Dear All,

A number of journal editors and learned societies in the UK which 
publish journals now feel that they have so little confidence in the 
ERIH journal 'ranking' exercise that they are requesting that the 
journals they edit or publish be removed from the list.

The Council of the Philological Society decided on this step at a 
meeting last Friday in respect of its "Transactions", and I have 
appended below a letter from Professor Patrick Sims-Williams of 
Aberystwyth outlining the reasons why he is withdrawing the journal he 
edits from the ERIH list.

Yours

Martihn

-- 
Professor Martin Durrell
German Studies, SLLC
University of Manchester
MANCHESTER, M13 9PL

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Appended open letter from Professor Sims-Williams:


Thank you for informing me that 'Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies' has
been rated A by the Literature panel of the European Reference Index
for the Humanities. Nevertheless, as Editor and Publisher of the
journal, I write to say that I do not wish CMCS to be included in
ERIH. Nor am I willing to fill in your questionnaire which asks for
confidential details of commercial sensitivity. I will publish an
Editorial to this effect in the journal.

Looking through the lists in the fields I am familiar with, I see many
absurdities. For example, the CNRS journal 'Etudes celtique' (sic! in
your list, recte 'celtiques'), has A 'importance' in the Literature
list but no 'importance' at all in the Linguistics list, despite
having published many central papers in Celtic philology, by Michel
Lejeune and others. The categorizations throughout the lists are so
incompetent that it is difficult to see the justification for
continuing with this expensive project (which has cost our Arts and
Humanities Research Council 51,571 pounds in 2006-9, and other similar
bodies in Europe over 300,000 euros in 2007-9).

Even if the rankings in 'importance' had credibility, it would remain
true that ERIH is doing a grave disservice to European journals. Far
from promoting European journals abroad (as e.g. an abstracting
service might do), it aims to tell the world that over 80 percent of
European journals are of limited 'importance'. It is also telling the
world – to the shame of a so-called 'European' Scientific Foundation –
that articles written in languages such as Italian are of  limited
'importance'.

The ERIH website contains  assurances that ERIH will do no harm, but
it contains no credible indication that it will be of any use to
anyone. The funding bodies in the UK have already come to the
conclusion that it is useless for bibliometric purposes.

If the ERIH rankings were to attain any credibility, that would make
it hard for non-A journals to find voluntary editors, contributors,
and subscribers; and in that situation  it would be almost impossible
for them to improve their ratings. So one must hope that ERIH fails
and that the ESF – in the interests of its own fragile credibility in
the humanities community – ceases to fund it.

Please delete CMCS from all your lists.

Patrick Sims-Williams, FBA

Editor and Publisher of Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies

Professor of Celtic Studies

Aberystwyth University