From: Maria Bonn <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2013 10:49:53 -0600

Historically, the value of publication has been measured by success in
the marketplace and impact of the publication, whether that impact be
cultural or scholarly. The calculus of this value has been as
straightforward as number of copies sold (documented most widely in
“best seller” lists) and/or dollars in profit generated to the complex
citation and referral counts that result in a scholarly “impact
factor.” As with so many areas of our cultural and intellectual lives,
the widespread adoption of digital technology and networked
communication (with its attendant social media practices) has
disrupted our metrics of publishing value and has called for a
revision of the ways in which that value is calculated. In some
professional and social circles, page visits, link referrals, Google
ranks, presence in the Twitter universe and other social media
prominence, are now taken as seriously as scholarly citation and
profit margins, a shift that raises questions for how scholars balance
the emerging professional requirement for an online presences with the
need for privacy and protected space for research. In addition, the
value measure of pages visits and glances (where a quick hit might
“count” for the same as an extended period of study and engagement)
are still in the early stages of development. While we have seen the
rise of “altmetrics” and “impact stories,” weeks on the New York Times
Best Seller List continue to indicate worthiness for attention and the
case for scholarly job security continues to be made by citation based
measures. In addition, the increased ease of collaboration and
co-authoring, even across wide spans of time and space, make assigning
authorial and impact “credit” both more compelling and more difficult.
We are also still developing rubrics for calculating the broader
social contribution of work that is made widely available via the Web.
In the scholarly context this revision of measures of value continue
to be embedded in disciplinary practices and prejudices, contexts that
have a significant impact upon shaping evaluation metrics.

The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) invites reflections and
reportage on enduring, emerging and potential measures of publication
value. We expect such discussions will be rooted in the publishing
context (of value to whom, for whom?) and will address both
short-comings and usefulness of the metrics under discussion. While we
anticipate that our contributors will be attendant to changes wrought
by digital technology and networked communication, we are also
interested in metrics embedded within print culture, both those that
endure and those that are no longer current.

Publication is anticipated for late spring, 2014; final drafts will be
due in April, 2014. Please send article ideas and indications of
interest to the editor, Maria Bonn [log in to unmask] Please see the
journal website for more information about the journal and the
submission process.

JEP articles are peer-reviewed at the request of the author, and
peer-reviewed articles are identified as such in both the article and
in the preservation metadata. Editorial decisions are otherwise made
by the editor in consultation with the editorial board. If you
yourself are not prepared to write on these topics but you know of
others who should be invited to contribute, please send suggestions to
the editor, as above.

- See more at: http://www.publishing.umich.edu/2013/11/26/cfp-metrics-for-measuring-publishing-value-jep/#sthash.p7zTqVfL.dpuf

Maria Bonn

Senior Lecturer,
Graduate School of Information and Library Science
University of Illinois

Editor,
Journal of electronic Publishing
(http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org)