In case you have not followed the 'dealing with journals / what is LaTeX' thread, I would very much appreciate your feedback on the following:

"I have often been thinking about devoting part of my website to 'hassle free' publication for anyone who wants to publish a paper on CFD. Absolutely no formatting requirements, as long as the file is in PDF. For quality assurance of these papers, I could implement a peer review process, where everyone could post their response or fill out a basic questionnaire after reading it. If a paper does not meet peer review standards, it will eventually get deleted. I currently don't have the web software to run this kind of application, but I think this would be a great service. Perhaps I can get some feedback on that."

If there is sufficient interest, I will make the time and financial resources available to completely reorganize my website, www.microcfd.com, and add a free 'CFD Publication' service where ANYONE can submit CFD related papers for online publication and peer review. The only requirement is that the paper is in PDF and less than 1MB in size.

If you have a CFD related paper that you wrote or published in the past, for which you have the copyright, and which you would like to see published online, simply email it to,

support@microcfd.com

If you are currently working on a CFD related paper and would like to submit it to my site when it is ready, simply email me the title and approximate date of completion.

In case my mail box should overflow with papers and your email is returned, please send it again in a few days.

Thank you for your attention.

Axel Rohde

Great effort !! This would be one of the fastest CFD publications I guess.

But I am just wondering, in terms of credit, how the so called authority give me credit if I publish here on your website rather than publishing in the journals which is a pain....It takes me more time to maintain the publishers standard than to produce the results in many instances!! I think many of us face the same experience.

Will be happy to hear from others.

CFD MAN

Current there are some preprint servers associated with CFD around the world.

For shock-capturing and other things related to the conservation laws system, one can use http://www.math.ntnu.no/conservation/all.html

For general numerical methods for CFD, http://arXiv.org/ is well known.

For general NSe problems, one can use the preprint service in http://wwwlma.univ-bpclermont.fr/NSenet/. However, it seems few people know this place.

In my opinion, in order to get academical `credits', one had better to publish his works on formal paper-based journals. People use preprint service, as I know, just to claim that `I am the first one finding this'.

Anyway, i appreciate someone to donate his hard disk to store tons of papers for CFD fans around the world

-Paul

I think there are details to be worked out, such as how a researcher would reference a paper in such a site, how the papers would be accepted or rejected, possibly some legal caveats to look into since it deals with intellectual property and copyrights, etc.

For example, would the papers be posted for review for some time and obtain a statistically significant number of reviews (greater than 2-3, e.g.) before being "accepted" into the formal list? How broad a scope would the publication forum have?

There is an appeal to the concept, since the focus is on dissemination of ideas rather than on procedures.

Certainly go for it and see how it develops!

For sure it is a brilliant idea. Please Dr. Axel Rohde put in your mind that no huge work or reputable achievements were done suddenly but by the exertion of much efforts over the passage of time. Go ahead and you will find all the possible help and support. S. S. Mudathir

I think you'll want to establish a clear objective or scope for your publication forum and set up a solid set of review guidelines. You don't want to fall into the trap of it being looked upon as a place where anyone who couldn't get accepted in a "real" journal can publish.

This is not intended to discourage you, you have a fine idea. The verdict won't be in until it is actually fleshed out and tried, and it should be tried. Bear in mind though that you will be battling people's perceptions and you'll have to be persistent. Changing what is "recognized and accepted" will not happen quickly, but it can happen.

Good luck!

Thank you for all your suggestions and encouraging words.

Axel

Sorry to be late in commenting - I've been away from the computer for a week.

I think this is good idea but can see a couple of things to be considered.

First I confess that, having passed reading exams in French and Russian 35 years ago, I have reverted to English only. For the online journal to be useful to me, English would need to be the standard. Too late for this old dog to learn new linguistic tricks!

Second, is Adobe Acrobat generally available to anyone who might want to publish in the online journal? I've seen v. 5.0 on sale at $200 (US). I suppose that it's much cheaper to buy the software once, avoiding the journals' page charges afterwards.

Finally, periodic publication is one method of keeping engineering credentials current [PE in the US, Chartered Engineer (?) in the UK, PEng in Canada]. Ultimately the credentialling authority will decide what credits to accept. What could an on-line journal such as this do to aid acceptance?

Any thoughts on all of this?

Jim,

Thank you for your input. - English would definitely be the standard or required language, because it is understood almost universally. I thought about the necessity of Adobe Acrobat, and I would probably accept MS Word documents as well, which I would then turn into PDF's before uploading. PDF's are truly platform independent (Windows, Linux, Mac). The problem with Word documents is that depending on the printer you have selected as your default, you often get slightly different line and even page breaks. This would occasionally require some minor reformatting. Since the idea is to relieve the publisher of this task, I would probably recommend a standard default printer under which the Word document has to be created. That way the PDF conversion on my end would be hassle free.

It seems to me that most people would want at least a minimum set of publishing / formatting guidelines, which I would certainly provide to create a more 'traditional' publishing environment. For quality assurance of this journal, there also has to be a stringent review process. I would upload submitted papers with a 'pending publication' status for a review period of six months. During this time it would be subject to peer review, and based on such feedback the author would be allowed to make changes to his pending publication. I would probably require a minimum of ten independent reviews from people in academics and industry with proper credentials. If for some reason a paper does not receive sufficient review, it would then go through a panel review of five referees, appointed volunteers from 'accredited' institutions who are willing to support the site. Their names, affiliations, and email addresses would certainly be available through the site. Once a paper has been through the six month review period, it will either be stored in the permanent electronic archives or be rejected, depending on peer or panel review.

Also, the journal would need a unique name backed up by a domain name and trade / service mark in order to protect its identity. I have a few ideas for such a name, but have not come up with anything definite yet. I am still in the brainstorming stage of this whole concept, and I am not sure if there is even sufficient interest for such an online journal. I have yet to receive a single manuscript, or some email of intent to publish, should I decide to go forward with this. Of course, I would need a short statement from the respective author for a 'permission to publish'. The publication would be a non-exclusive right, so the author would still have the option to publish his paper in a 'traditional' paper journal, if he desires to do so afterwards.

Whether such a journal will ultimately be accepted by authority, I really could not say. Perhaps if I could get a few 'big name' authors to submit to my site, which is unlikely, unless the idea was really well received by the community. Perhaps the need will eventually arise, because an electronic journal can be in color, whereas the traditional journals only allow black and white submission (with the exception of some conference papers which are distributed on CD). A color contour map converted to gray scale is useless in my opinion. That could be a major incentive for people to finally publish online.

Starting next week, I will be busy teaching again, but if I come up with a flashy name for this proposed journal I will at least secure the domain name and possibly a trade mark. I takes me an hour to do this online and about $300 for the trade / service mark application and domain name fee, which I am willing to invest. The actual website would be developed afterwards, and I would need at least ten papers to get started.

Any other thoughts or input are greatly appreciated!

Axel

Is it perhaps an idea to have a website especially for PhD theses (on CFD)? I mean a website where you can download theses or more simple, a website with short summaries of theses and links to sites where you can download them. PhD theses are in general unread which is a pitty. I have just tried to find thesis on the net but it was very difficult to find something. A special website for theses might help to reach a broader public. Perhaps such a website can be part of www.cfd-online.com

Tom