AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ABOUT THE JOURNAL (NOVEMBER 2012)

These are 2 important mails - respectively from Lucie Lamoureux (12 Nov. 2012) and from Sarah Cummings (19 Nov. 2012), shared on the mailing list, informing everyone about the status of the journal.

Dear all,

The Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KM4D Journal) was created back in 2005 and has been an important place for KM4Dev Community practitioners to document and share their experiences. The Journal was self-published from 2005 until 2008 with the online Open Journal System, with occasional hard copy printing when ad-hoc funding allowed. This meant that the Journal was free and open, which was in line philosophically with the KM4Dev Community. But the four years of self-publishing were also quite demanding on the Editorial Team, who did everything from A to Z, on top of their full-time work.

As of 2009, we had the opportunity to have some much appreciated editorial support through funding from the IKM-Emergent research programme. At the same time, Taylor and Francis/Routledge were interested in taking the Journal on board and the Editorial Team took the very difficult decision to no longer have a free and open access Journal (although authors copies are made available 2 years post-publishing). This allowed us to have assistance from professional editors and publish regular hard copies, mostly free of charge for the KM4dev Community upon demand, but we have struggled with this decision ever since.

The IKM Emergent funding is coming to an end, as is the agreement with Taylor and Francis, so we have decided to revert back to the Open Journal System platform. But a lot of work still needs to be done on the platform to bring it back up to snuff. Here is where you can find all of the Journal related links: http://wiki.km4dev.org/KM4D_Journal. We will keep everyone posted on developments here, on the KM4dev Mailing list, but also on the KM4D Journal group on the website (aka Ning): http://www.km4dev.org/group/km4djournal

The next issue - which will be the first back on the old/new platform - will be the December 2012, Climate Change and Knowledge Management Issue 8 (2), with Carl Jackson and Pete Cranston as Lead Editors.

Since the switch back to the old system will again entail a lot more editorial work, we would like to extend the invitation to anyone who has the interest (and a bit of spare time :-)) to please contact us here: KM4DJ-editors@dgroups.org

All the best,
Lucie Lamoureux, Senior Editor,
for the other Senior Editors: Ivan Kulis, Ewen Le Borgne and Denise Senmartin,
and for the Editor-In-Chief, Sarah Cummings

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Dear All

I just wanted to make a few additions to Lucie's mail last week.

Although support from IKM Emergent over the 2009-2011 period made it possible to publish the journal with Taylor & Francis (T&F), the journal also received support from Hivos and USAID during this period and it was indeed the support of USAID and Hivos which made it possible to continue to publish the journal during 2012. ECDPM has also supported the journal in kind by making it possible for Ivan Kulis to take part in the editorial team over the last few years. If you are one of the c400 people who received a free print subscription to the journal - something for which all members of KM4Dev were eligible as part of this publishing arrangement - you will have seen these logos on the back cover. I would just like to thank all of these organisations for their valuable support. As well, of course, as all the members of the editorial team, the editorial board, reviewers and authors who have contributed to the journal over the past four years.

Moving to a traditional academic publisher did not work out for a number of reasons. One reason was that we hoped that the journal would pick up subscriptions which would have made it more sustainable in the long term but this never materialised. Another was that, as Lucie said, the journal has almost always been something of a hand to mouth operation and, with the exception of a few issues, being run on voluntary time. This is one of the reasons that we didn't manage to generate enough flow of copy and to build up a buffer that would have made it possible to publish issues on time. It was great to have had the editorial support from T&F, and I personally really like having the paper copy arriving through my letter box, but as the editorial team, we often felt uncomfortable that it was difficult for members of the community to access the journal electronically. We had negotiated a deal with T&F that we could put authors copies online - on the wiki - one year after formal publication but this was stranded again through lack of capacity - and also with technical difficulties of getting hold of the author copies submitted to the online manuscript system after the event.

Finally, lots of you have offered to help - both on and off list - and many thanks for your support.

The editorial team is hopeful that we will come out of this as a more community-embedded journal than before.

Please also consider contributing to the journal by submitting articles, case studies and stories about your KM4D.

The new (and archive) journal site is available here: http://journal.km4dev.org/index.php/km4dj

and submissions can be made here: http://journal.km4dev.org/index.php/km4dj/about/submissions#onlineS...

Alternatively, you can also send an outline to one of the members of the editorial team, all listed in Lucie's mail below, if you prefer feedback before writing.

Regards

Sarah