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Tech, tools and resources

Team members: see also UJ Team: resources, onboarding for a quick guide to 'the things you need to access and use'

Tech scoping: Overview of the tools and solutions the Unjournal uses, is building, and needs

Hosting & platforms: Where we host the evaluation output and submission/editorial management processes

This GitBook; editing it, etc

Other tech and tools

Tech scoping

Updated see Gdoc on 'Editorial Management Tech needs HERE and embedded at bottom (to do: integrate these discussions)

We are eligible/may be eligible for some nonprofit discounts

Core needs

Hosting 'qualitative' evaluation content: A place to host the evaluations (as well as the authors’ responses and the editors' comments), allowing the public to read them in an attractive and convenient way (and perhaps respond to them). Ideally this will also make the quantitative ratings and predictions prominent and connected to the evaluations. This system needs to allow evaluations of any research that is publicly hosted and has a DOI.
DOIs, Bibliometrics, Google Scholar: We need these evaluations to be visible in "bibliometric systems". They need a DOI, they need to show up in Google scholar and other search tools. The references cited in the evaluations (including the original paper) should also appear in the bibliometric record. Right now 'CrossRef' seems to be the leading system for this.
Curation and organization: A place to bring together all of the evaluations we have done as the sort of center of our project, to explain it and get positive attention, as well as engage participation and readership.
'Editorial management': A tool to coordinate our management process (submissions, evaluations, et cetera)
Hosting and open-analysis of 'quantitative' ratings and meta-data: A place to organize the evaluation data, particularly the quantitative ratings and predictions, in ways that people can analyze and use.
Ideally also...

Some other desirable capabilities

Ways to enable evaluators and others to do collaborative annotation on pre-prints
Integrations with other platforms including prediction markets and OSF
Platforms for people to engage in other ways, perhaps up- and downrating evaluations etc

Further discussion HERE ("Unjournal platform discussion")

We have a partially-built system combining Sciety, Kotahi, and Hypothes.is. However, other tools and bespoke work will be needed to achieve some of the goals stated above.

2023 Update: We have moved mainly to PubPub, at least for hosting evaluation output (see https://unjournal.pubpub.org/)

Partial restatement and update, 2023

Ideally also, this would update automatically. We might also want to give some nice analysis and visualization for this (although we could do that in one of the other pages, simply bringing in the data from this place where it’s stored). An API and link to other data archives could be useful.

Hosting & platforms

Editorial management and paper intake: Kotahi

14 Nov 2022: For now, only managers/editors and authors will interact with this page. We plan to adapt it to become the interface for evaluations as well.

13 Dec 2022: Moving in this direction

Currently, the majority of our process is not done through Kotahi. We would need funds to make a more bespoke interface.

Host for Kotahi: Cloud68

Domain name: unjournal.org should take people to dashboard page (or login if necessary)

Will change this to: unjournalplatform.org 14 Nov 2022-- the login page is taking people to the wrong place for now

Output from evaluations goes to...

Gets into a single hypothes.is account: https://hypothes.is/users/TheUnjournal

This is essentially a workaround database. We are not using the full features of hypothes.is yet. See this slack thread/this Gdoc for the thoughts and progress on this.

As we often use Gdocs, see "Docs to md conversion" tips

Main public curated space: Sciety.org

Sciety (host & curate evals)

Group in preparation:

Goal: get Unjournal.org to redirect here

Expected to be ready in early December 2022.

PubPub

We are currently using PubPub (https://unjournal.pubpub.org/) as our main platform for hosting evaluations and ratings, manager summaries, and author responses. It offers flexibility, a good user-experience, and a range of features to help us integrate this work into the bibliometrics and archives (e.g., assigning DOIs). (See discussion of options in "Options for hosting reviews" doc.) We may find ways to use it in our submission platform and editorial management workflow as well; we are exploring this further.Some relevant private Gdocs (ask for access):

Unjournal pubpub current process and automation plans (~instructions for adding evaluation packages to our page)
Piloting Unjournal on PubPub: notes (includes discussion of initial setup of PubPub space)

Kotahi/Sciety (phased out)

Kotahi: submit/eval/mgmt (may be phasing out?)

See:

Sciety (host & curate evals)

Our first evaluation is up!!

See:

"Desired Sciety group output" (Gdoc section)

This GitBook; editing it, etc

What is GitBook? How to edit it?

See my notes on another GitBook here, on how to edit it, etc.

Some quick points:

GitBook is mainly used for tech documentation; but it has some important strengths and it's pretty good for general use.
It is based in markdown and other simple flat text files.
It synchronizes through Git/Github, and you can push and pull ... but you can also select "edit" and "merge" and use it fairly WYSIWYG.
They have a good support team (try their chat/help button).

Also consider our 'style guide' linked here (for this and other communications)

Shortcut for switching between public and private versions of the same page

18 Jun 2023 -- needs moving after moving GitBook location

Switching between the public and private versions of GitBook (while maintaining the same relative page) is a pain.

Semi-automate: going from the editable to the public version with a 'bookmarklet'

Setting the following as a ‘bookmark’ seems to help (Chrome: bookmarks manager, edit any existing bookmark by right click --> edit)

Name: “Switch to Public GitBook page” (or whatever)

URL: set to:

javascript:(function() { var publicUrl = document.location.href.replace('app.gitbook.com/o/-MfFk4CTSGwVOPkwnRgx/s/b1RpEkRWWqZAV4SlrFCt', 'globalimpact.gitbook.io/the-unjournal-project-and-communication-space/'); window.open(publicUrl, '_blank'); })()

To go in the other direction (public to editable version of a page)

Setting the following as a "bookmark" seems to help (chrome: bookmarks manager, edit any existing bookmark by right click --> edit)

Name: “Switch to Editable GitBook page” (or whatever)

URL: set to:

javascript:(function() { var editableUrl = document.location.href.replace('globalimpact.gitbook.io/the-unjournal-project-and-communication-space/', 'app.gitbook.com/o/-MfFk4CTSGwVOPkwnRgx/s/b1RpEkRWWqZAV4SlrFCt/'); window.open(editableUrl, '_blank'); })()

Other tech and tools

Automating reminder/response emails

Boomerang (for managing editors)

Just wanted to let any managing editors know about a way in which you can automate your reminders to potential evaluators to save time and headspace. It is using a google chrome extension called Boomerang. We can do this using their free service.This method means you can write your reminder email at the same time as your initial email and schedule it to be delivered a period of time after the original email (maybe 10-14 days) if no response is received. If they reply, the scheduled reminder will be cancelled automatically.These are the instructions:\

Compose and send the email first. Send as though it is a normal email.
After sending, look in sent folder.
Click reply to the email that was just sent.
Write out your reminder email.
Click send later and tick “if no reply” and choose the time you would like it to be sent.
Click confirm.

Hopefully this saves some time, especially if you reuse a generic reminder email format.The instructions I’ve shared are for use with gmail but you can also do this with Outlook.

Anonymity

Cryptpad for evaluators etc

hypothes.is for collab. annotation

See Gdocs

Tech scoping

Updated see Gdoc on 'Editorial Management Tech needs HERE and embedded at bottom (to do: integrate these discussions)

We are eligible/may be eligible for some nonprofit discounts

Core needs

Hosting 'qualitative' evaluation content: A place to host the evaluations (as well as the authors’ responses and the editors' comments), allowing the public to read them in an attractive and convenient way (and perhaps respond to them). Ideally this will also make the quantitative ratings and predictions prominent and connected to the evaluations. This system needs to allow evaluations of any research that is publicly hosted and has a DOI.
DOIs, Bibliometrics, Google Scholar: We need these evaluations to be visible in "bibliometric systems". They need a DOI, they need to show up in Google scholar and other search tools. The references cited in the evaluations (including the original paper) should also appear in the bibliometric record. Right now 'CrossRef' seems to be the leading system for this.
Curation and organization: A place to bring together all of the evaluations we have done as the sort of center of our project, to explain it and get positive attention, as well as engage participation and readership.
'Editorial management': A tool to coordinate our management process (submissions, evaluations, et cetera)
Hosting and open-analysis of 'quantitative' ratings and meta-data: A place to organize the evaluation data, particularly the quantitative ratings and predictions, in ways that people can analyze and use.
Ideally also...

Some other desirable capabilities

Ways to enable evaluators and others to do collaborative annotation on pre-prints
Integrations with other platforms including prediction markets and OSF
Platforms for people to engage in other ways, perhaps up- and downrating evaluations etc

Further discussion HERE ("Unjournal platform discussion")

We have a partially-built system combining Sciety, Kotahi, and Hypothes.is. However, other tools and bespoke work will be needed to achieve some of the goals stated above.

2023 Update: We have moved mainly to PubPub, at least for hosting evaluation output (see https://unjournal.pubpub.org/)

Partial restatement and update, 2023

Ideally also, this would update automatically. We might also want to give some nice analysis and visualization for this (although we could do that in one of the other pages, simply bringing in the data from this place where it’s stored). An API and link to other data archives could be useful.

This GitBook; editing it, etc

What is GitBook? How to edit it?

See my notes on another GitBook here, on how to edit it, etc.

Some quick points:

GitBook is mainly used for tech documentation; but it has some important strengths and it's pretty good for general use.
It is based in markdown and other simple flat text files.
It synchronizes through Git/Github, and you can push and pull ... but you can also select "edit" and "merge" and use it fairly WYSIWYG.
They have a good support team (try their chat/help button).

Also consider our 'style guide' linked here (for this and other communications)

Shortcut for switching between public and private versions of the same page

18 Jun 2023 -- needs moving after moving GitBook location

Switching between the public and private versions of GitBook (while maintaining the same relative page) is a pain.

Semi-automate: going from the editable to the public version with a 'bookmarklet'

Setting the following as a ‘bookmark’ seems to help (Chrome: bookmarks manager, edit any existing bookmark by right click --> edit)

Name: “Switch to Public GitBook page” (or whatever)

URL: set to:

javascript:(function() { var publicUrl = document.location.href.replace('app.gitbook.com/o/-MfFk4CTSGwVOPkwnRgx/s/b1RpEkRWWqZAV4SlrFCt', 'globalimpact.gitbook.io/the-unjournal-project-and-communication-space/'); window.open(publicUrl, '_blank'); })()

To go in the other direction (public to editable version of a page)

Setting the following as a "bookmark" seems to help (chrome: bookmarks manager, edit any existing bookmark by right click --> edit)

Name: “Switch to Editable GitBook page” (or whatever)

URL: set to:

javascript:(function() { var editableUrl = document.location.href.replace('globalimpact.gitbook.io/the-unjournal-project-and-communication-space/', 'app.gitbook.com/o/-MfFk4CTSGwVOPkwnRgx/s/b1RpEkRWWqZAV4SlrFCt/'); window.open(editableUrl, '_blank'); })()