It is of course really encouraging to see free access on-line journals.
However, 'free-access' does not been 'free'- any such enterprise incurs costs
and if payment is not to come from the reader it has to to come from somewhere
else, in this case a $9m dollar charitable grant. Noticeably these new
e-journals are science-based, where there is clearly more access to such large
scale charitable donations, and in the long term large-scale commercial
sponsorship (which of course brings a whole other set of problems).

Humanities based e-journals are unlikely to have access to such funding
streams, so what is the likelihood of a succesful free access archaeology
journal? While there are free access historical/archaeological journals out
there e.g Assemblage, Heroic Age, CAPRA, this genre has all the problems of
any publication reliant on good-will and volunteers to produce them, e.g
irregular issues etc. For example, Heroic Age is currently still on the
Summer/Autumn 2001 issue and Assemblage is on August 2001 (with the next issue
about to appear). I am not having a pop at these journals, but they clearly
have difficulties providing a consistent and regular output. In cases where
there is a professional editorial team such as Internet Archaeology it has not
been possible for perfectly understandable reasons to sustain free access.

It is of course absolutely fair that one should expect to pay for a
professional e-journal in the same way one should pay for a print journal, but
I think  there are problems with long term accessibility. For example, I
needed to look at an article in Britannia recently. I don't subscribe, but I
was able to go to my local university library as a member of the public and
ask to have a look at their journals, and photocopy the article. I was able to
do this with a minimum of fuss,during an evening without any advance phone
calls or organisation. However, if for sake of arguement I wanted to read an
article in Internet Archaeology to which I also do not subscribe I can't do
this. Yes, my university library subscribes to the journal, but as a
non-university member I am not able to access them. Even if I did I would have
to arrange ahead to book a computer, and unlike students I would not be able
to make a hard copy.

With the print journal in the library I can go in, scan through them, browse,
them, read reviews, read articles about stuff outside my field. The difficulty
in looking at electronic journals prevents me doing this with e-journals. It
ends the possibility of stumbling across the gem of an article in a journal
one does not normally read, or reading that intriguing book review or finding
paralles to ones research outside your own area. Ironic, considering the
emphasis placed on 'rhizomatic' thinking promoted by many advocates of the
internet.

Currently, there is a danger that e-journals will actually end up having even
more reduced access than print journals Whilst the academic community may be
well-served by them there is a huge audience of arcaheologists working
professionally who do not have access to academic facilities, not to mention
the even larger constituency of amateur archaeologists who will also not be
able to get access to the information in these journals. Ultimately this
threatens to increase the academic/field divide which has been such a plague.

Don't get me wrong- I think the internet is definitely the future for
archaeological publication, but we need to explore different models for
funding it. POssibilities include pay-per-view , where you can just pay a
small fee (ie not more than it would cost to photocopy the article) to look at
an article, or short-term subscriptions (i.e. pay for access for a period of
24 hours or a week).

Just as a matter of interest what would happen if I tried to British Library
Interlibrary Loan of an Internet Archaeology article?

david

Dr David Petts
'Keys to the Past' Project Officer,
Conservation Team, Environment Directorate
Northumberland County Council, County Hall
Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 2EF
Tel: 01670 533076   Fax: 01670 533086
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.northumberland.gov.uk