Jaime ALMANSA SÁNCHEZ, Editor Elena PAPAGIANNOPOULOU, Editor At the time of writing this editorial , as the new year is already underway, we are taking an introspective glance balanced with rational self-criticism . To begin with, even though the debate about current publishing models is ongoing, there is no internal conflict surrounding our work for the journal. It is our firm belief that the quality and accessibility of academic publications rather than impact factor and quantitative metrics should be a priority. We work with this principle in mind, aiming at the same time at being as inclusive and representative as possible. The downside of our model, apart from time constraints, is that we rely entirely on the donations we receive. Thus, there is no funding stability, the latter being one of the key sustainability factors . On the bright side, we are still here and our model’s virtue, apart from being freely and fully available for readers around the globe provided that...

By Faidon Moudopoulos The 3rd IHC International Conference in Heritage Management (HerMa) took place in Elefsina, Attica, Greece, from the 30 th of September to the 2 nd of October. Organized by the Institute for Heritage Conservation , an NGO aiming to promote good practices in heritage management, the event was more than a conference, being part of the Aeschylea Festival , organized by the Municipality of Elefsina. The coexistence of the Festival with the conference combined with the fact that the city’s candidateship for European Cultural Capital of 2021 nomination was successful, transformed those three days to an inundation of diversified heritage practices. The old olive factory with the conference logo (credit: Sophia Zakoura) All those parameters provided a fertile ground for the development of the conference. Moreover, the broad topics covered by the various panels stimulated the interest of professionals in various disciplines and resulted to a diverse a...

by Daniel García Raso Would you abandon him now? Until very recently, Nintendo, one of the giants of video games, had refused flatly (quite incomprehensibly from a business point of view) to create games for smartphones and other mobile devices, or even to allow their classic games (Mario, Donkey Kong or sagas like Metroid) to be available on these platforms. But at a meeting of senior executives, someone had to bring Tatsumi Kimishima to reason because Miitomo , the first smartphone app of the Japanese company, was released on March 17 with terrific success: in less than a month it got 4 million downloads. In less than a month since its launch on July 7, Pokémon Go surpassed platforms like Twitter in terms of user numbers. Thanks to the fetishist momentum of casual gamers, some must be gloating in Tokyo... even recovering from the ‘bump’ of Wii U, until they stated a mere 32% of stocks in Niantic , the actual company that released the app.  Pokémon Go is not only t...

I did not expect such a good weather in Berlin. With a full program from Thursday to Sunday, I had limited time to see Berlin, so right after checking in at the hotel I run out for a walk. I usually see politics everywhere, but Berlin was overwhelming; the struggle between Communism and Capitalism is still more than evident anywhere you look. Curry at the Wall, Berlin I wanted to open the post with this photo, because it is, in a way, a perfect introduction to my thoughts on the conference. You can only see the sausage and a bit of a balloon right where the wall was, not that long ago. Of course, Coca Cola is there and the bear holds victoriously his sausage as a trophy. Communism is over and we are all so happy about it that the new planning of the city embraced Capitalism in a way few cities have done.  Meanwhile, in Checkpoint Charlie, a couple of guys in army uniforms  take photos  with happy tourists that just entered the USA quarter. I cannot pay my publ...

This year's   editorial   had a lot to do with the future of the archaeology publishing world – a future that looks bleak – and an Open Access model that should confront neoliberal trends in academic publishing. It might sound strange coming from a journal sponsored by a company, but we believe our ethical stand on this matter is crystal clear. One of the issues we need to address now is the quality of the journal. There are certain things we are not willing to change. For instance, we believe that a large academic Editorial Board, which has little or no involvement in the real daily affairs of the journal, would not change anything for the better. However, there clearly is room for improvement and we ask you to help us in this effort. Radboud University Nijmegen has launched " Quality Open Access Market " (QOAM) to evaluate Open Access journals in a collaborative way. We want to use this tool in order to improve the journal, so we will not ask y...

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-mak...