Like Tim Young, I am on the Council of HMS. The Society has two editors for
the journal Historical Metallurgy (and a third who does the typesetting).
All are volunteers. I suspect that the issue being raised is one of
resources - the amount of time that any of us have for voluntary activities.
At least one of the editors is on this list but may be on holiday, since she
has not responded. About one-third of members are overseas but the content
of the journal depends on what is offered to it. I have occasionally heard
comments indicating that the flow of articles has been inadequate.
Part of the issue is that not every paper submitted to editors is in a
publishable state. A research student publishing his or her first paper in
inevitably impatient to see it in print, but it takes time to have it ready:
it needs to be refereed; edited; text agreed with author; then set in the
house style; and proofread; and printed. I have had over 30 academic papers
published in a variety of journals, many by societies. Some of these only
produce one issue per year; in one case alternate years. For one journal,
in which I have been published, the editors only consider new articles
during one season of the year, and are working on other aspects of
production at others. If an article misses the window, it waits a further
year. Other causes of delay include:
* The need for articles to be refereed.
* That some articles are from authors whose first language is not English,
so that work needs to be done to put the text into good English.
* The sheer mechanics of production.
Some journals (such as Economic History Review) have pre-prints on their
website - available to members who have logged in, but that may be because
they have a backlog of articles that are approved and have been set for
publication, but are awaiting their turn. I do not think that is the case
with HM.
I suspect that the answer that we do not need yet another journal, but the
editors of HM may find it useful to have some assistants who can subedit.
Another answer may be for people to put draft articles on their own websites
and post an abstract and a link on this list. I hope our list owners will
not shout at me for saying so!
Dr Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
[log in to unmask]
01562-720368
-----Original Message-----
From: Arch-Metals Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Killick, David J - (killick)
Sent: 20 June 2012 16:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Archaeometallurgy Journals
Marianne originally asked the following question: do we need another
specialist journal for archaeometallurgy? Ian has brought us back to this by
asking what would happen to the many descriptive papers about finds in
Britain if HM were to subject itself to the Citations Inquistion.
There are a number of other outlets for publication of descriptive papers.
The Archaeometallurgy in Europe conference series is now well established
and the papers are published. For those whose careers don't depend upon
rapid publication and citation index ratings this is a good option. The
downside for those whose who are not university or museum employees is that
one has to attend the conference and pay for it out of pocket, but European
archaeometallurgist have alwats done this - there were certainly a number of
avocational archaeometallurgists at the last AiE in Bochum. So I don't think
that making HM more selective will prevent avocational archaeometallurgists
in Britain from publishing. The real issue is that HMS is a society journal
- what do the members of the society want to do with it? For those in the
USA the Materials Research Society has occasional conferences on
archaeological science, at which archaeometallurgy is often presented, but
the costs of attendance are prohibitive for non-academics.
The worst dilemma is that facing young professionals - students and
postdocs - who do indeed have to traverse a very narrow path, overhanging a
precipice, when it comes to publication. Some have managed to squeeze
papers into technical publications whose editors may find archaeometallurgy
an entertaining break from the usual fare - for example there are several
papers on Peruvian archaeometallurgy in the journal Hyperfine Interactions,
which is a journal of spectroscopy. These journals are often highly rated
by citation indices, but papers published in such places are essentially
lost to an archaeological readership. To concentrate on chasing citation
indices is also a dangerous strategy for an aspiring young professional.
Archaeometallurgy is ultimately part of archaeology, and to get hired in
archaeology departments we need to convince archaeologists that
archaeometallurgy is interesting and relevant. This means that a dual
publishing strategy is needed - detailed technical papers in ranked
specialist journals AND papers in archaeological journals that relate the
findings to questions that are of real archaeological interest. In Britain
and North America we are evidently failing to convince archaeologists that
what we do is interesting - at a time when archaeological science is hot,
and many archaeology departments are hiring archaeological scientists,
archaeometallurgists don't seem to be competitive. (There are fewer
archaeometallurgists in full-time university jobs now in these regions than
there were in the late 90's). Ian Freestone told me a couple of years ago
that the same is true of specialists in prehistoric ceramic technology in
Britain and North America. I don't know what the situation is like
elsewhere in Europe.
So what is a young professional archaeometallurgist to do? Well, there are
JAS, Archaeometry and the Journal of Anthropological and Archaeological
Sciences, which are rated by the Inquisition and are read (skimmed?) by
increasing numbers of archaeologists. But I do think that there is a need
for an archaeometallurgical journal that has higher profile that HM does at
present - one that does for archaeometalurgists what Geoarchaeology does for
geoarchaeologists. (But Geoarchaeology has a corporate titan (Springer)
behind it). Another possibility would be to revive Archaeomaterials, which
was a very good journal that died soon after its sponsor (William Rostoker)
did. My colleague Pam Vandiver told me a couple of years ago that she was
having serious discussions with the Materials Research Society about their
publishing Archaeomaterials as an online-only journal. I'll ask her what the
current status of this discussion is.
________________________________________
From: Arch-Metals Group [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Tim Young
[[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 5:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Archaeometallurgy Journals
On 20 Jun 2012 at 13:19, Ian Freestone wrote:
> Dear All
>
> I think that there is an outstanding issue which David Killick
> mentioned and which needs to be discussed within the HMS.
.... and of course it is being!
The society actually has various routes for publications - and I think we
will see more being made of them in the future, perhaps with more
differentiation between them.
Much is going on behind the scenes at the moment....
The game is afoot....
Tim
=
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