Several weeks ago, someone posted the URL (http://www.resonance-pub.com/aimscope.htm) to this list of the "The Solar System Development Journal". Since that
time I've read the two papers by Sonter and Benaroya that are listed
there. Initially, I was very pleased to see such a publication. However,
I have since then reflected on the quality of those 'papers', and I am not
pleased.

The first page of the site states that,

"
As an e-journal of archival quality, all published papers will be of
scholarly and professional quality. To ensure this standard, all
manuscripts will be refereed by acknowledged experts and revised to a very
high standard.
"

The two papers that I read are interesting, but in my opinion, they are
NOT of archival, journal quality. My first bone to pick is with the use
of English in the papers. Take a look at the Sonter paper and note just
how many phrases and sentences are in quotations, underlined, bolded, or
in bullets. Then go to the library and look at a real scholarly journal,
and you will find none of this nonsense. The referees, if indeed there
were any, didn't do their job.

Another bone I have to pick is that the content is quite often not
scholarly. For example, go to page 11 of Benaroya's paper and you will
see extensive speculation and opinions on the environment and cultural
issues. Such discussion is fine for an email discussion list, but for a
scholarly journal? The material that appears in a scholarly journal is
supposed to be free from opinions and speculation; each statement must be
supported by research or by citation to previous, peer-reviewed research.
What is this stuff on page 11 of the Benaroya paper? Extensive
speculation and opinion are not allowed in scholarly journals, because
archival material in scholarly journals may be cited (RELIED UPON) in
future research. Will future researchers RELY UPON material they find on
page 11 of Benaroya's paper? I hope not.

If the site had billed itself as "The Solar System Development Magazine",
then perhaps I wouldn't be so taken aback from what I see there. But
they use the word "Journal" and make comments about archival quality and
referees, and furthermore the look and feel of the headers and the first
page of each paper is like that of a journal (e.g., "Received 2 February
2001, and in final form 7 July 2001" --- real journals may have such
lines, because the peer review process is often slow, and such attribution
can inform the reader of several papers who got to the research result
first).

The articles are interesting, and I enjoyed reading them. But this is not
a scholarly journal. It's a magazine.

Ron

>
> The articles are interesting, and I enjoyed reading them. But this is not
> a scholarly journal. It's a magazine.
>

Yeah, he is really stretching the definition of "scholarly". Most of us understand this to mean "peer reviewed". When I looked at the web site it did not mention peer review anywhere. It mentions an "editorial board", but that is something different.

There is no explanation of who is on the editorial board, nor what the acceptance and review criteria are for papers.

You are right.

Charles R.

But the Ladies Home Journal doesn't announce such goals as

"The Solar System Development Journal is an archival journal devoted to documenting the "

and

"As an e-journal of archival quality, all published papers will be of
scholarly and professional quality. To ensure this standard, all
manuscripts will be refereed by acknowledged experts and revised to a very
high standard."

I enjoyed reading the articles, and I look forward to reading more of
them. I hope to see a lot more in the future.

But there is a big discrepancy between the quality of the two articles I
read and the stated goals of the "Journal".

Ron

"Huebner, Jay" jhuebn@...
12/06/01 10:19 AM

Some of you may be taking the words journal and magazine too seriously.
These words have a wide variety of definitions, as in Ladies Home Journal
(which is also on line, see www.lhj.com) and Science magazine
(http://www.sciencemag.org/, published by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, which is the most referenced science "journal"). I
read for new ideas. I enjoyed the articles in The Solar System
Development
Journal and wish the authors and organizers success at promoting the ideas
of space developments. A good journal (or magazine) can do a lot for our
cause. Sincerely, Jay Huebner