At Game Studies, we now have competition: The Games & Culture journal:
Games & Culture is a new, quarterly international journal (first issue due March 2006) that aims to publish innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. The journal will serve as a premiere outlet for ground-breaking and germinal work in the field of game studies.
My first reaction was that this might as well be an introduction on the Game Studies web site. So how are they going to position the new journal? Reading further, Games & Culture seems to be positioned as belonging to the American cultural/critical studies tradition.
This leads to the problem is also that it is currently not very clear how we are positioning Game Studies: In 2001, it was brand new to do an academic peer-reviewed journal on video games, but now that everybody and their aunt are doing game studies, I think we lack a more specific profile.
If Games & Culture take on the “political” things, are we then doing “aesthetics, ontology, and design”, is this a ridiculous distinction, or are we / shouldn’t we / should we be doing both, or something else entirely?
Do we need a stronger profile for Game Studies?
Ideally, Game Studies could become something like “Science” is: probably the least focused of all journals, but at the same time the most prestigious. The prestige-factor would be the focus.
Unfortunately, this is kind of a dumb suggestion. Game Studies might benefit from a more focused profile, but a problem would need to be addressed first–readers need to know where to go for information outside of the focus.
One good distinction may be that Game Studies will be the journal that offers universal access, rather than one that is based on outmoded policies pertaining to copyright and to exclusive commercial print publication.
Forty board members (2/3 of the editorial board) resigned from Machine Learning Journal a few years ago in an attempt to move that community to something more like the Game Studies model. This was accomplished via the Journal of Machine Learning Research, a universally accessible online journal published by MIT Press. So it’s not as if other fields haven’t noticed this issue.
Perhaps Games & Culture won’t follow the model of current SAGE Publications (e.g., New Media Society), which require a subscription for access to articles, preventing me from reading them from home, the coffeehouse, etc., and preventing all non-academics and non-subscribing academics from reading them. Authors of articles in SAGE journals can, at least, post copies of their articles on their own sites, but this does not mean that the journal will be available to all (some authors may not bother to do this) or that authors will retain copyright and be able to disseminate their work in legitimate ways later on.
It seems particularly important during the formative years of a field to ensure that journals and other institutions serve the needs of open inquiry and actually promote scholarship and discourse as best they can. I hope others won’t overlook these aspects of a new journal as they work to establish it.
God forbid that two journals cover the same ground! ;-)
Speaking of universal access journals, there’s a post and discussion at Slashdot about the topic.
Hopefully the new “competition” will get the Game Studies journal to tighten up its release schedule.
I like the point that the new journal offers a bridge between US and Europe. That is clearly needed as all but one of the app. 40 reviewers for the new journal is Americans – if an American based journal can’t locate more than one European reviewer, we are in more trouble than I thought – we clearly need a bridge :-)
– Simon
Nick, respectfully, you’re being naive. Peer-reviewed *paper* journals are still critical for promotion and tenure cases in the USA. Yes, the online publishing model is better for a lot of reasons, but we have to face the reality of the American tenure model, even if we may question it.
Jesper, Simon, I’d love to see a non-geographical distinction in the journals’ purposes. I’m not sure what the right answer is, but this does seem like a good opportunity to consider the question. FWIW, my impression of the new SAGE journal was that it offered more of a cultural studies perspective, or more explicitly so, than GS.
Oh, one more thing. it’s not competition. It’s another journal in the field! Yee-ha!
Ian: I don’t think any tenure track description lists “paper” as a requirement. The requirement is peer review, no?
That’s what’s supposed to be great about being a free peer-reviewed journal anyway.
Jesper: unfortunately, the format of the journal does make a difference to high-level P&T review boards in the states. Peer reivew is absolutely a requirement.
American tenure is a conservative institution and it will take many more years for web-based journals to have the same general credibility as print ones. I wish it were different.
I think if a field or discipline is going to grow it needs to open itself up to others to participate. If I look at other disciplines do they only have one journal, of course not. Yes I can understand the concern if both the journal and the website are going to be covering the same areas. However, at this early stage may be we should give things time before we all get alarmed!
Ian: Do individual universitites have individual criteria, or is there some set of guidelines that are available somewhere?
Danish universities just tend to count “peer review” in my experience, but I have heard about list of journals that are considered worthy in both Norway and the UK.
In the UK getting your work in peer-review journals is extremely important to all academics. Some journals are considered more prestigious than others. So from a UK point of view, not that I can speak for the whole UK, a printed journal would be a better place to get work out in the present system!
Jesper: If only there were a guidebook. American tenure is a very political structure and sadly receptivity to different publication venues varies from institution to institution and even program to program. Some universities stop the review at the departmental level if it is not approved; others send it up the chain. There are a multitude of factors, and indeed we spend whole days every year talking about the tenure review process and how to plan for it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Game Studies is necessarily going to be discredited by American P&T review boards, but some more conservative departments or institutions still haven’t approved of web journals, so to speak. It really depends heavily on the situation.
If *paper* were the issue, why not just print out each issue of Gamestudies on paper? The real issue is the appearance of paper, i.e. page numbers instead of a url in your list of publications. Should beasy to fox.., eh, fix.
I’d like to see a statement from a tenure committee saying that paper is the criteria.
We have been discussing getting a publisher to print the journal as well, but so far we have been unconvinced that there was sufficient added value in doing this.
In Australia for DEST purposes (ie to get a publication rating) are the following requirements..
the journal is listed in one of the Institute for Scientific Information indexes (www.isinet.com/journals)
the journal is classified as “refereed” in Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory (Volume 5 – Refereed Serials) or via Ulrich’s web site http://www.ulrichsweb.com
there is a statement in the journal which shows that contributions are peer reviewed and from the editor..
I would also be very interested in the US system.
NB Australian Universities also need proof of full refereeing of a paper before they fund travel to conferences.
Jesper, it’s unlikely that you’ll find a guidebook that specifically states “paper is better than web,” but Ian is right – generally speaking, the US academy places a higher value on different kinds of publications, with print at the top. Peer-review is certainly one aspect, but there remains a broad bias that since print publications require an increased revenue commitment on the part of a publisher, they tend to hold greater weight. I’m talking about the humanities – I have no idea about the sciences.
Again, it varies from institution to institution, because private schools can do what they want, and public schools follow state, not federal, mandates and regulations (and I’m sure even schools in the same state vary greatly).
This isn’t to say that such *should* be the case. Nor does it suggest an unwillingness from scholars to support web-based publications. Only by showing the value of web-based distribution models, such as what Game Studies offers, do these attitudes get challenged and, eventually, changed.