Bunk journal?

[gmol]

Ok all you scientists, I've read three papers from the 'peer reviewed' journal First Monday (http://www.firstmonday.dk/);
and I really think that they are just a load of bunk.

I mean, reading the papers comes across as reading an editorial by someone. I can't really tell what the thesis of some (all) of them really are.

Would somone mind looking at the issue and taking a scan and telling me what they think. I'd really like to hear from someone in the humanities....

[Goshawk]

Eh, it comes across not necessarily as "bunk" but as the kind of self-consciously self-referential stuff that the East Coast Intelligentsia as represented by Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly do, only not nearly as well. I had the sense of a bunch of Atlantic Monthly wannabes, whose articles didn't make the cut there and so they're publishing them online in this First Monday thing.

I wouldn't take the "peer reviewed" part of it terribly seriously. It's not like it's the Lancet or something.

I didn't see any "science" at all. The whole First Monday concept is supposed to be "articles about the Internet". I don't see where "science" comes in.

[gmol]

The articles do try to talk about 'complexity' 'agents' 'cyborgs' etc. etc. Yes they don't make a claim to being 'science' but it should be at least sound reasoning (thesis wel presented, backup by facts, novel somehow etc.)...shouldn't it?

I am just not familliar with this type of publication, and I was taken aback by how lame it seemed...

[gmol]

Don't mean to beat this to death, but here is an example where the stuff written really does look like bunk; i.e. some sentences are simple non-statements:

"Cyborg logs and collective stream of (de)consciousness capture for producing attribution-free
informatic content such as cyborglogs"

I read that as "cyborg logs for producing "cyborglogs""...WTF?