Publishing

[Christian Lehmann]

Dear Nigel and everybody,

that is exactly the proposal that I have been waiting for and would have 
made myself. I am willing to cooperate in your working group.

Just a few thoughts:

1) Apart from a few idealists, most of those colleagues who have the 
necessary standing to draw prestige to the online linguistics publishing 
facility and are "prepared to be tough in terms of peer review and 
quality selection" would want some kind of remuneration for their 
service. That's the way this world is; we know it from experience with 
people who are on editorial or advisory boards of journals and series. 
That remuneration is not necessarily money, although that option would 
always work if money is available. The problem is that it detracts from 
the outspoken goal of making such publications freely available.

2) One might therefore think of a model where a member of that online 
publishing board takes on the duty of reviewing one book or two articles 
every two years and gets some (immaterial) benefit in return. (Ideas 
wanted of what that might be.)

3) Since your idea in itself is exactly what is needed, I assume that 
there will be, in the mid-run, more than one such online linguistics 
publishing facility. In order to get the idea running, it might be 
useful to allocate it rather highly. I offer to submit it to the CIPL 
Executive Committee, if that seems reasonable to members of your working 
group. CIPL fulfills a couple of presuppositions for that role:
- It is international and, indeed, in charge of a couple of permanent 
agenda on behalf of linguists worldwide.
- It has a certain prestige (although not quite the prestige that it 
ought to have).
- It has a certain infrastructure (although, again, that aspect remains 
improvable).
- It disposes of some money (although, again, ...) and might have the 
possibility to raise some more.

Best,
Christian

-- 
Prof. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Erfurt
Postf. 900221
D - 99105 Erfurt

Tel.:   +49/361/737-4201    (selbst)
         +49/361/737-4200    (Sekr.)
Fax:    +49/361/737-4209

E-Post: Christian.Lehmann at Uni-Erfurt.De
http://www.christianlehmann.eu