'Nature Conservation': a new dimension in Open Access publishing bridging science and application

This Editorial presents the focus, scope and policies of the inaugural issue of Nature Conservation, a new open access, peer-reviewed journal bridging natural sciences, social sciences and hands-on applications in conservation management. The journal covers all aspects of nature conservation and aims particularly at facilitating better interaction between scientists and practitioners. The journal will impose no restrictions on manuscript size or the use of colour. We will use an XML-based editorial workflow and several cutting-edge innovations in publishing and information dissemination. These include semantic mark-up of, and enhancements to published text, data, and extensive cross-linking within the journal and to external sources. We believe the journal will make an important contribution to better linking science and practice, offers rapid, peer-reviewed and flexible publication for authors and unrestricted access to content.

Opening up climate research: A linked data approach to publishing data provenance

Traditionally, the formal scientific output in most fields of natural science has been limited to peer- reviewed academic journal publications, with less attention paid to the chain of intermediate data results and their associated metadata, including provenance. In effect, this has constrained the representation and verification of the data provenance to the confines of the related publications. Detailed knowledge of a dataset’s provenance is essential to establish the pedigree of the data for its effective re-use, and to avoid redundant re-enactment of the experiment or computation involved. It is increasingly important for open-access data to determine their authenticity and quality, especially considering the growing volumes of datasets appearing in the public domain. To address these issues, we present an approach that combines the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) – a widely adopted citation technique – with existing, widely adopted climate science data standards to formally publish detailed provenance of a climate research dataset as an associated scientific workflow. This is integrated with linked-data compliant data re-use standards (e.g. OAI-ORE) to enable a seamless link between a publication and the complete trail of lineage of the corresponding dataset, including the dataset itself.

Challenges in conducting and publishing research on the Middle East and Africa in leading journals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons for the lack of research attention paid to the Middle East (ME) and Africa regions. In particular, this study seeks to identify the reasons for and implications of the paucity of ME- and Africa-based studies in high-quality international journals in the marketing field with a specific focus on the challenges in conducting and publishing research on these regions. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a systematic review of the literature on the ME and Africa regions to identify papers published in 23 high-quality marketing, international business, and advertising journals. This search resulted in 301 articles, among which 125 articles were based on primary or secondary data collected from a local source in those regions. The authors of these 125 articles constitute the Delphi study sample. These academics provided input in an effort to reach a consensus regarding the two proposed models of academic research in both regions. Findings – This paper differs from previous studies, where academic freedom emerged as the most important inhibitor to conducting and publishing research. The most frequently mentioned challenges in conducting research in Africa were access to data, data collection issues, diversity of the region, and lack of research support infrastructure. For the ME, the most often described challenges included validity and reliability of data, language barriers, data collection issues, and availability of a network of researchers. Editors’ and reviewers’ low interest and limited knowledge were ranked high in both regions. South Africa, Israel, and Turkey emerged as outliers, in which research barriers were less challenging than in the rest of the two regions. The authors attribute this difference to the high incidence of US-trained or US-based scholars originating from these countries. Originality/value – To the best of the knowledge, no marketing studies have discussed the problems of publishing in high-quality international journals of marketing, international business, and advertising for either region. Thus, most of the issues the authors discuss in this paper offer new insightful results while supplementing previous research on the challenges of conducting and publishing research on specific world regions.

To hold up prisms: Australian and Canadian indigenous publishing for children

Bradford discusses Thomas King's exhortation to writers that is directed specifically to Canadian First Nations writers, which captures the importance of language as the primary means by which individual and group identities are formed. He mentions the important contribution that Indigenous publishers make to children's literature.

The Fiftieth Gate : an Australian case study in twentieth-century 'popular' publishing

On Sunday 6 April 1997, historian Mark Baker's first non-academic book was launched at Melbourne's iconic migrant portal, Station Pier. The guest list of over 500 invitees included representatives of many print media organisations, most of whom interviewed the author. His photograph was reproduced a week later in the 'Agenda' section of The Age newspaper. In this portrait, Baker leans on the railings beside the massive structure of Station Pier. Framed by sea and sky, he is caught glancing pensively over his shoulder past the camera and into the middle distance. He is alone. The day is bleak. Here, the reader is invited to surmise, is a man with much on his mind. In a flash of inspiration the sub-editor has prefaced the accompanying caption, 'Back to the future', linking the story with the mass media of film and television.

Web publishing revisited-a case study of literary websites in Russia

The concept of web publishing has been widely discussed in IS research literature since the WWW emerged. The discussion in various publications often revolves around the issues of business success and profitability, web design, and effective content presentation. This paper is a study of one of the “unknown” segments of the Internet - a family of websites publishing literary works in the Russian language. We demonstrate that the innovative model adopted by site owners in building the relationships with the site customers, and the information technology selected for the sites can play a crucial role in the success of a web-based venture. Our analysis is based on the concepts of virtual community and socio-technical interaction. We discuss the  contribution of this case not only to the innovative use of the Web-based business models, but also to the new forms of literary life and national  culture. Some of the concepts, principles and practices, adopted on those sites may be of interest to the Internet developers and communities worldwide.

A case for blended and collaborative learning as strategies for teaching editing and publishing within a postgraduate writing program

Several recent studies have called for the breakdown of' arbitrary distinctions between virtual and "face-to-face" classrooms' (Comeaux & McKenna-Byington 2003: 348; see also McDonald 2002; Rosset, Douglis & Frazee 2003; Morse 2003). In 2004 the Professional and Creative Writing discipline at Deakin University added Editing and Publishing (which had previously been available as on-campus-only units at our institution) to an established list of online postgraduate writing units taught via the auspices of the new (to our university) WebCT technology. This paper describes and evaluates our experience of challenging the 'arbitrary distinctions' between our two cohorts of students by incorporating blended and collaborative learning strategies into our course via two specific projects.

Where did all these books come from? The Publishing Industry and American Intellectual Life

The American book publishing industry shapes the character of American intellectual life. While the newspaper and television industries have been accused of and investigated for bias and lowering America’s intellectual standards, book publishing has gone largely unexamined by scholars. The existing studies of the publishing industry have focused on finance, procedure and history. “There are few ‘theories’ of publishing – efforts to understand the ‘whys’ as well as the ‘hows.’ Few scholarly scientists have devoted significant scholarly attention to publishing” (Altbach and Hoshino, xiii). There are many possible reasons for this lacuna. First, there is a perception that books have always been around, that they are an “old” technology and therefore they don’t appear to have had as much of an impact on our society as television and other media (which were developed quickly and suddenly) seem to have had (Altbach and Hoshino, xiv). Also, despite books’ present and past popularity, television, radio, and now the internet reach more people more easily, and are therefore more topical points of study and observation. In studying the effects of mass media on everyday American life, television and the internet may be the most logical points of study. Regarding public intellectual life however, books play a much more important role. Public intellectual life has always been associated with independent thinkers publishing their work for the masses. For this reason, this I focus on trade publishing. Trade publishing produces fiction and non-fiction works for the general reading public, as opposed to technical manuals, textbooks, and other fiction and nonfiction books targeted to small and specific audiences. Although, quantitatively speaking, “the largest part of book publishing business is embodied in that great complex of companies and activities producing educational, business, scientific, technical, and reference books and materials,” (Tebbel 1987, 439) the trade industry publishes most of the books that most people read. It is the most public segment of the industry, and the most likely place to find public intellectualism. Trade publishing is not only the most public segment of the industry, but it is also the most susceptible to corruption and lowered intellectual standards. Unlike specialty publishing, which caters to a specific, known segment of society, trade publishers must compete with countless other publications, as well as with other forms of media, for the patronage of the general public. As John Tebbel (author of a widely referenced history of the publishing industry) puts it, “The textbook, scientific, or technical book is subjected to much more rigorous scrutiny by buyers and users, and in an intensively competitive market inferior products are quickly lost" (Tebbel 1987, xiv). Since the standards for trade publishing are not nearly as specific – trade books simply need to catch the attention of a significant number of readers, they don’t have to measure up to a given level of quality – the quality of trade books is much more variable. And yet, a successful trade publication can have a much greater impact on society than the most rigorously researched and edited textbook or scholarly study.