I know guide you in this area but I wish you good luck.

Best regards

Fadel

Thanks, Fadel!

Thanks, Timur!

Hi Valeria what do you mean by "double blind"? rgds John

@ John: in the review process, the reviewers are unknown to the authors, and viceversa. That requires some work from the editorial point of view, and the authors need to find a way to cite their own work without giving their identity away.  There is a thread about which some of us posted, which then led to my current question:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_think_double-blind_review_is_better_than_regular_review_in_journals?cp=re65_x_p3&ch=reg&loginT=TyUOG92ndVBFKtPsA9l9G8W8QduAbgaviqJMEK5xurY%2A&pli=1

@Iolanda-Gabriela: thank you very much for that article. It's very helpful!

No

My recommendation would be to start  a double-blind journal in the area of 'renewable energy'- but from the engineers point of view or perspective.

@ Ali: it will really depend on how many associate editors we can find, who buy strongly into this concept of double-blind reviewing. Even "just" thermal-mechanical-electrical is a pretty wide scope as it is. From the mechanical engineering standpoint, I can find good associate editors in the field of mechanics of materials, but that is a much more limited scope.

@ Thalangunam: thanks! Renewable energy is very multidisciplinary, and could fall under 'mechanical' and 'thermal' engineering. So, there is still the issue of narrowing the scope and finding associate editors/reviewers.

@ everybody: do you pay publication fees? What publication fee would you be willing to pay for the cost of the editorial staff of this journal? It would take quite a while to get to a subscription model. Thanks!

I have paid US$2,400 for the cost of a video published by the Journal of Visualized Experiments. I actually was caught by surprise, I did not realize that there was a cost associated to the video production. I am happy with the final result, and I was able to pay this fee out of two existing grants, but some authors may not have external funding and may not be willing to pay that much. 

Thanks!

I have no experience in starting a double-blind reviewed journal, but if it is also planned to be open access, I guess that a fee between 2000$-3000$ is acceptable.I think more than that and you might lose submissions to better known journals that, although being single-blind in their review process, ask for similar money for open-access publication of papers.

My belief, albeit being that of a relatively young member of the research community, is that public research should always be published open-access and that grants should explicitly have funds allocated for covering fees required by open-access journals. I think that this viewpoint is being more and more common in public funding agencies and I hope it continues on gaining ground.

However, I see there might be an image concern for a new journal to charge high fees. I'm not sure if the perception from the research community is that a high fee indicates more chances of being published (as the new journal needs the money) or if it sends the signal that you must be confident in the quality/novelty/significance of your work to submit it there and that higher fees supports lower volumes of high quality papers.

Anyhow, best of luck if to all of you who do embark on this endeavor, and particularly to Valeria for your promotion to full professor.

@ Laurent: thanks a lot for the feedback! In my department, open access journals are seen negatively as a very low hanging fruit on which to publish. So, yes, we would have to build the reputation of this journal to the point that US$2k-3k would be acceptable. The reputation of the editorial board will be critical. 

Thanks also for the wishes about my career:-). I can see you have read the other thread.

I'm always amazed at the reaction to open-access journals given how dependent we are of the research results of others to guide, inspire or validate our own. I guess that it is cultural, engineering being so closely related to the industry and its trade secrets and competitive nature.

Thanks Valeria, I am familiar with withholding identities on both side though I had not heard it termed as double blind but I see where it comes from. I agree with your aims.

@ John: do you have any insights that could help start such a journal? Thanks!

Dear Colleagues,

For those who haven't yet considered the topic of double blind review, a few interesting links. 

The 2008 Editorial of Nature especially interesting, the results of the survey of 3,000 academics.

Kind regards, Balázs

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/social-science-and-medicine/policies/double-blind-peer-review-guidelines/

http://www.nature.com/news/nature-journals-offer-double-blind-review-1.16931

http://www.nature.com/news/journals-weigh-up-double-blind-peer-review-1.15564

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/full/451605b.html

Thanks a lot, Balázs! Very helpful.

@Laurent: 3,000 USD is three months pre-tax salary of an associate professor or a whole year salary for a doctoral student  in Hungary. Even if I support wholeheartedly the open access, if I had a choice, I would employ an associate professor for three months (or the the doctoral student for a year) and send the the paper to a high reputation conventional journal. (Well, the budgets are not so flexible, of course.)

A project at the Hungarian National Science Fund of say 75,000 USD is a very big one for four years. You plan to publish at least two papers of that project that is 6k USD, i.e. 8% of the total budget. The reviewer of the project proposal would at least suggest to reduce that (may also reject the financial plan).

If the fees are so high, researchers from many countries would not be able to get finances for that unless they have a financially strong partner (co-author, first author) from USA, Switzerland, or Germany.

Kind regards, Balázs

@ Balázs: thanks for the sobering reminder of the value of money across different countries. 

@ Ali: I do not think there is any way that the editor(s) will make money out of this journal, especially not at the beginning. I really see this as service to the community, and an attempt to create a more fair and balanced environment where to publish.

@ Everybody: what if the best paper in a given topic in a quarter were to be awarded with open access? Would that be an incentive for quality?

Yes , it will improve quality of the papers(by and large) and also  the quantities, because, everyone will start vying for their paper to get an exceptional prize and therefore will forward it for the award and sometimes, though not at all times,quality will become a casualty.One has to ensure that such a thing does not happen.

@Balázs,

It is indeed a sobering reminder of the uneven material resources availability of the research community, it being money or other. I thank you for it.

However, I see the subscription base to be a similar barrier to producing quality research in regions with lesser financial resources. As the subscription fees for libraries are quite substantial, I find that the public research institutions are just funding research publication through another pipeline. Of course, some publisher allow for free access to users from countries meeting some 'poverty' criterion, but I doubt that is really the way to go, particularly for the regions caught in the middle ground. That being said, I don't have actual numbers to confirm my point of view and I would be happy to be proven wrong if anyone has them.

The fee I proposed was given as a ceiling anyway, based on the fact many recognized journals charge similar amounts and that submission to an unknown journal for a higher fee would be unlikely. . However, as I see it, the more people publish open-access, the less the fees should become.

@Valeria, I find the idea interesting, but I see a possible debate around what would be the criterion for 'best paper'. I see that some journals give access to the most viewed/downloaded papers, but is that really a sign of quality? That would certainly limit the chances of publications from less popular or established topics to be awarded the 'prize'. An editorial award based on a pre-selection by the editors which would then have to be re-evaluated and voted for might work, but would also be a lot of work...

@ Laurent: good points. I see this setup as a pre-selection by the editor(s)/associate editors involved in a given category.  I would not use audience-based downloads as a measure of quality. In this type of journal, I see a lot of guidelines that will need to be accepted by the editors and associate editors (one being that none of us can submit to this journal). Maybe at the end of this, only the people who really care about the journal mission will be left, who would be already probably working for free in any case.

It may be worth to do this to increase the quality of the submissions, but it still all depends on what the cost structure of the journal is going to be.

I wanted to ask the community what they thought, and whether this would be an incentive for quality or not.

@Iolanda: submitting to the very first issue will be very risky for the authors. I am hoping that we will be able to convince a number of established researchers of high caliber who have nothing to loose (they may have already tenure and/or a full professor post and/or a high number of published papers), and support the mission of this journal.

It appears that several social sciences journals have a double-blind review process. I am thinking to contact the original editors and ask them how they managed the process at the very beginning. I assume that they may be supportive of the attempt of establishing a double-blind review process in a scientific journal, especially if there is no competition with theirs.

@Ali

I know that Institutions subscribe to journals through their library and that indexing of the journal is important. The point I intended to make was that those subscription are expensive and are a form of subsidy to the publication of research that is, in the end, no different to subsidizing publication through open access journals. It is just that instead of paying for publishing your research at the end of the process, you pay to access knowledge required for making your research right from the onset.

I also meant that in poorer countries, the fees associated to these subscriptions might be a limitation to the quality of the research as decisions on the breadth of available subscriptions for reference will be inevitable. If open access gains popularity, the price for publication should come down and be partially covered by a reduction of library subscription fees. Its just the path that the money follows that changes. However, as a by product of a migration towards open access, researcher from poorer country, and even those from richer countries, would have better access to reference material to start with.

@ Ali and Laurent. I see both your points.

I think this may boil down to interested readers paying for the individual articles they want, if their University/institution has no access. The cost of individual papers of current journals in my area is ~US$40. Interested readers may also ask for a particular paper through the Inter-library loans at their libraries, or contact the authors to get the articles, or ask for these articles to be uploaded on Researchgate, if this option is available. 

There are several legal ways to get an article without an institution subscription.