Overlay journals

Publishing on Cabdell is free and immediate. An overlay journal adds what journals do best on top of it: an editorial board, a public policy and a selection that readers trust. It never decides what may be published; it picks, among what is already published, the articles it stands behind. Selected articles show the journal’s name, and their authors are told.

A journal is a public list with a policy and editors. Like every public list, it lives on the blockchain as notes of 0-ALGO payments to oneself: each change costs only the network fee, and anyone can check who selected what and when.

Found a journal

1. Create a public list (on your profile, tab Lists, or from Save on any article) and give it the journal’s name and a one-line description.
2. Open the list’s page and choose Make it an overlay journal.
3. Write the editorial policy (at most 600 characters): what the journal selects and how. For example: “Articles in sleep research that hold the Peer-reviewed seal; two editors agree on each selection.”
4. Invite editors: their addresses, one per line (at most 30 editors in all). Each invited editor is notified.
5. Click Make it a journal and sign.

The journal then appears in the Journals directory, with its founder, its editors, its policy and its size.

Edit a journal

• Accept the invitation. An invited editor sees it in the inbox, on their profile (tab Lists, Your journals) and on any article page (Your journals): Accept or Decline, then sign. Nobody becomes an editor without signing.
• Select articles. On an article’s page, Your journals lists the journals you founded or edit: tick a journal to select the article, untick it to remove it, then Save the selection and sign. The authors of a newly selected article are notified.
• Leave. An editor can resign at any time (decline the role). The founder can dismiss editors, invite others, change the policy, or end the journal (it becomes a plain list again).

Selections made by an editor stay when the editor leaves: they were made under the journal’s policy at the time, and the journal’s page says who made each one.

Accept or decline a selection (authors)

Anyone can found a journal, under any name, and select any article. So a selection does not count as the article’s journal until the article’s submitter accepts it (D-162). The submitter, told of the selection in the inbox, accepts or declines it with a signed note, like every journal change: {"op":"selection","journal":"<founder>/<list>","articles":[12],"accept":true} (false declines). Only the article’s submitter can answer, the latest answer stands, and the founder and the editor who selected are told of an acceptance. Until it is accepted, a selection is shown as not accepted and never names the article’s journal elsewhere, for example in the tags that Google Scholar reads; a declined selection stays on the journal’s page, marked declined.

Volumes

Like a printed journal, an overlay journal is organised in volumes. A new journal starts with volume 1, in editing (open): new selections go into it.

• A full volume rolls over by itself. A volume holds up to 1 000 articles; the selection that would be the 1 001st opens the next volume and goes there. A journal can have up to 1 000 volumes, so in practice there is no limit.
• The founder can open the next volume earlier, for example every year: in Journal settings, Volumes, tick “Close volume N and open volume N+1” and give it a title if you like (“2027”). The open volume’s title can be changed there too. An empty volume cannot be closed.
• A closed volume is finished. Its articles can no longer be added or removed, like an issue already printed, and it keeps who edited it: the founder and the editors at the moment it closed. If a selected article is retracted later, it stays in its volume and shows its retraction.
• An article is selected once per journal, in the volume that was open at the time.

The journal’s page shows the volumes as tabs, the one in editing first; each volume says whether it is in editing or finished, when it opened and closed, how many articles it holds and, once finished, who edited it. An article’s page says “Selected by Sleep Letters, vol. 2 (2027)”.

Print a volume or save it as PDF

Print volume N (PDF), under the volume on the journal’s page, opens the volume ready to print; PDF / Print opens your browser’s print dialog, where Save as PDF keeps a PDF. Anyone can print any volume, finished or in editing:

• The cover: the journal’s name and description, the volume’s number and title, its state (In editing, open since a date, or Finished, open from one date to another), how many articles it holds, its address, the date printed, the editorial policy and who edited it (the board when it closed, or the board today while in editing).
• The contents: the articles numbered in the order they were selected, with their authors.
• Every article in full, each from a new page, headed by the same record as a printed article (version, address, CID, DOI, licence, seal) and how to cite it; see Save as PDF or print.

A volume in editing can still change, so its copy shows it on the day it was printed. A volume of more than 50 articles prints in parts of 50 (part 1 holds the first 50 selected). Like a printed article, the PDF is made by your browser; Cabdell’s server renders and stores nothing, and each article can be checked against its CID.

What readers see

• On the journal’s page: its policy, its editorial board (founder and editors, with the date each joined), the invitations not yet accepted, and the selected articles, each with who selected it and when, and its seal state.
• On an article’s page: “Selected by” and the names of the journals that selected it, and whether the submitter accepted each selection.
• In the Journals directory: every journal, the largest first.

Why journals on top of Cabdell

• Selection, not gatekeeping. Anything can be published and read; journals add a signal of quality that readers can choose to follow, and several journals can select the same article.
• Everything in the open. The policy, the board and every selection are signed and public; a journal’s reputation is its editors’ and its record.
• No lock-in. The article stays the author’s, at the same address, with its reviews, votes and seal; a journal that disappears takes nothing with it.

Limits

Editors per journal	30 (the founder not counted)
Policy	600 characters
Articles per volume	1 000; the next volume opens by itself
Volumes per journal	1 000
Volume title	80 characters
Journals per founder	the 100 public lists of an address

Public and permanent

A journal, its policy, its editors and its selections are recorded on the blockchain and readable by anyone; later changes and removals are recorded too, but the history stays.