Research Cooperative Review (Issue 1, 25th April 2009)

Update-Review-Announcement1. UPDATESince January 2009, our membership has increased from 400 to almost 700 (25th April). The organisation of the site and of tabs for Groups and Notes have been improved, to make navigation easier. More options are shown under the Search tab, and the advanced Member search function is working well.A rationale for discussions and supporting projects within the Cooperative has been developed, and is explained in the top page of the Topics section: our focus is on communication, in any subject area or language. Language-specific pages have been added to allow members to communicate with each other in the languages they prefer. To help maintain these new areas of the site, additional 'group administrators' have been appointed.2. REVIEWI have not had time to review any special topics in detail, but have been looking at open access publishing systems. Two very good starting points to learn about these are the Public Knowledge Project (pkp.sfu.ca), and the Public Library of Science (plos.org). There is currently a strong debate in the academic world about the pros and cons of working with commercial academic publishers rather than non-commercial open-access systems. In both approaches, a critical question is whether or not the publishers actually provide effective guidance, review, copy-editing, promotion and distribution.3. ANNOUNCEMENTYour help is needed! Please continue to invite friends and colleagues to join - and especially people who you know are interested in any area of research communication. This can be done using the Invite tab in our main menu, or by sending a note with our website address through your own email system. If each existing member can bring us one new member, our membership will double, and positive synergies might quadruple.The 'Research Cooperative Review' is an official broadcast of the Research Cooperative, and is limited to 2000 words by our host. Author: P. J. Matthews. Feedback is welcome.