Hi fellow mechanicians,
Professor Suo and I have devised a model for creating a journal on iMechanica. It is a simple model which doesn’t require installing any additional modules or features.
We simply let a user be a journal manager, and he selects excellent blog entries as articles to be published in the next issue of the journal. He will then create a blog entry listing the titles of the articles with their respective authors and make each title a link to the original post. This way another user only needs to click on the title of an article to see the full entry.
The list of issues created by the journal managers will be posted on another page, which will be the homepage of the journal. The journal homepage will be a list of links to particular issues, which are only the blog entries of the journal managers, and in turn the issues will have links to particular articles. Finally, a link to this journal can be posted on the right hand column for easy access. We can have people rotate the job of being the journal manager and he will be responsible of publishing the next issue. Does it sound good?
We have even developed a preview journal on iMechLab, listed as a link on the right column as “iMech Journal”. Please take some time to check it out and give us feedback. Notice that each issue of the journal is simply a blog entry by a regular user. You can even make your own issue. Just let either me or Professor Suo know, and we can add your issue to the journal homepage. You will need to use HTML to format a list of articles, but if you need help, click on the tag titled “serious” on the top right, and look for an article titled “Journal formatting”. Remember, this is only a model and we want your feedback about what you like and what you want to change. Thank you.