From the Incoming Editors
Harmony Bench and Simon Ellis
It is with great pleasure that we assume the editorship of the International Journal of Screendance. Up until this time, the journal has been edited by Claudia Kappenberg and Douglas Rosenberg, and the first four volumes are a testament to their work and commitment to the process of publishing the journal. We would like to thank Claudia and Doug for their energy, enthusiasm, and artistic-scholarly vision. They will continue to be a guiding presence in the journal's future.
But what of that future? Publishing journals is becoming an increasingly difficult undertaking, with the uncertainty in the publishing industry in general and the tight fiscal conditions under which academic institutions are being asked to operate. With this in mind—and with the support of the Journal's Board—we have decided to adopt the online Open Journal System (OJS) in order to make the Journal openly accessible in various digital formats (HTML, PDF, epub), and to increase its financial viability.
OJS will enable a completely online peer-review process (which minimizes administrative burden) and will help us get the journal to readers more quickly. The volume you are now reading—Volume 4—is the first edition of IJSD to be published on our OJS site at screendancejournal.org, hosted by The Ohio State University. Volume 5 will be completely submitted, reviewed, prepared, and published via OJS.
Volume 5 will also be our first edition as editors, and it is scheduled for publication in the (Northern) Spring of 2015. Its theme is screendance practices and community. Looking further forward, there will be an open call for papers for Volume 6 in May 2015, and we are currently looking into the various possibilities for print on demand for readers who prefer a little less screentime.
We are very much looking to continuing Claudia and Doug's work, and we are excited at how we might keep developing the journal for the screendance community: its artists, students, and scholars.