21:54, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
146.  Support I'd love to see where this would go, especially with the right software support. stephen (talk) 05:30, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
147.  Support. There was a discussion on the English Wikipedia a few months ago which involved a bunch of journal redirects, and I wished then there was some way to form consensus on whether or not the journals mentioned in the redirects were valid enough to be cited. This project would seem to work to resolve that concern of mine. Steel1943 (talk) 02:41, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
148.  Support. If successful, this initiative could make predatory publishing obsolete. — Newslinger talk 03:08, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
149.  Support. As an academician, I support the initiative wholeheartedly. Csgir (talk) 05:04, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
150.  Support. I would like to see a voting system for each paragraph in a journal paper. This would provide a review system as well as allowing the overall consensus of the community to emerge. It would be particularly useful to use those paragraphs with consensus in wikipedia, since simply citing a peer reviewed journal paper is not an indication of consensus. The voting option would also allow concensus to change overtime to overcome the bias that comes which older papers build up of being more cited. Each paragraph could also have have a critique explaining why they disagree. This would make the review system much more transparent. The critique in turn could be voted on. Those areas without concensus would also give an indication of which areas need further research. Voting options would allow people to disagree with some parts of a paper while still allowing it to be published unlike the traditional peer review system. NeedsGlasses (talk) 09:41, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
151.  Support. This is a great idea. --Yodin^T 11:32, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
152.  Oppose as an exercise in navel-gazing self-indulgence. If some Wikipedians want the respect and gravitas of academia, it can be done elsewhere. Cheers! ——SerialNumber54129 12:15, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
153.  Oppose. The idea of creating "Open-access peer-reviewed academic journals with no publication costs" is both admirable and timely. But the model proposed here is still far below passing the proof of concept stage. I am a practicing active tenured research mathematician, with 75+ published papers and extensive experience both as a reviewer/referee and a journal editor. The main (and in my opinion, fatal) problem with the proposal is that the proposed WikiJournals require the articles to be submitted and published in MediaWiki format. This requirement creates the following issues:

     A. Preparation of such an article by its authors would have to be done in the open, presumably in a sandbox that one of the authors creates in their user page on WikiJournals. While editing access to such a sandbox might be restricted to a group of authors (although even that would be difficult to implement), the content itself would be visible to everyone while the article is being prepared. Scientific research is an intensely competitive endeavor, and priority of credit for a specific discovery or development is paramount. In medicine, for example, if two papers with similar results are published 1 day apart, the paper that was published 1 day earlier gets the credit and the priority. [That, by the way, is why in medicine pre-publication of research papers is extremely uncommon]. Other fields have less drastic priority standards, but priority still drives everything else. Serious researchers will not want to expose their new ideas, techniques and data to competitors until they have a reasonably finished product that they can claim credit for.

     B. If a paper is rejected by one of the WikiJournals, the authors will want to re-submit it elsewhere. That would require converting a paper from MediaWiki to a different format, such as LaTeX, MS-Word etc. That's not an easy matter, especially with longer papers. In Math and Physics, for example, close to 99% of the papers are now prepared in latex. Many (if not most) math and physics journals now require the articles to be prepared in latex, and do not accept any other alternatives. Math papers now tend to be mostly in the 20-30 pages range. Most authors will be unwilling to invest the time needed in preparing a paper in MediaWiki format if there is a substantial likelihood that they later will have to do a large amount of work to convert the article to another format.

     C. Very few practicing research scientists are familiar with the MediaWiki format and have even a rudimentary experience with editing in that format. Requiring the article to be submitted in that format, with no other alternatives, cuts off the great majority (again, I would say something in the 98-99% range) of potential contributors. One can argue that this situation can change over time and that eventually people will learn, but in 17 or so years of existence of Wikipedia that has not happened yet. Unless people are, at least for the first few years, given the option of submitting papers in other formats, I can't see the project as actually taking off.

     There are various other concerns that I have, but the above points are the most important ones. They could be overcome by allowing the papers to be submitted and hosted in, say, pdf only format. However, that seems to run contrary to Founding principles, and I doubt that WMF will agree to it, even as an interim measure. Nsk92 (talk) 12:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     I agree that import/export tools to convert to and from latex/docx/pdf would be extremely valuable (technical wishlist). Currently authors either write directly in markup or prepare in a docx then copy-paste (usually using visualeditor). Conversion tools would likely also have use across other wikis, since it's not uncommon for new articles on wikipedia to be similarly prepared in a docx. The majority of journals (even biomed journals) these days accept articles that were previously online as preprints (list and database), so that aspect is becoming less of an issue. Indeed it's becomingmore common people to publish preprints specifically as scoop protection (examples: 1 2 3). Additional related questions at this page. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     If and when an automated converter from pdf and/or LaTeX to MediaWiki becomes available and is shown to actually work well, there will be something to talk about. Until and unless that happens, IMO the project is dead in the water and is an egg that is not ready to hatch. Even the limited docx conversion option using the visual editor that you mention above is not really workable. It would be a huge pain to try do do such a conversion manually on, say, a 20-30 page paper and would still require knowing a fair amount about how MediaWiki works. Plus the fields that only use LaTeX, like math, physics, and most of computer science, would be completely excluded. Regarding the copyright issue. Yes, most journals now accept papers that had been posted as preprints, but with important restrictions. The journals do not provide attribution to prior preprint versions and they do not allow subsequent alterations of those preprint versions. The standard arXiv license does not require attribution. By comparison, the CC BY-SA 3.0 License used by WMF projects requires attribution when the work is later reused and published elsewhere. I am not aware of any cases where journals have provided such attribution to preprint versions and they may well be unwilling to do that. Nsk92 (talk) 14:46, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     Also, even if various automatic converters and alternate submission formats become available, I still don't see how the proposed model can be viable for fields like medicine where credit for new work only attaches at the moment when a paper is published and not before. These fields do not use pre-prints, and scientists there closely guard their work and data until the moment of publication. The WikiJournal model requires the submitted paper to be posted in a preprint form while the paper is being reviewed. The great majority of medical researchers will be unwilling to do that. They will insist on the text of the paper remaining private and publicly unavailable while the paper is being reviewed. I don't see how the WikiJournal model can accommodate such a requirement. Without such capability the pool of medical and biological researchers willing to submit to WikiJournals shrinks dramatically. You may get a few occasional oddball submissions and maybe, if you are lucky, some survey papers. But people doing serious cutting-edge stuff will publish elsewhere. Nsk92 (talk) 15:23, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

154.  Oppose per Jo-Jo Emerus. Lepricavark (talk) 12:43, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
155.  Oppose per Jo-Jo Emerus, SerialNumber54129 and NSK92. If anyone wants to see their paper published in a peer-reviewed, indexed etc journal, well, there are already bazillions of the things to which they could submit. As with recent proposals related to videos, this seems to be driven by the medics. - Sitush (talk) 13:31, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     I recently read Making History, Now and Then, written by the historian David Cannadine. In the prologue, around pp 5 - 7, he discusses the bloat in published history research, notes that quality has been sacrificed for quantity and that there is so much of it published on ever more narrow subjects that it is impossible for academics to keep up even with reading for the bits that do relate to their topic of interest. He notes that the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (a form of performance monitoring for academics) necessitates and even drives this situation, for without publication the academic runs the risk of losing funding opportunities or even tenure etc. He says much more in the same vein but one thing the Wikimedia movement should never be is a job creation/retention exercise. It is bad enough that the WMF bloats as it does without us adding into that mix potential conflicts caused by self-serving publication-seeking academics. If they can't get it published in the existing journals, both closed and open access, it probably is not worth saying. I have other concerns, too, such as editorial independence and the undesirability of potentially creating sources which we then use ourselves. I am pretty sure I raised some of these issues in an earlier discussion on this subject but I'm blowed if I can remember where it is. - Sitush (talk) 15:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     A further point: most of our articles on most of our projects are poor, and we're adding more every day. Creating yet another project just diverts attention - these people are not going to edit Wikipedia, for example, for precisely the same reasons that they have always not edited it. Someone above mentions Wikidata as an example of a good open-source "validatable" project which this proposal could somehow complement. Odd then, that I seem to find more errors on Wikidata than even on en-WP every time I look at the thing. And the chorus of people such as Doc James answering an Oppose above with "I'd be happy to be published in it" (paraphrase) just suggests that this is a vanity project, sorry. As earlier, if you want to be published, submit to a publisher. - Sitush (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

156.  Support. Walterwiki (talk) 13:32, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
157. Question: The 'Journal contents' section states: 'The submitted preprint contents would undergo a public peer-review by external experts and considered critically by an elected editorial board before accepted into a journal's mainspace, or rejected.' This raises a few questions for me:

     • Who chooses the 'external experts'? How are they recruited to peer review preprint content?
     • Are the 'external experts' going to be renumerated somehow? Or will they be doing it for free? And we all know what you get when you pay peanuts.
     • In the event of a conflict between these 'external experts' and the elected editorial board, whose decision takes preference? Who will resolve such conflict?
     • Why does a peer-reviewed journal need the work 'wiki' in it? It's about as far away from my understanding of a 'wiki' as you could get. A propos, I have spent much of the past twenty years telling students that wikipedia is in no way a reliable source for academic work and should not be used. I suspect this is an ingrained and in some ways cherished feeling amongst academics. The idea that (yet another) wiki will become a reliable, credible source for academic endeavour, regardless of the rigour of the peer review behind it, is slightly ludicrous. As a sidenote, I and my colleagues often direct students to wikiversity should they want to see how not to do academic work or research. Isn't there a strong likelihood that this new project could end up in the same category? Fortnum (talk) 15:34, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     @Fortnum: The questions about who recruits outside reviewers and how is answered above; see the response to PiZero's questions. It is completely standard in academia for experts to review papers in their area of specialty without remuneration -- it is part of our service to the research community. Editors use input and recommendations from the reviewers to make editorial decisions; reviewers are never in a position to make the decisions directly themselves. --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 16:30, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     For further information, external experts can be recommended or excluded by submitting authors via the authorship declaration form. External peer reviewers are contacted by the peer review coordinator via these guidelines. Peer reviewers are not remunerated, however automated publons integration may be another longer-term goal. The editorial boards and associate editors are elected via these processes and have these ethical duties. When significant disagreement occurs between reviewers, typically additional external reviewres are sought. Final decision lies with the editorial boards, but the peer reviewer comments remain openly vieweable to make the process transparent to audit. General journal management is heavily guided by the relevant COPE guidelines.

     Wikiversity contains a very wide range of quality, ranging from some of the best such as the work of v:Helping Give Away Psychological Science, through to the worst (epitomised by the necessary bans of v:Cold fusion and other fringe topics). Indeed, the focus on external peer review is specifically to address quality control that can be an issue in sister wikis.

158.  Support. The founding principles are not set in stone, and they do not have to apply to everything the Foundation or the community does. (It would also seem that they are mainly descriptive rather than prescriptive.) That they accurately describe what the projects are like now does not mean that they must be accurate forever into the future. I think the proposed project is in broad alignment with the overarching goals of the movement, would be a good fit for the capabilities of the existing MediaWiki software, could generally benefit the community and the WMF as another viable sister project, and could have advantages for those who publish their work there in comparison to traditional journals. Jc86035 (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
159. 'Neutral' Something needs to be done. En Wikipedia is hostile to expert writers. And wp:RS rules out actual reliability and expertise as a criteria for sources. Ideally, this would be fixes in En Wikipeda although I fear that it has lost the ability to evolve or fix things. But this sounds like it woule be messy/ have a lot of problems. North8000 (talk) 17:47, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
160.  Oppose and very strongly per Sitush and Jo-Jo. Yikes. Praxidicae (talk) 17:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
161.  Support. In real life, I'm a professional academic scientist, and I've come over time to have a lot of concerns over the traditional journal publication process. I think the proposal here has a lot of potential to test things that could address those concerns. And I also think that if it fails (from, for example, a lack of interest in submitting high quality work), it will be quite possible to decide to shut it down and mark it as historical. So I see it as a worthy experiment from the perspective of traditional academics. As for the perspective of WMF projects, I've read and thought about the opposes based on the concerns about core principles, and it seems to me that, as a separate project, it's acceptable to try out something different. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     @Tryptofish: I think those who are proposing this have been experimenting for years. I didn't register the timestamps at first but this survey (or whatever it is) was initiated on 21 August 2016. - Sitush (talk) 18:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     @Sitush: Thanks, I didn't see that either, until you pointed it out! I came here from the new watchlist notice at en-wiki. But anyway, I support continuing the experiment. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

162.  Support. I was sceptical about the journals back in the day (unlike some, I have long been aware of them), but so far I think they are turning out better than I expected, in particular in terms of getting "peer" external reviewers. Johnbod (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
163.  Oppose. Open-access e-journals exist already, it's called arXiv. What exactly is WikiJournal bringing to the table that arXiv isn't? If there is something missing that WikiJournal will provide, is it some feature arXiv can/will fix anyway in the future? How about collaboration with arXiv, has that been considered? The current proposal doesn't mention them at all, which seems like it's ignoring a giant elephant in the room. If the Foundation wants to expand, it should consider either niches that are currently unfilled by anyone, or issues where a proprietary site is currently the most significant provider (e.g. commercial FindAGrave -> some open WikiGraveyard project). This seems more like if Wikimedia decided to make its own version of OpenStreetMap - just competing against an existing open source project for unclear benefit. SnowFire (talk) 21:33, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
164. Weak oppose. Seems an good idea, but needs improvement. It also seems like wanting to deteriorate Wikipedia, as both are informational sites. I am not generaly aginst that, but i oppose it for now (weakly, through; i may hcange my mind). Eni vak (speak) 21:45, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     I would contend that it has improvement of Wikipedia specifically as a specific goal (landing page). Several articles written from scratch have been subsequently integrated into Wikipedia (example), and others were written on submitted from Wikipedia via WP:JAN (example) (category). Similarly, other articles have been valuable for wikiversity courses (example), or wikicommons (example). See also 2018 WikiJSci aims and scope editorial and Signpost article. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:41, 22 August 2019 (UTC)