 Proposal of "Systematic Innovation Review" Website |
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Proposal of "Systematic Innovation Review" Website |
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Editor: Toru Nakagawa (WTSP Project Leader, Osaka Gakuin Univ.) |
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Posted: Aug. 30, 2022; Updated: Sept. 16; Sept. 22, 2022 |
Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Aug. 30, 2022; Sept.16, 2022)
This is the Proposal of "Systematic Innovation Review" Website, in its initial stage.
As described in the Index page of SI-Review Proposal
, we had hot discussions on this proposal and reached a consensus on the core part of the Proposal.
The Proposal shown here was written down newly by Toru Nakagawa with extensions of details. The WTSP Global Co-editors read the manuscript and agreed to join this proposal. Nevertheless, it is natural that each member has some slightly different opinions. Such different opinions may be expressed in the Discussion pages together with feedbacks from various organizations and readers.
The Proposal are shown in html (this page
Initially on Aug. 30, 2022, we posted only Section 1. Vision of the Proposal. Today on Sept. 16, 2022, we have posted the full body, from Section 2 to Section 8, in the name of Toru Nakagawa and WTSP Global Co-editors. The vision is much extended, showing various philosophies, policies, some basic ideas, etc., as you may take a glance at Table of Contents
. Two important issues, i.e., the process of forming international/interdiscipline consensus, and financial basis, are mentioned shortly with some alternatives; they need to be made clear gradually with feedback and discussions in the global TRIZ community. (Sept. 16, 2022)
Keyphrases are shown in bold face. (Sept. 22, 2022)
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4. Editorial |
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Table of Contents
Proposal of "Systematic Innovation Review" Website
Aug. 30, 2022; Sept. 16, 2022
Toru Nakagawa & WTSP Global Co-editors
Darrell Mann, Michael Orloff, Simon Dewulf, Simon Litvin, Valeri Souchkov
1. Vision of the Proposal of Establishing "Systematic Innovation Review" Website
1.1 What is the Purpose / Value Proposition ?
1.2 Background: Current status of methodologies and websites in the relevant fields
1.3 Scope of the "Systematic Innovation Review" website
1.4 Naming of our website: "Systematic Innovation Review" (website)
1.5 Categories, Nature, and Quality of articles
1.6 How to collect/get good manuscripts
1.7 Organization for promotion and operation
1.8 Relationships with other organizations and websites/journals2. Who Are Users/Readers and Authors? Needs of Contents.
2.1 Professionals in TRIZ
2.2 Ordinary Users/Practitioners in TRIZ
2.3 Beginners in and Unfamiliar to TRIZ
2.4 Professionals in various methodologies around TRIZ
2.5 Ordinary Users/Practitioners in Various Methodologies around TRIZ
2.6 People Unfamiliar to Any Method
2.7 Need to Categorize Articles/Papers in the SI-Review website3. Organization for Promoting and Operating the SI-Review Website
3.1 Initiation of Proposal by the WTSP Global Co-editors
3.2 Our basic philosophy for getting collaboration of different organizations/groups
3.3 Getting cooperation with TRIZ international organizations: MATRIZ, AI, ETRIA, SSI
3.4 Big conflicts in the TRIZ community --- How can we solve them?
3.5 Possible forms of Organization for Proposal Promotion and SI- Review Website Operation
3.6 Forming the SI-Review Project by the support of the TRIZ community4. Editorial Board, Editorial Advisory, and Editorial Office/Staff
4.1 Editorial Board
4.2 Editorial Advisory
4.3 Editorial Office/Staff5. Process of Preparing Manuscripts of Papers/Articles
5.1 Preparation by the Editorial Office
5.2 Collecting/inviting the articles/papers: Pool of candidate articles
5.3 Submission of Manuscripts of Articles by the Author(s)
5.4 Peer Review Process: Single-Blind Peer Review6. Structure and Editorial Operation of the SI-Review website
6.1 Setting up the SI-Review website: Web Platform in the Cloud
6.2 Basic Editorial Operation inside the SI-Review website
6.3 Structure of SI-Review Website: Categorized Sections
6.4 Links to references and relevant articles7. Usage of SI-Review by Readers
7.1 Use of SI-Review: Registration or not
7.2 Allowance of usage by the readers
7.3 Communication from readers/users8. Financial Issues of SI-Review
8.1 Possible Costs
8.2 Possible alternative ways of Income
Proposal of "Systematic Innovation Review" Website ==> See Word file
Aug. 30, 2022,
Toru Nakagawa and WTSP Global Co-editors)
Darrell Mann, Michael Orloff, Simon Dewulf, Simon Litvin, Valeri Souchkov
1. Vision of the Proposal of Establishing "Systematic Innovation Review" Website (Aug. 30, 2022)
1.1 What is the Purpose / Value Proposition ?
Establishing a new website which can represent the whole works and activities in the field of TRIZ and related methodologies in the world.
We focus on the methodologies and their applications which aims at solving various difficult problems in the real world creatively and systematically.
The website invites and collects excellent works authored by various people in different approaches in the whole field and publishes them regularly for open access.
The website intends to be NOT another good website among many existing ones BUT standing representative of them in the field on the basis of good collaborative relationships with them.
The website serves many users/readers, who are professionals, practitioners, users, and learners in some methods in the field or the unfamiliar with any method, for helping them understand the methods and their applications to solve their own problems better and more effectively.
For this purpose the website posts various categories and styles of articles, including scientific papers on methods, technical articles of applications, standard texts of established methods, instructive articles for students and children, announcements of activities, etc.
By publishing articles on different methods in different approaches in a fair, noncommercial manner, we expect to have a common environment of understanding them, and to stimulate gradual further evolution and integration of methods/approaches
In this manner, the website wishes to serve for the better understanding and more effective application of creative problem solving methodologies and for contributing widely to science, technologies, industries, society, etc.
The vision of the website will be achievable only on the basis of international and inter-disciplinary cooperation of the communities in the relevant fields and good work by the Editorial people.
1.2 Background: Current status of methodologies and websites in the relevant fields
The Proposal has emerged through our five-years work of WTSP (World TRIZ-related Sites Project).
In the filed of TRIZ (in a wider sense), there exist a few international associations/conferences, and a large number of consulting firms and academic groups working independently and often competing, and most of them have their own websites.
It is noticed, however, that the world TRIZ community does not have a "Representative" website in the sense stated above.
The website of The Official Foundation of G. S. Altshuller is an important source of TRIZ documents by the Creator of TRIZ. It intends to archive the original documents in which Mr. Altshuller involved (including his works/books published after his death (1998)) and has never been updated since (around) 2008. Thus it does not reflect any recent development in TRIZ.
The TRIZ Journal was the leading electric journal in the early stage of TRIZ proliferation in the West. It was active for over 10 years since 1996 by posting several papers every month. However, it had a broken history of 3 different owners on and off while reducing its visitors. The latest trial of its revival since 2018 failed in April 2020, unfortunately.
Thus, nowadays TRIZ has many websites in different approaches and competing against one another without a common place for presentation and discussion. This situation looks confusing for people both inside and outside of the TRIZ community.
Different approaches show the energy and motivations of evolution (of TRIZ or anything), but for their sound evolution they need to have a common place of presenting good works, for discussion and collaboration. A new website of the present proposal is going to provide such a place, "Representative website" in the field.
The situations of methodologies around TRIZ (i.e., Creative problem solving methodologies in general) are more or less similar. Various associations, conferences, consulting firms, and academic groups, etc. for different methods and approaches are competing even in a larger scale, without having common places of discussion across the methods.
1.3 Scope of the "Systematic Innovation Review" website
Focus of the scope of the website of our proposal is TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) and its extensions.
We recognize that currently TRIZ has various approaches, including Classical TRIZ, TRIZ in engineering, Simplified TRIZ, Modernized TRIZ, Extended TRIZ in Business/management, in IT/SW, in Bio, etc., Reframed/re-structured TRIZ.
Our website accepts and treats all these approaches (and further extensions) in a fair manner for scientific and technical discussions. We believe variety of approaches can find their own advantages and needs in different application areas and are natural in the evolution of a general methodology like TRIZ.
Our scope is even wider than TRIZ and covers different methodologies for Creative Problem Solving in general, as mentioned above. The naming of "Systematic Innovation Review" intends to cover such a wide area of methodologies.
At the initial stage of promotion and operation, however, we will focus mainly on TRIZ and will include the methodologies around TRIZ on some invitation basis. Later, after our success in the TRIZ field and getting recognition by professional in wider areas, we will extend our organization and our scope to such a wider area.
1.4 Naming of our website: "Systematic Innovation Review" (website)
We have tentatively chosen the naming of our website as "Systematic Innovation Review" (website), or in short "SI-Review".
It implies that we aim at serving for Innovations (i.e., successful/influential cases of Creative Problem Solving) with Systematic methodical approaches. The name does not limit application areas of the methodical approaches; e.g., engineering, business, agriculture, medical, society, human relationships, etc.
The term 'Systematic Innovation' was used by Darrell Mann in his book "Hands-On Systematic Innovation" (2002) to represent TRIZ in its modernized form integrating several near-by methodologies. The term also intends to introduce Systematic (i.e., TRIZ-like) methodical approach into (mostly art-like at that time) innovation process.
The word "Review" is included in the name for expressing its role of publishing papers/articles, but slightly different from Journals. See discussion (1.4). We use a website because of its low cost, quick publication, international open access, free/low charge for users, etc.
Monthly publication of main articles, while more frequent posting of announcements, news, users' communications, etc. may be useful for keeping the website active.
1.5 Categories, Nature, and Quality of articles
We want to fill needs of various types of users/readers by posting multiple categories of articles. And for each category we should post reliable high-quality articles using suitable selection criteria.
Scientific papers are an important category, for reporting research on methods/methodologies, tools, new findings, etc. We will apply selection criteria for scientific papers to them, but with some shift of weights from 'new unpublished paper' to 'over-view/review of recently established works'. See below.
Technical and practical reports are the second category, for reporting applications of methods/methodologies/tools to solve problems in real or educational/training situations, processes and organizations for applications, and instances of case studies, etc. Selection criteria are not the same as those for scientific papers; we should put more weight on practical easiness/effectiveness, and description of concrete situations, etc.
Standard texts for engineers/business persons/etc. on method and their applications may be another category. We should select good articles explaining essence of established methods together with illustrative application examples. We should not stick to traditional methods/processes but adopt easier and more effective methods.
Educational texts for students and children are also an important category. The texts should be carefully addressed to some group/level of students/children. Areas of problems/applications should be chosen to attract interest of students, and essence of methods (or more basically how to think) need to be explained in an easy and attractive way with some help of examples/illustrations etc.
News and announcements of activities are yet another category to be posted in our website. News (related to innovation and also patents) may be reported in the sense of scientific/technical journalism. However, since there exist abundant mass media and technical journalism, we should put less weights here and should focus on what kind of methods and processes are used in successful cases. Announcements of activities in our relevant fields should be posted, for non-commercial, international/regional/domestic activities. Commercial activities by consulting firms etc. will not be posted. No commercial advertisement, in our website.
Discussions related to hot topics and important issues may be posted as a special category. Discussions may be moderated/selected by the Editor before posting.
Q&A and communications from readers are welcome and will be posted regularly under the Editor's moderation.
The website uses English only. It encourages authors to use figures, photos, tables, and summary slides. Movies may be uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo and the URLs are shown in our website articles.
One important point: our website prefer 'Reviews' to 'Journal papers'. In academic sense, Journals often has their publication criteria of 'new, unpublished, original papers'. But our website prefer publishing Reviews, which mean 'original articles, over-viewing the author's own original works, reviewing references in a specific field/topic, keynote type lectures, etc.'. We put weight not on 'new, unpublished' but rather 'recently established, already published in part'.
We understand that there exist many conferences and journals in our fields which accept 'new, unpublished, original papers' (and sometimes reject over-view/review articles). But ordinary users and even professionals do not have time/interests to survey and read so many papers. Thus we intend to collaborate with such existing conferences/journals/websites by using different criteria for selecting articles. Namely, they publish new, unpublished original works, while we publish over-view/review type articles which have bases of (at least) a few works published in parts. In this manner our website can publish (or sometimes re-post) excellent established works showing their original references explicitly.
1.6 How to collect/get good manuscripts
"Systematic Innovation Review" website is going to have Editorial Board (of nearly 10 Board members) and Editorial Advisory (of about 100 members) coming from various associations, countries, and groups of approaches in our relevant fields.
These Editorial members always keep in mind to find excellent works published in various conferences, journals, and individual websites, etc.
Authors who want to publish his/her work in the SI-Review website are encouraged to access to any of such Editorial members at the initial stage of contribution.
Recommendation of a good article to be invited to publish in our website may be submitted by any of Editorial Board members and Editorial Advisers to the Editorial Board.
The Editorial Board decide to invite several works as candidates to publish (near future) in the SI-Review website.
The manuscripts submitted by the Author to the Editorial Board are handed to the Peer-Review process, as explained later, and will be published in the SI-Review website.
It is important that the Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory represent the whole community of TRIZ (and even some of around-TRIZ) and understand the purpose/philosophy of SI-Review.
1.7 Organization for promotion and operation
For operating the SI-Review website, we should establish an organization centered on Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory, who can represent the whole community of TRIZ (and related methodologies) as briefly mentioned above, and supported by some Editorial staff and Managers. It is necessary that the members of the organization share the vision and philosophy of the SI-Review website and it is desirable that the global community of TRIZ and related methodologies widely understand and support its vision and philosophy.
The key issue for us is who and how can promote such vision and philosophy to form support and consensus widely in the global community especially at the initial stage. At present there is no official, international place where a proposal like this should be submitted and discussed.
The original proposer, Toru Nakagawa, fortunately has WTSP Global Co-editors, i.e., a group of international TRIZ leaders discussing and working for the WTSP project for these 5 years (and having good professional relationships for over 20 years with most of them). All together, we have been active in working with MATRIZ, Altshuller Institute, ETRIA, and SSI (Society of Systematic Innovation).
TRIZ leaders in the WTSP Global Co-editors are well-known and influential in (some part of) global TRIZ community through their professional activities such as publications/trainings/consulting/networking/ websites/conference-organization/etc. Network of TRIZ leaders/colleagues through WTSP are just one of such examples.
In this situation, we have decided to start the initial promotion of the proposal of the SI-Review website, voluntarily on the basis of the WTSP Project.
We are going to show our proposal openly (in this website and other places) and to submit the proposal to various TRIZ-related international/regional/domestic organizations asking for their considerations/discussions. And feedbacks from them will be shown in this website.
We know, however, that this kind of big proposal should be discussed and promoted more officially in collaboration of various organizations and many groups/individuals.
Thus we wish that some organization for promoting and discussing the proposal in the global scale be formed on the basis of some common understanding in near future. Then the contents and role of this website will be moved to such a new preparatory organization.
At moment, we do not know how we can make such a preparatory organization, who are to be members of it, and how they can decide their directions, etc. Everything will become clear gradually along with the feedbacks from various organizations and groups.
The final form of the Organization for Operating the SI-Review website is not clear yet at moment. For making our Editorial operation in accordance with our vision and philosophy, we should have a stable financial basis and good personnel management. There may be several choices in forming and managing the organization, and the choice may give some influences on the Editorial operation and on the contents and their reputation.
1.8 Relationships with other organizations and websites/journals
As mentioned above, our SI-Review website will not try to compete with other TRIZ-related organizations, such as international associations/conferences, websites, journals, etc. We try to be in good cooperative win-win relationships with them.
Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory of SI-Review accept TRIZ professionals from various TRIZ-related organizations as the members. Thus such TRIZ professionals directly contribute to the editorial work of the SI-Review and can reflect their thoughts/philosophy/outputs in the activities of the SI-Review.
SI-Review assumes and encourages the activities of such individual TRIZ-related organizations, and posts their announcements (e.g., holding conferences, publications, etc.) and makes links to their websites/journals/etc.
SI-Review invites selected good works among the publications of such organizations to publish as papers/articles in the SI-Review, through the peer-review process. It is important that new, unpublished papers/articles are submitted to and published in such individual organizations, while over-view/review papers/articles of more-or-less established works (based on multiple/many original published works) are invited and published in SI-Review. Thus it is a honor for the author(s) and the organization(s) that a paper/article based on their works is published in SI-Review.
In posting a paper/article in the SI-Review website, SI-Review should state the source (in case of re-posting) and also show references of original articles/papers (in the form of publications and URLs, if available).
Getting copyrights permission from authors and publishers is of course necessary as usual. It is desirable to have a basic consensus beforehand on copyrights handling between SI-Review and many organizations in the TRIZ community.
In this manner, SI-Review does not compete against but collaborate with many organizations and groups in the TRIZ-related fields in the world.
2. Who Are Users/Readers and Authors? Needs of Contents. (Sept. 16, 2022)
In order to clarify the general demands of our website contents, we are going to take account of the types of our users/readers and also the types of our authors. We consider 3×2 classes of people, i.e., (Professionals, Ordinary users/practitioners, Beginners/Unfamiliar) × (in TRIZ, in other methodologies around TRIZ), and think of their behavior and desire in relation to our website.
2.1 Professionals in TRIZ
Professionals in TRIZ are the class of people who may principally contribute to our SI-Review website as Authors and possibly as Editorial Members and also may read and study various contents written by other Authors carefully and criticizingly.
Professionals in TRIZ may be working in academia as researchers/teachers, in consulting firms for consulting/training, in industries for solving problems by applying TRIZ, etc. All of them have their own desire to develop their methods further, to extend their capability, to solve their problems better, to be successful in their jobs, to be promoted in their organizations, to become famous with their work/publications, etc. All these desires may be the motive force for developing and promoting the (TRIZ) methodologies. Thus our SI-Review website should provide them with the place and chances for them to contribute and satisfy their desires.
Because of the variations of their jobs, stances/approaches to the (TRIZ) methodology, styles/places of presenting their works, the SI-Review should provide different categories/types/styles of posting their work and should have generosity of accepting such differences. For example, TRIZ professionals working in academia want to publish their papers as peer-reviewed scientific papers to be approved by scientific citation indexes. But TRIZ professionals working as consultants, industrial practitioners, school teachers, etc. may not care much about the citation in academia.
For these Professionals, it is important to read excellent works authored by other Professionals, not only those in similar categories/approaches but also different categories/approaches. Every Professional tries to search for and watch good works in the areas of their interest. But it is not an easy task in the current situations, where various works are presented in different occasions/places/languages. Thus it is much desired that excellent works in wide categories/approaches/languages are selected and published in a reliable website, like SI-Review, regularly.
Reading and learning good works in different categories/methods/approaches/etc. (and especially in similar categories/methods but in different approaches and by different groups) are useful and stimulative for Professionals. They may trigger new findings/knowledge, criticisms, inspiration of new directions, and so on.
Such impacts may go further into discussions, competitions, collaborations, etc. among the Professionals in the relevant arears. All these will drive further development of (TRIZ) methods and their applications, and all together result in stimulating the evolution of the (TRIZ) methodology.
2.2 Ordinary Users/Practitioners in TRIZ
Here we mean the people who have learned (some part of) TRIZ and are learning TRIZ further and are (trying to apply or) applying TRIZ to solving their various problems. Such people are the main target readers of our SI-Review websites; i.e., largest in number of visitors and most fruitful in giving information through our website articles.
They may be studying or working in quite different situations/jobs. They may be undergraduate or graduate students, researchers in academia/industries, engineers in various industries, managers of a business or a project, etc. They may be introduced to TRIZ in some approach, and may have learned (the approach of) TRIZ to some extent, may be preparing for or have tried to apply the method to their problem(s). And they want to learn more on TRIZ. But we must remember that they have different levels of understanding, experiences, and application capability, and they know some categories and approaches of TRIZ. Thus they have different backgrounds and different attitudes/levels of eagerness to learn TRIZ (and other Around-TRIZ) methods.
It may be often the case that many of them prefer well-established methods to newly-proposed methods, application reports to scientific papers, easy-to-understand examples to conceptual explanations, etc. Knowing such interests of these ordinary users/practitioners different from those of Professionals, our SI-Review website should provide various articles in appropriate categories/approaches/levels/styles.
We should note that providing good articles suitable for these ordinary users/practitioners to get better understanding and higher capability of application of (TRIZ) methods will be the most effective and useful contribution of the SI-Review website to the proliferation of the TRIZ (and relevant) methodology.
Feedback by these people in the forms of impressions, comments, questions, etc. may be useful to improve the contents of our SI-Review website.
2.3 Beginners in and Unfamiliar to TRIZ
The percentage of people who know TRIZ to some extent are very little at moment in every country. Thus the lest of people are regarded as being Unfamiliar to TRIZ or just Beginners in TRIZ. Beginners are positioned in the frontier of the proliferation of TRIZ, and hence the most important target readers for our SI-Review website.
There are various types of people Unfamiliar to TRIZ. There are many engineers and researchers left unfamiliar to TRIZ even in the areas where TRIZ has been introduced to some extents. There are many more intellectual people working in the areas where TRIZ has rarely been introduced, for example academia other than engineering, various industries except manufacturing, industries related to software/medicine/chemistry/etc., businesses, social services, education, politics, etc. Our SI-Review website need to take account of these large population of people in its editorial activities.
Introductory and attractive articles are necessary for the Beginners to understand and get interested. Simple and effective methods and clear application examples are to be shown. Because of different types of Unfamiliar to and Beginners in TRIZ, we will need to prepare various articles/texts suitable for them. We should accept various ways of introducing TRIZ to the beginners, including the historical orthodox way of presenting Classical TRIZ. This means SI-Review website will post several different sets of articles/texts of TRIZ (in the wider sense) for Beginners.
Children, students in schools, and undergraduate students form another type of people Unfamiliar to TRIZ. They should be carefully educated to be able to think and solve various problems (in future) creatively. Specific knowledge/methods are not important but essence and way of thinking in TRIZ may be educated in their young ages. Thus our SI-Review website should include the special category of TRIZ Pedagogy and Educational texts for young people.
2.4 Professionals in various methodologies around TRIZ
As discussed in Section 1.3, our SI-Review website has the scope wider than TRIZ, i.e., Creative Problem Solving Methodologies in general, even though our focus in the initial stage is TRIZ (and its extensions in a wider sense). We (people in TRIZ community) want to learn/apply/cooperate with other methodologies around TRIZ and also want to show our TRIZ methodology to the people in the communities of around-TRIZ methodologies for their understanding/usage of TRIZ in a collaborative way. We believe such an interdisciplinary communication/collaboration serves much better for the proliferation of the relevant methodologies having the common goal that Creative Problem Solving Methodologies serve the world for better development of society.
Professionals in various methodologies around TRIZ are more or less in the same situations with Professional in TRIZ. Thus various types of them and various interests and needs of them are similar to those described in Section 2.1, except some more differences in their approaches to methods.
First, we want to learn various methodologies around TRIZ from them. Thus we will invite some Professionals around TRIZ to contribute their excellent papers/articles to (re-)posting in our SI-Review website. Different goal settings, problem definitions, approaches, tools (methods), etc. will stimulate us. Their comments and discussions on our methods and activities will also be fruitful.
Those Professionals will also learn from us TRIZ, and will get some influences from TRIZ. Inter-disciplinary communication/collaboration will make various effects on the methodologies and activities on both sides, hopefully in the win-win relationships.
It is an idea for us to invite some Professionals around TRIZ to Editorial Advisers from the initial stage of SI-Review website, and in future after a few years we may explicitly expand our scope of SI-Review website to 'Creative Problem Solving Methodologies in general' and re-organize the Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory to be formed by both TRIZ and Around-TRIZ Professionals.
In this manner mutual understanding and integral/cooperative use of different methods are to be encouraged through SI- Review website. In a long run, we can expect collaborative and integrative use of different methods and evolution into easy to understand and effective methods.
2.5 Ordinary Users/Practitioners in Various Methodologies around TRIZ
The number of ordinary Users/Practitioners in various methodologies around TRIZ may be nearly 100 times larger than those in TRIZ. Many of them are expert Users/Practitioners in some methods.
They will encounter TRIZ at first as Beginners of TRIZ. Thus, as discussed in Section 2.2, they first want to read easy-to-understand, application oriented articles. And they will want to learn the merits of TRIZ concerning to when/where/how to apply the methods and how effective they are.
Thus, articles in SI-Review should be clear and illustrative for these Users, who are new to TRIZ but familiar with some other methods. They may be much guided and influenced by the papers and discussions among Professionals of different methodologies.
2.6 People Unfamiliar to Any Method
There are many people Unfamiliar to any method (for Creative Problem Solving in general) : managers, business persons, ordinary engineers, students, etc.
Introductory articles (or news) in mass media, books, textbooks, websites, etc. may be influential on them to some extent. In our SI-Review website, brief refences to such information sources (articles/news) may be useful.
Easy introductions to TRIZ (and related methods) should be posted in SI-Review website.
2.7 Need to Categorize Articles/Papers in the SI-Review website
The discussions above in Sections 2.1 to 2.6 have clearly shown that various types of articles are necessary in SI-Review website to fill the requirements of numerous readers/users/authors of different types and background.
For avoiding readers' confusion, SI-Review should clearly Categorize its articles/papers according to their nature and target audience, etc. Ideas of such categorization will be discussed later. (See Section 6.3.)
3. Organization for Promoting and Operating the SI-Review Website (Sept. 16, 2022)
In Section 1.7 (Organization for promotion and operation), we have discussed the necessity of initiation of promoting this Proposal and the importance of getting international cooperation for promoting it further and for establishing an organization which operates the SI-Review website on a sound basis. These are the issues most delicate and difficult in realizing the vision of establishing a "Representative website in the field of TRIZ (and related methodologies).
We are going to present here our current philosophy and ideas about these issues, and we ask you, many people/groups/organizations in TRIZ community, for your consideration and feedback for open global discussions.
In the latter half of this Section, we will think of various possible types of our organization to operate the SI-Review websites. The description is very vague at present, because their feasibilities are uncertain. We will have to consider carefully about possible types of our organization as a part of our vision.
3.1 Initiation of Proposal by the WTSP Global Co-editors
As explained in Section 1.7, the idea of this Proposal was first obtained by Toru Nakagawa through the work of the WTSP Project and was shown and discussed inside the WTSP Global Co-editors. Overcoming some initial reactions such as 'Utopia illusion', the WTSP Global Co-editors reached a general consensus of initiating the Proposal for realizing the vision of SI-Review website.
At moment, the six co-authors of this Proposal document form a voluntary group for initiating the SI-Review Proposal, while Toru Nakagawa is responsible as its Leader.
We have started a sub-site 'Proposal and Discussion for Establishing SI-Review Website' inside the existing WTSP website. URL: https://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/eWTSP/eSIReview/ . We are going to promote the SI-Review Proposal by using this sub-site as a platform for open presentation and discussion.
3.2 Our basic philosophy for getting collaboration of different organizations/groups
Before trying to get collaboration of different groups in the TRIZ community in the world, we would like to state our basic philosophy (again):
SI-Review website does not try to compete against various existing organizations/groups/conferences/journals/etc., but try to cooperate with them in win-win relationships.
We accept the fact that there exist three major international TRIZ organizations, reflecting the historical, regional, and methodical (slight) differences.
SI-Review website will form its Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory by accepting members from different organizations/groups and different approaches/methods.
SI-Review website will accept different approaches/methods of TRIZ and its extensions (and further those of Around-TRIZ methodologies), under peer-review for assuring their quality.
SI-Review website will not try to control or interfere other organizations/groups policies and activities, except posting open discussions in the website on some of important issues.
3.3 Getting cooperation with TRIZ international organizations: MATRIZ, AI, ETRIA, SSI
MATRIZ (International TRIZ Association) was founded by Mr. G. Altshuller in 1997 in Russia, as a successor to the TRIZ Association which was active since 1989. Since '90s it gradually expanded into the Western World. It is formed as an association of regional TRIZ schools/associations/groups (currently 46 active ones). Recently MATRIZ is active, in holding TRIZfest and TRIZ Developers Summit conferences, operating TRIZ Certification system, etc.
Because of its origin, long history, and many TRIZ Masters certified by Altshuller, MATRIZ has the position of Authority in the TRIZ world and wants to be the global leader of TRIZ. Because of the same reasons, however, MATRIZ has some tendency of traditionalism and conservatism concerning the extension of TRIZ.
Thus forming consensus and collaborating with MATRIZ is most important and delicate for us. Our stance will be as follows:
Traditionalism insists to keep TRIZ methodology in its classical/traditional form. A TRIZ Master once gave a paper at an international conference saying "Don't touch TRIZ". Similar papers may be posted in SI-Review website passing the peer review; it is OK because many other papers will be posted for extending and improving TRIZ. Open discussions between traditionalism and progressivism may be meaningful in the SI-Review website.
MATRIZ operates its TRIZ certification system. Even though we understand its merits, we will be independent of it because of its negative effects due to its partial traditionalism. For certification, MATRIZ poses 'Standardized' textbook which is based on Classical TRIZ in its traditional format. We think that nowadays, for instance, 'Substance-Field Modeling' may be replaced with 'Function Analysis Modeling', and the Altshuller's Contradiction Matrix (obtained early '70s, having 39 parameters) should better be replaced Darrell Mann's new Matrix (built newly in 2010, having 50 parameters). We think 'standardization' of textbooks in old style has the negative effect of preventing various positive evolution of TRIZ.
Of course, people in the world can learn a lot from TRIZ Professionals and their activities working in MATRIZ. So we wish to achieve consensus with MATRIZ and to establish/operate SI-Review website in good win-win collaboration with people in MATRIZ. Two of our WTSP Global Co-editors (S. Litvin and V. Souchkov) are leading members in MATRIZ.
'The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies' was established in USA in 1998, as a global center for proliferating TRIZ especially in the Western World. It operates on the Membership of individual persons. It holds annual conferences TRIZCON in various cities in USA. Website of AI posts various articles contributed by the members, besides announcements and proceedings of TRIZCONs.
Altshuller Institute was very active during '00s, but it seems to be in difficult time in recent years. We keep good relationship with AI since its start.
ETRIA (European TRIZ Association) was established in 2001 and has been holding its TRIZ Future Conference (TFC) every year in various European countries by turn. ETRIA has a strong basis in Europe and features with academic approaches, especially with good academia-industry collaboration.
Scientific papers presented at TFCs are published through Springer with citation indexing, while Practitioners' papers are published in some special issues of technical journals run by the organizing universities. We would like to learn ETRIA's experiences of publishing these papers. We, WTSP Global Co-editors, keep good relationships with ETRIA, because three of us are among the five Founding Members of ETRIA.
SSI (Society of Systematic Innovation) is the fourth international association in the field of TRIZ. It is based in Taiwan (with slight changes in its organization name) and operates ICSI (International Conference on Systematic Innovation) since 2010. SSI also publishes IJoSI (International Journal of Systematic Innovation) since 2010, with double-blind peer-review. Contributions to ICSI and IJoSI seem to come mostly from Taiwan, P.R. China, and nearby Asian countries. Some of us, WTSP Global Co-editors, have loose relationships with them.
In summary, we are sure that our Proposal of establishing SI-Review website by international cooperation of the whole TRIZ community will be understood and supported by all the four international associations, i.e., MATRIZ, AI, ETRIA, and SSI.
3.4 Big conflicts in the TRIZ community --- How can we solve them?
Many TRIZ Professionals say they have experienced with big conflicts in the TRIZ community. Groups (or firms, or organizations) with different approaches in TRIZ often compete and sometimes fight for the market share in industries and in countries.
We think the root causes of most of the conflicts lie in the fact that TRIZ has been extending much in itself and also in order to meet various needs of the real world. Even the core part of TRIZ has a number of (big) methods using big knowledgebases, and hence the process of applying them to solve problems has become complex (with multiple alternatives) and not easy to understand and not effective enough for non-expert users. And the needs to solve various problems of different types (e.g., future forecasting) in different areas (e.g., business/management) urges the extension of frontiers of TRIZ. Thus TRIZ extends its various aspects/approaches in the high-end frontiers, while many ordinary users of TRIZ want some simpler yet effective methods at the low end. This is a typical situation where disruptive innovations would occur. In such situations, there occur conflicts between orthodox high-end developers and new low-end (including outsider) developers.
On the basis of this understanding, we, SI-Review website, will not try to unify various approaches in TRIZ by suppressing some of them. We will allow papers/articles of various approaches to be posted in our website, as long as they are written in a fair manner and have passed the peer-review system, and to be discussed openly. We hope that such open discussion among various TRIZ Professionals and Users will gradually settle down into some form among authors and readers, and converge to some (multiple) directions. It will be the natural evolution of a methodology like TRIZ. We will not try to choose one approach/method as 'Standard'; we will not try to 'Solve Conflicts' nor 'Unify different approaches' explicitly. We will wait for the appearance of new approaches/methods which naturally show a new direction of solving conflicts and unifying approaches.
Furthermore, we should better realize that the whole market demanding effective methods/practices of Creative Problem Solving are much larger.
3.5 Possible forms of Organization for Proposal Promotion and SI-Review Website Operation
Assuming our initiation of Proposal of the SI-Review websites get support by most people in the TRIZ community (including 4 international associations), then, we should think and decide in which manner (especially in what organization) we should proceed to make the vision clearer, build a consensus, decide details to establish the SI-Review website, and further operate the website.
The organization in the preparation stage may be temporary and different from the organization at the operation stage. Nevertheless we should think of the form of our organization for operating the SI-Review website, as the target of our preparation.
In the following table, six possible forms of Organization of Operating the SI-Review websites are roughly shown. We would like to get help from many of you, because I (Toru) have very little experiences in this issue.
Type
Basis
Management
Editorial
Collaboration
(A)
SI-Review Society
Membership (individuals, groups, associations)
President
Editorial Board + Members
Strong with associations (?)
(B)
NPO SI-Review Org.
Membership
+ Income from publicationsManager
Editorial Board + Members
Strong with groups as members
(C)
SI-Review, LLC
Income from publications
Manager
Editorial Board
Maybe weak in collaboration
(D)
SI-Review Foundation
Donation + Income from publications
President
Editorial Board + Editorial Advisers
Good collaboration with individuals, groups, associations
(E)
SI-Review (EU) Project
(EU) fund + research/ publication activities
Leader
Editorial Board + Project members + Advisers
Strong collaboration among project members
(F)
SI-Review (Voluntary) Project
(Voluntary) support + voluntary work
Leader
Editorial Board + Editorial advisers
Strong collaboration among voluntary members
3.6 Forming the SI-Review Project by the support of the TRIZ community
At moment, we (WTSP Global Co-editors) are working for initial promotion of the SI-Review website in the form of (F) Voluntary Project. This form is flexible, easy to start, easy to make consensus inside the project, easy to have a clear vision. However it has no authorization by the community, no power to decide anything which affect people/organizations, very little financial capability, etc. So we know this is just a temporary voluntary group (maybe personal project) only for the initial stage of promoting the Proposal.
In the near future, we wish to have a new Voluntary Project (still in the form of (F)), with the name of SI-Review Project and explicitly supported by many people/organizations (including the four international associations). Probably such a new Voluntary Project will be formed by 20-30 Professionals in TRIZ (and some around TRIZ) voluntarily coming from various organizations/countries/approaches/backgrounds, and openly discuss and decide to prepare for establishing the SI-Review website. The discussions and (preliminary) decisions should be disclosed openly and fed back to their various organizations/groups/etc. for further discussion and preparation. In this manner the SI-Review Project may not be formal but practically have the capability to decide various policies and their details for the preparation of starting the SI-Review website.
At moment we still do not know in which process we can form such a widely supported Volunteer Project.
The form of the organization which operates SI-Review website is not discussed yet. The six forms (A) to (F) need to be considered, and prepared step by step in future. We should postpone the discussion and choice on this issue for some more time (till the start of the SI-Review Project).
4. Editorial Board, Editorial Advisory, and Editorial Office/Staff (Sept. 16, 2022)
Now let's think about practical organization for editing the SI-Review website, mostly independent of the form of operation/management discussed above in Section 3.5. Editorial Board, Editorial Advisory, and Editorial Office/Staff are to be discussed here.
4.1 Editorial Board
Editorial Board is responsible for making the contents of the SI-Review website and for deciding the policies and directions of the SI-Review itself. Thus, Editorial Board is the head and the main body of the organization 'SI-Review'. (In some form of organization of SI-Review, there may be President/Manager/Director/etc. as the head of the organization above the Editorial Board.)
Editorial Board will be formed by (nearly) 10 Editorial Board members including the Editor in Chief (and possibly Vice Editor in Chief).
Editorial Board members should be Professionals in TRIZ (in a wider sense) (and some around-TRIZ). It is much desirable that they, as a whole, come from various methodical Approaches, from various Categories, from various background (e.g., academia/consultancy/industry/etc.), from various organizations, from various countries, etc.
Nomination to Editorial Board members may be done by volunteering, recommendation by individuals and organizations, etc. Assignment to Editorial Board members may be done by some form of election, some preparatory negotiations/discussions. (All these processes are not clear yet.)
Editor in Chief will be decided among the Editorial Board members. (Or else, Editor in Chief will be decided first among the Nominees to Editorial Board, and then Editorial Board members are assigned by election or any other method.) (This process is not clear yet.)
Editorial Board members are assigned to some Categories of SI-Review contents and some more roles of Editorial Board.
Term of Two years, allowing extension.
It is usual that Editorial Board members are honorary job without payment. (Considering the burden, especially on Editor in Chief, we may need some reward for their service (especially on Editor in Chief).)
4.2 Editorial Advisory
SI-Review website should have an Editorial Advisory having a large number (about 100) of Editorial Advisers. They have the roles of supporting the Editorial Board in its whole aspects of editorial work, policy decision, etc.
Editorial Advisers may recommend good works worthy of publishing in SI-Review to Editorial Board, may advise to Editorial Board responding with its inquiry, and may suggest various ideas/opinions/comments/etc. to Editorial Board.
Editorial Advisers also serve as Reviewers of submitted articles/papers when asked by the Editorial Board.
Editorial Advisory members should be Professionals (or Practitioners) in TRIZ (in a wider sense) and some around-TRIZ, in a way of larger diversity than Editorial Board members. It is much desirable that they, as a whole, come from various methodologies, from various methodical Approaches, from various Categories, from various background (e.g., academia/consultancy/industry/etc. and Professionals/Practitioners/journalists/managers/etc.), from various organizations, from various countries, etc.
Editorial Advisory members may be nominated by volunteering, recommendations by Editorial Board members, recommendation by individuals and organizations, etc. Assignment to Editorial Advisory members may be done by Editorial Board. (All these processes are not clear yet.)
Terms of Two years, allowing extension.
4.3 Editorial Office/Staff
Editorial Office need to be formed under the supervision by Editor in Chief.
Editorial Office can be virtual, by fully using web servers, editorial tools, and communication tools in the cloud/internet.
Desirable office staff (Editorial Staff) are: a professional editor, a web designer & technical staff, and a secretary staff. Can we get volunteers for such staff ? Or need to hire? (Need to be discussed later.)
5. Process of Preparing Manuscripts of Papers/Articles
5.1 Preparation by the Editorial Office
Before starting the SI-Review website officially, we have to prepare for all its system, including various policies, schemes, rules, hardware/software/communication systems, personnel, etc. Here are some of those main items listed as a note.
We need to set up Policies, make Announcements, build up Editorial Board/Editorial Advisory/Editorial Office, set up Review system, make a Call for Articles/Papers, etc. Official administrative registration and obtaining financial basis, etc. are also necessary.
Preparation for the server and platform: Getting a web server, Editorial platform (e.g., Easy Chair)
Preparation for the website includes: setting access control, building folder structure, deciding web design, etc.
Preparation for the articles: setting Categories of articles/papers, Guidelines to authors, Templates of articles,
5.2 Collecting/inviting the articles/papers: Pool of candidate articles
Editorial Members are urged to watch presentations and papers in various conferences, journals, websites, publications, etc. and find excellent papers/articles worthy of recommending as the candidates for publication in SI-Review website. (Here Editorial Members stands for Editorial Board members and Editorial Advisory members together.)
We should have a Pool of possible/candidate articles/papers which are proposed/recommended by Editorial Members.
This Pool of candidate articles (including papers) may be installed in an Editorial Platform such as Easy Chair, in a way similar to a conference site. We may have some special rule of accessing each Proposal and (later) its Manuscript, such as:
Editorial Members may submit proposal/recommendation of possible/candidate article/paper by filling a specified Article Proposal Form. (Authors (if not an Editorial Member) are advised to access, at the initial stage, any of Editorial Members for obtaining their support. The Author and the supporting Editorial Member together should fill the Article Proposal Form, and the supporting Editorial Member may submit it to the Pool.)
A Proposal (including recommendation) of an Article (including paper) may be uploaded by an Editorial Member, just like uploading an Abstract by the Author in ordinary conferences. All the Editorial Members may access to any of such Proposals, while the (possible) Author of the proposed article (if not an Editorial Member) may access only to the specific Proposal. There may be some scheme that Editorial Members may add their names in the Article Proposal Form for supporting the Article Proposal.
Selecting among these Article Proposals, Editorial Board decides the Invitation for Author's submission of the proposed article with any suggestion/request.
In the next stage of uploading the Manuscripts (of Articles) themselves for the reviewing process, only the Author is allowed to upload the Manuscript itself (and revise it when necessary), and only the assigned Reviewers (besides the Editor Board members and Editorial Staff) may access to the Manuscript.
5.3 Submission of Manuscripts of Articles by the Author(s)
The Author(s) submit the Manuscript of the Article (article/paper) invited by the Editorial Board to the Editorial Platform (e.g., Easy Chair, See Section 5.2).
The submission can be done by the Author directly to the Editorial Platform (the permission is set by the Editorial Office). The Manuscript must be prepared by the Author using the specified Template and following the suggestions/requests from the Editorial Board.
The Manuscripts in the Editorial Platform can be accessed by the Author(s) and the Reviewers of the Manuscripts, besides the Editorial Board members and the Editorial Staff. For the preparation of the Manuscripts and the operation of the Editorial Platform, the Authors may be supported/guided by the Editorial Staff.
5.4 Peer Review Process: Single-Blind Peer Review
The Manuscript is then go through the Peer Review Process.
SI-Review website adopts Single-Blind Peer Review Process, instead of Double-Blind Peer-Review Process. This choice is because (a) at the stage of the Pool of Proposed Articles, the set of (possible) title, outline, and Author(s) are disclosed to all the Editorial Members, (b) due to the nature of our SI-Review articles, i.e., 'over-view/review of recently established works' (Section 1.5), our articles are usually based on multiple of already published reference works, and (c) we should trust our Reviewers in their fair judgement of contents of articles independent of the Authors. (If any unfair judgement by a Reviewer becomes evident, Editorial Board will handle the case and make some appropriate warning to the Reviewer.)
We should set the criteria of our Peer-Review beforehand, in accordance with the purpose of our SI-Review, slightly different from those of ordinary scientific journals, and also depending on different Categories. The primary purposes of our Peer Review process are to check and possibly improve the quality of the Manuscript, in its correctness, clearness, usefulness, novelty, originality, fair citation of references, etc., so as to assure the worthiness of posting the Manuscript in the SI-Review website.
Editor in Chief assigns 1+2 Reviewers for each Manuscript. The first Reviewer is the Editorial Member who submitted the Article Proposal to the Pool of Proposed Articles (or an alternative Editorial Member assigned by the original Editorial Member). Two other Reviewers may be Editorial Members or some other person appropriate for the review work.
Every 2 weeks Editorial Board decides GO/NG to the review process of such Manuscripts.
When necessary, Editor in Chief assigns one more Reviewer among the Editorial Board members.
When the Manuscript has passed the Peer-Review Process, the Author should upload the Final Manuscript (often with minor revisions suggested by the Reviewers) to the Editorial Platform.
6. Structure and Editorial Operation of the SI-Review website (Sept. 16, 2022)
6.1 Setting up the SI-Review website: Web Platform in the Cloud
The SI-Review should have its own Web Platform in a webserver in the Cloud. There we need to do the editorial work for converting the Manuscript into (a part of) Web page, and to upload and maintain the published web pages for open public access.
It is an idea to have two Sub-sites in our SI-Review Web Platform:
The First Sub-site is the Working Sub-site for all the editorial work of preparing the SI-Review web-pages by use of Final Manuscripts. The Working Sub-site is an active working platform in the Cloud, and can be operated cooperatively by Editorial Staff, Editorial Board members, and some assistants. The Working Sub-site is NOT open to the public.
The Working Sub-site should hold 3 Editions of SI-Review website: (a) Current Draft Edition, (b) To-be-Published Edition, and (c) Archived Published Edition,
The Second Sub-site is the Open Public Sub-site, i.e., the "SI-Review website" in an ordinary sense, for publicly posting the SI-Review contents to be read and used by ordinary users. The Open Public Sub-site is always posting the SI-Review in the Current up-to-date Edition and may be read and used interactively by ordinary users.
For editing the website (especially the Working Sub-site), some good software tools, e.g., Adobe DreamWeaver, should be used.
6.2 Basic Editorial Operation inside the SI-Review website
(a ) Current Draft Edition is composed of temporary working pages, which are based on the Final Manuscripts of new articles/papers downloaded from the Editorial Platform (e.g., Easy Chair) and are edited/adapted into SI-Review web-pages, and are tested for the consistency. Editorial work in this Current Draft Edition is done initially by editorial Board members and finished by Editorial Staff.
(b ) To-be-Published Edition is based on the Current Published Edition and adapting/integrating the new web-pages coming from the Current Draft Edition. Revisions of existing web-pages for reflecting the new pages and for setting hyperlinks are necessary, and testing of the consistency is important. All the editorial work in this Edition should be carried out by the Editorial Staff, under the supervision by Editor in Chief.
To-be-Published Edition need to be checked and tested fully before the next posting schedule.
(The fully tested part of) To-be-Published Edition is uploaded to the Open Public Sub-site, and replaced into the Current up-to-date Edition in the Open Public Sub-site.
The new posting of the Published SI-Review website should be done by Editorial Staff regularly (for example on the first working day of every month).
The updated Public Edition should be checked quickly by volunteers of Editorial Members, and corrected, if necessary, by the Editorial Staff.
(c ) Archived Published Edition may be renewed by the back up of the Current Published Edition, regularly for example after a week of the monthly posting. This work is carried out by Editorial Staff. The Archived Edition may be stored newly every year for the purpose of recording.
6.3 Structure of SI-Review Website: Categorized Sections
SI-Review websites are categorized into some Sections. Possible Sections may be:
Scientific papers,
Application & Practice,
Basic & Introductory,
Children & School,
Documents,
News & Activities,Each section should have its own way (guidelines) of collecting, reviewing, editing, and posting Articles.
It is desirable to have Section Editors, who take care of each section, in the Editorial Board.SI-Review Top Page shows the list of new Articles of all the sections in each month, for recent 3 months.
In each Section, Articles are accumulated and further categorized if necessary. Keep all articles accessible and active for life; because they are valuable and worthy. This reflects the philosophy of our SI-Review; i.e., we want to publish 'recently established original works' rather than 'new, unpublished original works'.
It may be useful to have short notes of 'Comments & Discussions' behind (each) Article. Readers, especially Editorial Advisers, are encouraged to write such a note, with signature.
6.4 Links to references and relevant articles
Source references must be shown clearly and with links. This is especially true in the cases of reposting an Article from some other journals/websites/etc. and revision/integration of articles/papers already published in some other journals/websites/etc.
Articles should show (full) references to articles/papers inside and outside the SI-Review, and links to them.
Articles in SI-Review should be accessible easily with links (from the Top Page through some index pages or pages of relevant articles).
Desirable to install an interactive Keyword Search mechanism inside the SI-Review website.
7. Usage of SI-Review by Readers (Sept. 16, 2022)
7.1 Use of SI-Review: Registration or not
SI-Review is Open Access, Free of Charge in principle. (But we may consider the possibility of some exceptional cases, as discussed below).
We should consider and choose whether to request Registration (with or without charge) by the readers or not.
No need of Registration is easier for readers and also for SI-Review. Statistical analysis of readers' access and behavior (with Google Analytics, for example) is useful, and may be enough. Regular publication of new Articles on scheduled dates may be good enough without pushing the update announcement.
On the other hand, readers' Registration is useful if SI-Review wants to know readers' properties and to push information to them. Registration usually requests reader's name, affiliation, properties, interests, etc. and password. Password control is tedious for readers. Pushing information to individual readers need various work, e.g., maintenance of email address, setting up information suitable for readers, etc.
It may be an alternative policy for us to allow the user's choice of becoming a member of SI-Review or not.
An alternative policy is to set SI-Review Members with (password) Registration for some merits of accessing closer documents in the SI-Review website.
There can be various choices for us, whether SI-Review Membership is free of charge, or a fixed charge, or charge depending on the subscription/downloading, etc. Then, we also have to decide what documents are charged, how much is the charge, etc.
--- This issue of charged membership is related to the issue of our financial basis. (See Section 8.2)
7.2 Allowance of usage by the readers
For all the Articles posted in the website, SI-Review reserves the full copyrights. And at the same time, the Authors have their copyrights on their articles, and are allowed to re-post or republish their articles in any other non-commercial place they choose under the condition that the original SI-Review source is clearly stated.
Readers are allowed to read, print, download, and store the SI-Review Articles for their own personal use. Quoting parts of Articles (including figures and tables) is allowed for non-commercial use with showing the reference.
Using the whole or parts of Articles (including figures and tables) for commercial purposes must obtain SI-Review's written permission (possibly with some charge).
Translating Articles of SI-Review into some other language and posting/publishing the translated version in non-commercial website is allowed without charge, under the conditions of prior notice to SI-Review and clear statement of the original reference. In case of translation and publication in other language on a commercial basis, prior written permission from SI-Review is necessary (possibly with some charge).
7.3 Communication from readers/users
Communications from readers/users are welcome. Messages from readers/users will be posted in some appropriate pages in SI-Review with signature and under moderation by the Editors.
8. Financial Issues of SI-Review (Sept. 16, 2022)
(For the purpose of stable and active operation of SI-Review, the issues of Financial Basis and management are important. Here we discuss on Financial Basis showing various possibilities, but no decision is made yet. (See also on the issue of Forms of Organization: Section 3.5.)
We should think of Possible Costs first and then on Possible Income.
8.1 Possible Costs
Here we list up possible Costs:
(1 ) Rental costs of the webserver (for SI-Review Website) in the Cloud.
(2 ) Costs of using the Editorial Platform (e.g.. Easy Chair).
(3 ) Costs of software tools for editorial work (e.g., Dream Weaver).
(4 ) Costs of equipment and communication in the Editorial office
(5 ) Costs of manager/technical editor working at the Editorial office.
(6 ) Costs of technical staff/designer working at the Editorial office.
(7 ) NO Payment to Editor in Chief and Editorial Board members.
(8 ) NO Payment to Reviewers.
Costs (1)-(4) are related to equipment and software, and need to pay explicitly.
Costs (5)-(6) are payment for services by Editorial Staff. They are relatively high and necessary for the smooth operation of SI-Review.
Costs (7)-(8) are payment for Editorial Board and Reviewers, but are assumed NOT to pay for voluntary service. But we may need to re-consider.
8.2 Possible alternative ways of Income
Here we list up possible alternative ways of Income, without evaluating any feasibility or possible amount.
(a ) From Supporters: Funding or donations, regularly or temporarily
(a1 ) From international associations (MATRIZ, ETRIA, AI, etc.)
(a2 ) From national associations
(a3 ) From consulting firms and industries
(a4 ) From any other volunteers
(b ) From Funding organizations
(b1 ) As budget for a research project (e.g., EU budget)
(c ) From Authors: Fee of publishing Articles (just like Fees of presenting at conferences)
(c1 ) Maybe different rates for academic authors and for commercial authors
(d ) From Readers, in some limited form
(d1 ) As donation from Readers on a voluntary basis.
(d2 ) As one-time Membership fee, for possible access to some Members-only documents and some other services.
(d3 ) As annual Membership fee, for possible access to some Members-only documents and some other services.
(d4 ) As the fee of downloading some specific documents in Members-only area.
(e ) From Commercial Users
(e1 ) As payment of commercial use of SI-Review Articles for training by consulting firms
(e2 ) As payment of commercial use of SI-Review Articles for employee training by industries
(e3 ) As payment of commercial publication of SI-Review Articles
(e4 ) As payment of commercial publication of SI-Review Articles after language translation
The source of possible Income may be preferable in the order (e ) > (a) > (b) > (c) > (d), we suppose.
However, there can be reasonable solutions in (d) also.--- This issue of Financial Basis will be postponed to discuss/decide for a time being
--------------- End of description at moment. Sept. 8, 2022 Toru Nakagawa --
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Last updated on Sept. 22, 2022. Access point: Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp
