SYSTEM DYNAMICS REVIEW (SDR)
Publisher’s Report for SDS Policy Council (July 2007)
Graham Russel, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/sdr
John Wiley & Sons Inc. acquire Blackwell Publishing
John Wiley & Sons Inc. officially acquired all the assets of Blackwell Publishing in February 2007. Together, the two companies publish more than 1250 scholarly peer-reviewed journals (many of them on behalf of learned societies) and an extensive collection of books with global appeal. Blackwell’s publishing program is now in the process of being merged with Wiley’s global STM business to form a new division called “Wiley-Blackwell”. Graham Russel, the in-house Wiley Editor responsible for System Dynamics Review, is therefore part of the new Wiley-Blackwell operation.
In a year which sees both the 50th anniversary of the field of System Dynamics and the bicentennial of John Wiley & Sons (founded in New York in 1807), it is fitting to have finished digitizing all the SDR backfiles. The early backfile issues of System Dynamics Review (from 1985 to 1995 inclusive) are now fully live on Wiley InterScience, and form part of the Wiley Backfile Collection in Business & Management. Please see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc/114030183/all
Current library subscribers to SDR will get access to these issues only by making a one-off purchase of the whole Business & Management Backfile collection. However, SDS members can now enjoy access to the full-text of these SDR backfiles simply as part of their membership package.
The SDR backfiles are PDF scans of the original pages, supported by searchable functioning abstracts (recreated in XML and freely accessible by even non-subscribers) and with recreated references (accessible only by subscribers/SDS members). The references have been carefully integrated to include CrossRef support.
An example
In SDR vol 3 issue 2 there is a paper by Eric Wolstenholme and Abdul-Sattar Al-Alusi (entitled ‘System dynamics and heuristic optimisation in defence analysis’), which cites Gustafsson and Wiechowski ‘Coupling DYNAMO and optimization software’ which in turn was published in the previous year’s SDR.
Now – thanks to the CrossRef support for the backfiles – one simply needs to click on the link after the Gustafsson citation in the references to open up the abstract for the cited paper from volume 2.
The excellent cumulative Tables of Contents on the Society’s website at http://www.systemdynamics.org/SDRListOfAllTitles.htm has also now been updated to provide links to the abstracts for all the newly digitized files right back to the beginning of the Review. Wiley have a link to this cumulative Tables of Contents from the SDR homepage on Wiley InterScience.
The latest Impact Factors (2006 data) are now out. Last year the Impact Factor for SDR stood at 0.379. This year, SDR has seen an encouraging improvement in its Impact Factor to reach 0.667.
A 50th Anniversary banner appears on the Review’s homepage on Wiley InterScience, and there is also a special gold logo printed on the actual covers this year to celebrate this magnificent milestone.
The next issue will be the special double issue to mark the 50th Anniversary. This will form 23:2&3, and should be published about the time that an issue 3 of the Review would normally appear (i.e. September/October).
It was suggested at a previous Policy Council meeting that either the 50th Anniversary issue be made freely accessible to, say, non-member delegates or that members be able to buy extra copies. As the current schedule has not allowed for extra issues to be finished in time for Boston, Wiley are happy to consider printing extra copies for sale.
Wiley would like to hear the Policy Council’s view on how many extra copies we should print for this purpose.
The special double issue to mark the 50th Anniversary will also feature some supplementary material in the online version. This is an exciting new development for the Review and will allow authors’ supporting material to be available on the Wiley server. (These items will definitely be of a supplementary nature and hence remain unedited and untypeset; but could in theory be any sort of digital file, text, images, audio, video, models etc. providing the authors have the rights to use it.)
Over the next two years, the online presence of both companies – Wiley InterScience and Blackwell Synergy – will move to a new improved and combined web platform. This will give us even better ways in the future for handling this supplementary material.
Online usage on Wiley InterScience of full-text SDR papers during 2006 was more than 25% up on usage over the same period the year before. This is really excellent growth.
Most downloaded SDR papers from Wiley InterScience in 2006 included:
Improving strategic management with the fundamental principles of system dynamics (21:4) [Kim Warren, prize lecture]
The rediscovery of industrial dynamics: the contribution of system dynamics to supply chain management in a dynamic and fragmented world (21:3) [Henk Akkermans & Nico Dellaert]
Statistical screening of system dynamics models (21:4) [Andrew Ford & Hilary Flynn]
The impact of endogenous demand on push-pull production systems (21:3) [Paulo Gonçalves, Jim Hines & John Sterman]
Group model-building: tackling messy problems (15:4) [Jac Vennix]
All models are wrong: reflections on becoming a systems scientist (18:4) [John Sterman, prize lecture]
The continuing popularity of relatively older classic papers (and of course papers written by those selected as prize-winners) again highlights the benefits from having digitized backfiles.
Wiley are also keen to explore with the Society the possibility of establishing a freely accessible Web 2.0 style collective knowledge site to support the Society and the field of system dynamics generally.
Wiley would provide the platform and the authoring tools, and the site would allow a blog/wiki approach to the subject. We anticipate it could call upon material available from our book publishing over the years and, with the support of the Society, some selected content from the Review.
We feel this could be one way of addressing some of the interesting challenges raised by Qifan Wang, in his piece “On the Next 50 Years” e.g.:
· “… long articles seem to be too difficult for newcomers to this field to read and understand. This might make it less effective in popularizing SD.”
· “… The SD Review is currently only accessible to SD society members and subscribers. Others can only choose to read SD Review on-line through Wiley InterScience or just download brief editions.”
Marketing summary
We aim:
These goals will be achieved through a combination of:
· Online marketing activity, using Wiley InterScience as a hub and exploiting further opportunities arising with Wiley-Blackwell, as we move to a new improved and combined web presence over the next couple of years.
· Mailing activity to subscription agents worldwide.
· Flyer mailing to sample copy requestors, lapsed and cancelled subscribers.
· Advertising in key journals and industry publications.
· Promotion via the SDS to potential new members.
· Promotion at key and niche conferences attended by Wiley.
· Promotion where possible at events not attended by Wiley.
· Active promotion by board members at lectures and other events.
Graham Russel 25 July 2007