A short history of the Journal of Peer Production by its founder

Since we have reached the final issue of the Journal of Peer Production, it is worth spending a few moments to summarise what it achieved. Aside from exploring and extending a new field of research, as can be seen by reviewing the range of topics covered in our fifteen issues, the journal developed original alternative practices in academic publishing. For peer reviewed articles, we publish the reviews – which can remain anonymous or not – as well as the original submission of the article. We created a range of ‘signals’ indicating the article’s quality so that we could publish articles more quickly, whilst protecting the journal’s reputation (after a few years, it became clear that not everyone agreed that this was an excellent idea: some wished that we adopted a more conservative approach and rejected more papers, but the practice remained). The journal’s rules and policies were debated on our publicly accessible and archived mailing list. Debates were lively and respectful. It was clear that participants cared deeply about the journal’s goals, integrity and legacy. In sum, the Journal of Peer Production not only researched and documented peer production: it also enacted it.