Welcome to the second issue of JEP under our editorship. It is a potluck edition.
The first article, “Non-Fungible Token (NFT) in the Academic and Open Access Publishing Environment: Considerations towards Science-Friendly Scenarios,” we hope provokes conversation. Block chain is either the future or an unnecessary, distracting waste, depending on whom you ask. The article suggests that NFTs can play a valuable role in scholarly publishing. Is this correct? Let us know what you think. Write down what you have to say and submit it to the JEP portal. We are looking to publish blog-length commentary on the topic. We will also be putting in place other less formal ways to respond. Check out these alternatives at https://bit.ly/jep-blockchain.
Many publishing practices require modification as standards are developed and need to be applied. This is often a non-trivial undertaking. In “FAIRifying a Scholarly Publishing Service: Methodology Based on the OpenEdition’s Internal FAIR Audit,” we have an example of one organization’s path to applying a complex set of standards across a large publishing operation.
“An Open Social Scholarship Path for the Humanities” considers how the advent of digital scholarly infrastructure and open access can contribute to making the results of humanistic research available, accessible, and useful to publics beyond the academy. This case study lays out the challenges and presents strategies to overcome them. The opportunities for making scholarship public have expanded, and it is incumbent on us to take advantage of these opportunities. This article explores how to begin this process.
Finally, “Web of Science Book Citation Indices and the Representation of Book and Journal Article Citations in Disciplines with Notable Book Scholarship: A Case Assessment for Political Science” takes a close look at the editorial practices, and the results of these practices, of an important tool that is used to both discover and evaluate monographic content. It finds significant flaws that call into question the effectiveness of the tool, particularly when it is used to evaluate scholarly monographs.
We hope you enjoy this potluck edition. While we continue to pursue special topic issues that focus on specific themes, we also are committed to issues such as this one, which bring together a diverse set of topics that challenge our thinking and make visible new and useful ways of thinking about publishing.