Peer-reviewing the monkeyhouse

December 17, 2004 12:15 PM

Introducing the International Journal of Web Based Communities (IJWBC), a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal whose first issue just went online. Growing out of the papers presented at the IADIS International Conference on Web Based Communities, the journal lists among their intended subject coverage such topics as "the history, architecture and future of virtual communities", "group processes and self-organisation", and "fading hierarchies and epistemic dictatorship". Read it while you can, because future hardcopy subscriptions will run you $450/€430 a year.
posted by Asparagirl (7 comments total)

I particularly liked this article on "Roles and knowledge management in online technology communities". MetaFilter has a lot of geeks and librarians in its userbase, but it's not a technology community, per se. And yet I think we could all name certain users here who fall into the seven roles the authors have quantified: "core organiser, experts, problem poser, implementer, integrator, institutionaliser, and philosopher". Matt would be fall into the first of those designations, obviously, and I would think someone like MiguelCardoso falls into the last of them, and I'm sure people here can think of representative users for the other five groups.

There aren't any articles yet about a certain peer-reviewed, self-policing web community, but I suspect it will be only a matter of time. Someone's bound to get a Ph.D. out of this place eventually.
posted by Asparagirl at 12:17 PM on December 17, 2004

will run you $450/€430 a year.


ROFL!!! $5 to join one, $450 to read about it!

this reminds me of an episode of married with children, when the refrigerator repairman presented a bill for $80, al remarked "80 bucks to fix a hulking thing in the corner? it's only 25 bucks to marry one!"
posted by quonsar at 12:28 PM on December 17, 2004

When the Audience is the Producer: The Art of the Collaborative Weblog
posted by euphorb at 2:03 PM on December 17, 2004

Good link. This is a favorite topic of mine since the most interesting stuff on the internet seems to orignate out of web communities. One question though: is Rheingold still considered the best guru on the subject or is someone else better?
posted by clockworkjoe at 2:55 PM on December 17, 2004

...will run you $450/€430 a year.

That's a crazy-high price for a journal, isn't it? All of the ones I've looked into subscribing to in hardcopy (*blush*) were far cheaper for individual subscriptions... only institutional subscriptions ran into the hundreds.

I guess my taste in scholarly work are pretty low-brow?
posted by onshi at 11:04 PM on December 17, 2004

Not sure about my brow height, but the excellent Journal of Democracy, which I read, is a far more affordable $32 for individual schmucks like me.
posted by athenian at 11:54 AM on December 20, 2004

Hey! I subscribe to that too! Isn't it awesome?
posted by Asparagirl at 3:41 PM on December 23, 2004