An open plan

This message is in response to the request by Amin Hakim for information about a plan.

My overall plan in creating the Research Cooperative is to help researchers get their work published by facilitating contact between all the people involved in research, language services, and publishing.

The plan is also to give young researchers, language specialists and publishers opportunities to gain experience and build human support networks. For this reason there is no vetting of members - we welcome the inexperienced and the professional alike. If you need to know whether someone is a true professional - look at their profile, talk to them, and make your own assessment. If you need to know whether specialists in your field are willing to provide free volunteer help - ask them, and show that your request for help is serious.

The plan is also to nurture a culture of mutual support and effective negotiation among researchers, language specialists and publishers, everywhere.

Although the network has originated as an English-language website, the need for open facilitation is the same for research in all languages.

For this reason, I have established pages for specific languages and specific countries, so that people working in those languages and areas (including Farsi and Iran) can find each other more easily and start discussing the particular issues they face in getting research published.

Thus, the open plan for this Iran focus group is to:

(1) shed light on research writing and publishing in Iran,

... and to help members in Iran engage more effectively:

(2) with each other and

(3) with researchers, language specialists and publishers in other regions of the world.