New Special Issue "Performative Social Science" / Relaunch FQS
Dear All,
I would like to let you know that FQS 9(2) "Performative Social Science"
has been published. As there are some substantial changes concerning the
complete FQS site, please read the following information very carefully.
1. New Special Issue "Performative Social Science"
2. New Publishing System and New Design
3. New Citation Policy for FQS Articles
4. Newsletter
5. The Next Steps
Important: Dependent from your local provider it is possible that it
will need a bit until you will be able to access the "new FQS"; this is
the case if you receive a "Multiple Choice" message while trying to
access one of the URLs mentioned below. Just try it again some hours
later, please.
1. New Special Issue "Performative Social Science"
FQS 9(2) --
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/current --,
edited by Kip Jones (Special Issue Editor) and Mary Gergen, John J.
Guiney Yallop, Irene Lopez de Vallejo, Brian Roberts and Peter Wright
(Co-Editors), deals with topics and methods with which, until now,
social scientists have hardly been familiar. Photography, music, dance,
poetry, video installations, dramatic monologues and theatrical
performances have recently been added to the qualitative researcher's
toolbox and "performative" -- in the widest sense of the word -- has
become a "working title" for the dissemination efforts of researchers
wanting to enhance, or even move beyond, PowerPoint conference
presentations or traditional journals. Those engaging in this new
"performative social science" are often changing these boundaries or
pushing beyond them. These qualitative investigators are courageously
developing arts-based research methods and dissemination techniques in
order to both investigate deeper and reach wider audiences. This is good
news, not only for participants in research studies, who can often be
involved in producing subsequent performative presentations, but also
for the larger community to whom findings should be directed.
In FQS 9(2), more than 40 articles deal with "Performative Social
Science"; additionally the issue contains selected single contributions
and contributions, belonging to the sections FQS Debates, FQS Reviews
and FQS Conferences: It is our hope that this new issue will bring some
inspiration for your daily work!
We would like to thank the editors and the authors of FQS 9(2) and
especially Kip Jones for his important pioneering work in the field of
international (performative) social science. In our case and within the
challenges of a performative zeitgeist, it has meant for FQS that we
have learned to "walk" and "talk" along with this new approach. From now
on, videos and audios will part of our everyday work.
2. New Publishing System and New Design
From this Issue on, we are using the journal management and publishing
system, "Open Journal Systems" (OJS, http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs). We
decided on OJS because of several reasons:
-- So called "metadata", now available for each article, allows
convenient searches for authors, article titles, etc. (see e.g.,
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/search/authors).
Additionally, by using the metadata, FQS articles will also be
retrievable from other sites such as the Directory of Open Access
Journals, for example. This will help to further increase the visibility
of our authors and their articles. (This will be done after some final
work has been realized, see Section 5.)
-- OJS is databank-based, so content is generated dynamically while
accessing a side. One example for an advantage is that instead of
creating lists of book reviews already published in FQS manually in
three languages, now you can access the latest versions by one click,
see
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/search/sectionDetails/Reviews.
Using databanks has also some consequences for the URLs and the web
addresses you used until now for citing articles (see Section 3).
-- OJS is an open-source software, developed by the Canadian Public
Knowledge Project. As OJS is the most prominent online-journal system
(used by more than 1,400 journals currently), there is a strong
community of developers all over the world working on future
improvements of OJS. For example, the possibility of switching between
different languages has been programmed by Bozana Bokan, a member of our
team, and is now available for all other journals using OJS. Currently
colleagues in other countries are working on open peer review facilities
for OJS, which will be included in a new release that we might also use
for FQS, along with the traditional review routines (double blind review
etc.).
-- Submission of articles and the complete journal and publication
management can be organized online.
3. New Citation Policy for FQS Articles
One consequence of the FQS relaunch is that URLs that you used to cite
articles are now changed to URNs (Uniform Resource Name -- so called
persistent identifiers like the DOI some of you might know). The correct
URN is mentioned in the citation section at the end of the respective
article, e.g., "urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802437" for the article below:
---
Citation
Gergen, Mary & Jones, Kip (2008). Editorial: A Conversation about
Performative Social Science [46 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative
Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(2), Art. 43,
http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802437.
---
As URNs (like DOI) cannot be used directly in a web browser to access an
article, you need to use the complete address
(http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802437 (as illustrated in
the example above) to access an article.
4. Newsletter
We will continue to use this newsletter in the future (currently
distributed to more than 8,600 colleagues worldwide). Nevertheless, we
recommend that you register at
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/user/register to use
additional reading tools for informing colleagues about articles, access
different styles for citing FQS articles in other publications, etc.
5. The Next Steps
At the present time, ten issues (437 articles) are available at the new
site and in the new design; issues 1(1) to 6(2) will follow
successively. All "old" URLs that you use to cite FQS articles will
continue to work, but from now and in the future, they will be
redirected and point to the new version of the article as soon as it had
been migrated to OJS.
To revise a project like FQS has meant an enormous effort for all
involved. We would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(German Research Foundation) and the Center für Digitale Systeme of the
Freie Universitaet for their continued appreciation and support of our work!
Like any changes, ours certainly caused mistakes: any comments or
questions are welcome!
Katja Mruck
--
FQS - Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung
/ Forum: Qualitative Social Research (ISSN 1438-5627)
English -> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm
German -> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs.htm
Spanish -> http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-s.htm
Dr. Katja Mruck
Freie Universitaet Berlin
Center fuer Digitale Systeme (CeDiS)
Ihnestr. 24
D - 14195 Berlin
E-mail: katja.mruck@fu-berlin.de
Phone: ++49 (0)30 838 - 52 779 (off.)
++49 (0)30 791 54 31 (priv.)
Fax: ++49 (0)30 838 - 52 843
