[IPOL discuss] [IPOL edit] Suggested changes in Submission Procedure/Author Manual

[Miguel Colom]

Quoting Luis Alvarez <lalvarez at ulpgc.es>:

> I would be more than happy to listen any idea to increase the number  
> of papers published in IPOL and I think that to strongly simplify  
> the IPOL code guidelines goes in such direction.

Dear Luis,

The problem of having more articles is related to the impact factor of  
the journal, and the impact factor relies also on the number of  
published articles. It's a vicious circle.

Some actions we could or should try:
- Fix the software guidelines to remove all the false information  
("only C/C++", etc) which is preventing the authors to send their  
codes and to avoid showing all the technical information as general  
strong requirements. The editor should guide and help the author with  
that checklist.

- Improve the look of the main page in http://www.ipol.im
At this moment is looks poor. It's functional and does its job, but it  
could be way better. For example, we could imagine the list of  
published articles where each of them is a row with a little picture  
on the left, and the title and the abstract on the right. At this  
moment, the users needs to click on an article to get into the details.
However, I reckon that other journals (such as IEEE TIP) are not much  
different: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=83
But there's no reason why we couldn't make the main page better.

- In the main page write clearly which databases are indexing us. We  
don't have an official "Impact Factor" yet, but we're indexed by  
important databases, including the Emerging Citation Index. This  
should not be simply put as news in the page, but a section itself.  
Say, in the top menu, a new entry "Indexation" which could go to a  
dedicated page with the list of indexers, linking to them.

- After we release an issue (each year), the EIC could write a short  
editorial (say, one page) talking about the novelties on the field, or  
even the novelties on IPOL itself (the demo system, new languages or  
libraries accepted), the perspectives of the journal, news on the  
indexation (SCOPUS and others). And we could create a large PDF with  
that cover page editorial and all articles in the issue.

- Organize a workshop on Reproducible Research, to increase the  
visibility of the journal. I accept to be one the organizers if we do  
it.

- Increase the corpus of topics or type of data in the journal.  
Actually, we're already doing this with the new data types that the  
new interface will support soon: audio, vídeo, 3D.

- Add a forum at each article's page, where the users can post  
messages and start discussions on the topics of the article.

- Suggested by Guillermo Sapiro and Gregory Randall: statistics on the  
number of times an article has been downloaded, and show it on the  
website. It's an indirect measure of impact of the codes.

Honestly, I don't know if any of these actions could finally increase  
the number of published articles, but it's just some ideas.

Best,
Miguel