I share David Petts enthusiasm and reasons for internet publication
of excavation reports (well, having published one in Intarch, I would,
wouldn't I!), though I also share his worries. One problem with printed
journals is that, more and more these days, they prefer publishing synopses
of field-work - preferably treated in the context of the current literature
- to publishing hard data, but I am sceptical of any reader's ability to
give an article a fair appraisal without access as well to raw data in some
abundance. Even though I am 58 years old I am not stuck in tramlines of
linear thinking; rather, I agree with David that what I call the "Chinese
Boxes" approach that internet publishing favours is a far better way of
letting the reader decide which parts of the data (or text or context) are
relevant, instead of trying to stick him or her in a tram that can only go
in one direction of intellectual progression, that has been predetermined
by the author(s) (we were about a dozen authors) - perhaps, heaven forbid,
so as to impose a dialectical framework on the reader from the outset!
David Petts' worries are very real. There is also another one he
hasn't brought up that could discourage excavators from publishing lengthy
reports in internet form. Many funding organizations have not caught up with
internet publishing, and evaluate the academic worth of articles in terms
not only of a journal's standing in citation indices, but also in terms of
page-length. Internet journals do not have pages as such, in marked contrast
to your simply sending a copy of a thesis or a manuscript as an e-mail
attachment which will conserve the page form and numbering of the original
document you wrote on your PC. Judith says nothing can be done about this. I
appreciate, of course, that everyone can print out our article in different
ways (or bits of it, as it really was very long) and not everyone has
software or hardware capable of printing out our colour plates (but it was
so nice to have a lot of them, which would have been utterly out of the
question in traditional print journals!!!).
Still and all, and even though our article was sent out in several
files, I just wonder if, as well, there could perhaps be a recommended
pagination for Intarch articles, following that of the MS version of
hardcopy text that authors submit together with diskette or e-mail
attachment files. In other words, if page 21 of a manuscript ends with, say,
"Bell" and page 22 begins with "Beaker" a parenthetical page-break "(PB
)" might be inserted by journal editors to the file they send out to readers
over the web, standing between those two words: "Bell(PB pp. 21-22) Beaker".
The total number of words of the article should also be given, because that
would allow hard-nosed scrutineers of applications for research funds to
work out quickly how far the number of MS pages has exceeded the page-length
that the article would have occupied in print-journals, which usually have
300-400 words per page. Moreover, boxes in the text, tables, illustrations,
and so on, even if they are in different files, would still preserve in
parentheses their relative page numbering in the original hardcopy MS.
Once again, thanks Judith and Co. for doing a wonderful job!
Yours truly,
Michael J. Walker, DPhil.,MA, BM, BCh, FSA
Professor of Physical Anthropology
Murcia University, Spain
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