Just thought I’d drop a line to say why I’m posting even less than usual, and why that’s likely to continue for a few weeks months…
You can guess the major reason: Gold Open Access Journals 2011-2014.
I’m trying to do the scan as carefully as possible, and include as many DOAJ-listed journals as possible.
Oh, that’s not all I do: I rarely do any of it after supper, there’s still (some) TV, I’m still reading roughly a book a week and lots of magazines, there’s still the Wednesday hike (or long walk) and the daily 1.3-mile walk around the block. But it takes up a fair amount of time.
Optimistic schedule
If all goes well, I hope to complete the first pass sometime in mid-March. I won’t start the second pass (revisiting a couple of thousand journals where revisits are required or advisable) until early April.
In between, I hope to put together some sort of Cites & Insights issue.
But there’s also a medical situation in late March that could have me out of commission (at least where typing’s concerned) for anywhere from a day or two to several weeks; the day or two is more likely, but you never know. (Benign Schwannoma on the forearm, if you must know: “benign” being the key word.)
Come April, there’s the rescan–a lot fewer journals, but each one will take significantly more time. At least I hope many of them do: part of the revisit is all journals that were unreachable or unworkable or raised malware flags, and I hope a fair number of those don’t have the same exclusionary conditions.
(So far, the only discouraging part of this new project is that too damn many OA journals–not very many in the overall scheme of things, but still too damn many–cause Malwarebytes or McAfee Site Advisor or Windows Defender or, in one case MS Office to say “do you really want to go there?” I believe that uncontrolled ad sites make up a lot of the problem, but in any case it is simply not acceptable for any journal site to have code that triggers malware warnings. Nor will I ignore the warnings. If I had a dedicated Chromebook, I suppose I could–but that wouldn’t be helpful for others. And yes, I did get a serious bit of malware last time around, and it became clear that at least one other journal was trying to install the same code; that’s why I use Malwarebytes these days.)
I’m guessing I’ll need to take more breaks during the rescan, so there may be more blog posts and activity at Cites & Insights. Then, of course, comes the analysis and writeup… after which I may have a good deal more time. Or not.
Not complaining; I love this. It’s a little triumph each time I can fully analyze a journal I’d left out before, even if it means opening up a dozen PDFs for each of the past five years. At least now I have real broadband, so that’s feasible if annoying. (“Real broadband” as in Comcast, guaranteed 25mbps, actual 30mbps–as opposed to “Uverse” 1.5mbps but dropping entirely once or twice or more a day.)
Still around, still mildly active in various parts of the LSW diaspora, but mostly doing research. And enjoying it.
