New Special Issue "Performative Social Science" / Relaunch FQS

[Katja Mruck <katja.mruck@fu-berlin.de>]

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