What a great idea, Barbara. I'm willing to help!

It occurs to me that we could almost use a system, ironically enough, like the mechanical turk: I.e. set up a central bourse using something like conftool or open journal systems where papers could be submitted and people could volunteer to assist. That system would then handle the mechanics of pushing the papers out to volunteers and the comments back.

Marin raises a very good point about time and career-value--the more so since I still owe him a translation. And while I agree with you that people are good and willing to volunteer, it doesn't hurt to think about sustainability issues.

This raises a second possibility: I wonder if we could treat the bourse (if that was a good idea) as a new form of pre-print publishing: something like the way arXiv.org works for physicists: i.e. a lightly edited, but non-refereed place where people drop drafts before they submit to journals. If we used something like commentpress, then we could crowd source the english correction (and other things) in an open fashion. I'm on the executive of a group that is focussed on the future of the scholarly journal (force11.org) whose membership began in the sciences, I can ask them more about the arXiv model; and of course we have Marin, who is expert in all things scholarly communication here.

This is probably more than you are thinking of! But I think it would make sense to think of an infrastructure for handling the mechanics as easily as possible and the more it looks like a journal, the easier it is to extract credit (albeit minor credit) from all participants. I wonder if this is something the more Anglophone ADHO Constituent Organisations (e.g. ACH, CSDH/SCHN, aaDH) might want to adopt as a programme as well, encouraging their membership to contribute as public service.


On 13-08-28 07:49 AM, Bordalejo, Barbara wrote:
Dear Marin,

I can see why you have doubts, however I have a some volunteers already. There are other tasks that might be more valued in academia, but perhaps we should see collegiality and inclusion, and those who seek and promote them, as valuable too. Some scholars already act in this generous way, although perhaps not yet by helping to bridge the language gap. Several years ago, I was told that if I ever saw an academic in a position of power and couldn't immediately spot tangible merits, that I should look at his or her record on speed and reliability of peer-review completion, reference letter writing and other contributions to academia. 

I am still looking for volunteers for any language people feel they can contribute to review. And I have been thinking that if this becomes a large enough enterprise, there should be a site where volunteers can sign up and be found. 

In the meantime, I want to thank all of those who already put their names forward. I am sure that they know this already but I want to say it anyway: your participation matters, your actions matter and I, personally, feel grateful to find that members of this community have so much to give and such willingness to do so. 


All the best,

BB


On 28 Aug 2013, at 05:29, Marin Dacos <marin.dacos@openedition.org> wrote:

This is a very interesting proposal. I am not sure if is doable, because it will become a heavy task to do for native speakers, and these task will be in competition with other, much more valuated in the acadamy, such as writing books or articles for their own.
How could we solve this issue?
Best regards,
Marin



On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Bordalejo, Barbara <bab995@mail.usask.ca> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,

During the last few weeks I have reviewed some articles (all in English) by non-native speakers. Some times they are almost perfect, some others they are far from it. I know that my own texts suffer the same problems. Clearly, this is a factor that keeps scholars, who are not native speakers of English, marginalised.

We had a similar discussion on the subject of the Anglo-American (and Canadian) hegemony in the field, but I don't recall a concrete solution being offered. In any case, I have an idea that might be helpful. I was wondering whether I could ask those of you with native or near-native English skills to volunteer to proof articles to avoid rejections based on bad expression or avoidable mistakes.

If you think that you can contribute to this, send me an e-mail and I will compile a list of volunteers to put in the GO::DH website.

Thank you for your help,

BB



_______________________________________________
globaloutlookdh-l mailing list
globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca
http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l

You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted.

If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours.



--
Marin Dacos - http://www.openedition.org 
Director - Centre for Open Electronic Publishing - CNRS - EHESS - Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) - Université d'Avignon
OpenEdition is now a Facility of Excellence (Equipex)

Nouvelle adresse postale :
OpenEdition - 38 Rue Frédéric Joliot Curie - F - 13013 Marseille Cedex 20

Tél : 04 13 55 03 40 Tél. direct : 04 13 55 03 39 Fax : 04 13 55 03 41

Skype : marin.dacos - Google hangout : marin.dacos@openedition.org 
Twitter [FR] : http://twitter.com/marindacos
_______________________________________________
globaloutlookdh-l mailing list
globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca
http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l

You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted.

If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours.



_______________________________________________
globaloutlookdh-l mailing list
globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca
http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l

You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted. 

If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours.


-- 
--- 
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Professor of English
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4
Canada

+1 403 393-2539