Editorial: Consolidating the model
As we are about to bid farewell to 2015, we must admit
that this past year has been interesting regarding the academic publishing sector.
In September 2014 we presented a poster at the EAA Meeting in Istanbul to celebrate
our journal’s first five years. One of the points highlighted in our poster was
our commitment to provide a completely free service to both authors and readers.
This academic publishing model is by no means innovative. It has been established
in Spanish archaeology since 1998 with ArqueoWeb
and, during the past few years, most institutional journals have been uploaded
under the OJS (Open Journal Systems) platform. In the case of public
institutions, Open Access is understood as part of their academic responsibilities
and its standard costs are incorporated in the general budget for publications.
In our case, JAS Arqueología S.L.U. supports the small material costs of the
journal, while our team works voluntarily for the project.
Then, is AP Journal
a loss-making endeavour? Of course it is. With zero returns it is practically impossible
to make any money. The point, however, is not making profit but sharing public
archaeology, and this is what distinguishes us from any other editorial. Once
the web hosting service is paid, the material costs of the journal are less
than 100€ per year, which is affordable for the company if donations to the
journal are low. However, the financial costs are only one part of the
equation. The other critical part is the time spent and effort put into the
whole project. Obviously, we all have other work─and life─related commitments
and responsibilities, but still we are willing to commit to the project in our
spare time, although the latter is sometimes hard to find. We (Elena and Jaime),
as founders and editors of the journal, have the responsibility to do it, but should
thank again (and always) the rest of the team for their hard work and for sticking
with us. Together we spend several dozens of hours handling and copyediting
papers, communicating with authors, reviewers and publishers, managing our social
media, holding online meetings, producing each volume, and publishing content
that is steadily increasing and getting better.
In March 2015 we submitted an application to be considered
for inclusion in Scopus, just to try and see what would happen. Up to now, the
application status is still “Submission received” (i.e. the first out of seven
steps). Meanwhile, Latindex (from UNAM, Mexico) listed us with 32 out of 36
criteria[1]
met in less than a week and ISOC (from CSIC, Spain) did so in two days. It is a
pity that only ISI (Thomson-Reuters) and Scopus (Elsevier) are
valuable for the academic system, but we do not care about our submission’s outcome
or its timing as we firmly believe that the value of the journal must be
measured by our readers and authors, and that the peer-review system is a first
step to ensure its quality. The real challenge, however, is to survive (and thrive)
in an environment where internet journals are still undervalued and authors
prefer to publish in indexed journals to increase their h-index (which deserves
its own editorial). If one day Scopus decides to include us, we can be sure of
one thing: the number of papers received would increase exponentially in weeks.
Hopefully this entire model will have collapsed by then and we want to be part of
the reform.
We said it has been an interesting year for the academic
publishing world, also because Maney Publishing has been acquired by Taylor and
Francis Group. As you probably know, Maney was the publisher of the journals Public Archaeology and Journal of Community Archaeology and
Heritage. As a result, the annual subscription fee for both journals recently
rose from 188€ to 236€. We are worried because the rising costs of journal
subscriptions are another example of how academic research and publishing is
still extremely commoditized. Nevertheless, we sincerely hope they carry on
with quality content for those who can afford a subscription. For those of us
who are not linked to an academic institution with funds to pay subscriptions,
affordable prices and Open Access are the only ways to access research. This is
why we want to consolidate our model and be an alternative to the market. This
is why we kindly invite you to take part in this quest and enjoy the benefits
of publishing in open online journals like ours. We will only state one:
everybody can read you.
Regarding the current volume and its contents, this
year we had a slight change of plans: due to recent events and other internal
issues, we took the decision to postpone the third part of our looting forum
for next year. At present it is our pleasure to bring you a collection of
papers that we believe you will find useful. Volume 5 opens with a research
article, signed by Festo Gabriel, in which the author examines local communities’ perceptions of archaeology and
cultural heritage resources in the Mtwara region of Tanzania. The paper is
revealing as to the chasm between local communities views and conventional
practice, which combined with the lack of community involvement in heritage
management can have repercussions for the protection of cultural heritage.
Indeed, community involvement is key to effective heritage management and a
holistic approach from which local communities can benefit is the only ethical
and sustainable path. In our second article, Alicja Piślewska explores the relationship between archaeology and
society in Poland, providing an overview of the latter throughout the 20th
century, discussing public participation while giving a detailed account of the
role of archaeological museums, festivals, re-enactments, and reconstructed
sites, and closing with a critical discussion on digital public archaeology. Next,
Johan Normark examines the 2012-phenomenon, presenting his personal experience in
dealing with it as an academic blogger, and provides a critical discussion on
the ways archaeologists tackle fringe ‘archaeologies’ through traditional and social media. Our
fourth paper takes us to present day Albania. The authors of this research
paper, Francesco Iacono and Klejd L.
Këlliçi, study the public perception of the material heritage of the country’s
recent dictatorial past and discuss how, in the case under study, notions of ‘difficult heritage’ can be problematic if often neglected aspects
other than trauma are not taken into account. In our final
article, signed by Colleen Morgan, ‘punk archaeology’ and the relation of
archaeology with DIY practices and anarchy are under investigation.
There
is a common thread running through most of this volume’s articles. Public perceptions of archaeology and cultural
heritage should be seriously taken into account, if increasing the public’s
involvement and engagement with the past when practicing public archaeology is
a priority. Bridging the gap between society’s needs and conventional practice is not only
still relevant today in numerous contexts but also of utmost importance.
In this volume you will also find our regular Points of You article. Helen
Stefanopoulos reflects on why alternative and more inclusive approaches to
archaeological heritage management in Greece should be adopted and points out
the necessity of re-evaluating existing policies. Finally, we are pleased to
also share with you a series of book reviews, representing some of the most
interesting publications of the last couple of years and covering most of the topics
that pertain to public archaeology, from illicit trade of antiquities to
popular representations of the past, and from theoretical approaches to
management and community engagement. We are doing our best to provide what we consider
to be an essential tool for the critical analysis of current trends in the
field and would like to remind you that we are waiting to review your titles in
the future. As for the blog, we would like to remind you that we regularly
publish reviews of events as well as links to Open Access theses. Remember, you
can send us the link to yours and we will be happy to share it.
This year we participated for the first time in the
Day of Archaeology, an important digital public archaeology project that grows
each year, with a post by Elena (http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/ap-journal-its-journey-and-my-day-of-archaeology/).
Hopefully we will get more involved in the coming years and encourage you to do
so too.
There are different approaches to public archaeology
in different countries, but with public archaeology slowly shifting away from
the definition debate towards a more reflective and critical outlook and
discussion of both theory and practice, we feel optimistic that true progress can
be achieved. We want to be part of this, and we want to do it with you. Last
but not least, we wish to make a few announcements:
1.
Call for Debate:
We welcome guest blog posts on
a wide range of topics related to public archaeology as well as event reviews.
You can send your posts in a Word document with image files attached to our
email. We
also encourage your feedback and comments, after visiting our blog, as well as
discussion via our other social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Google+). If you have any specific topic in mind
that you want to write about, we are open to suggestions.
2.
Call for Papers:
Volume 6 will be published in 2016. The deadline for
submissions is 31 March 2016. As the number of papers submitted is steadily increasing,
we wish to receive papers for our
next volume as soon as possible so that there will be enough time to get things
done in a timely, consistent manner. For more information about the submission
procedure, please visit our website. In case you have any questions or doubts,
please feel free to contact us.
3.
Call for Special Issue Proposals:
We invite guest editor proposals from those who wish
to discuss particular topics and areas of research that fall within the aims
and scopes of the journal. Special issues provide a great opportunity to review
a specific topic, examine aspects that remain unaddressed, discuss, suggest and
develop novel approaches, and encourage new research models. Feel free to
contact us for guidance on preparing your proposal.
4.
Call for Donations:
As previously mentioned JAS Arqueología will continue to take
care of and publish this journal for as long as it exists. The philosophy of
this journal—and of its editors—is to provide the widest access at no cost for
both authors and readers. AP is—and will remain—a free-access and not-for-profit
journal, thus, sustainability is always an issue. Keeping the journal an open-access and
ad-free publication means its future depends on your support. So if you find
any stimulation in AP Journal, please consider a modest donation. We will be
grateful for your support and donations, no matter how small the amount, make a
big difference.
At this point, we should warmly thank and express our gratitude to our
donors. Should you wish to support AP Journal, you can do so either directly or
indirectly, by buying a hard copy of any of the existing volumes:
·
Direct
donation via PayPal on our web page.
·
Purchase of
the hard copy. There is a fixed price of 10€. Just ask us.
Jaime
Almansa Sánchez
[1] Two of the criteria do not apply to
us, as they are meant for Spanish/Portuguese publications that should offer
Abstract and Keywords in two languages. A third one will be readily met, starting
with this volume (i.e. adding dates for reception and acceptance of papers),
and the fourth, technical criterion will be addressed as soon as we find a way
to include it, as it will also be useful for other repositories and search
engines.
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