A new reason to boycott Elsevier

There are lots of good moral reasons to boycott Elsevier journals, from unconscionable open access fees to high subscription charges. I can add another, less moral than selfish, but a new reason nonetheless.

I have grown increasingly frustrated with the monumentally complex Elsevier manuscript management system that the company has used to manipulate authors and reviews. I have had to create multiple profiles, and then went through hell to consolidate them into one system. I finally had the courage to complain to a journal editor about it, and he was very rude about it, so much so that I fear that I have foreclosed my opportunity to contribute to the journal, which is particularly unfortunate because it is one of the most highly ranked journals in the field. Even more unfortunate, two of the four top journals in my part of archaeology are published by Elsevier. Take a look at the Archaeology Journal Ranks page on this blog and click through to see who publishes what.

So as not to burn all of my bridges, I agreed to review an article for another Elsevier journal and it turns out they have instituted yet another new document management system and they old accounts didn't roll over to it. So, I had to start the registration process again, and create a new account. I really couldn't believe it. I mean, really, what could the executives at Elsevier possibly be thinking? It's truly astonishing the horrendous disregard that they seem to have for all their clients, the authors, editors and reviewers without whom Elsevier cannot exist.

If one could actually communicate with any of the executives of Elsevier, I suspect they would give the typical corporate answer, that they changed the software for our convenience, as when your bank tells you that they moved all the ATM machines to Malaysia "to serve you better."

So, Elsevier has a disproportionate influence on archaeological publishing. They publish the Journal of Archaeological Science and the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (via Academic Press). We probably can't do anything about the latter, but we might be able to change the publisher of the Journal of Archaeological Science. It is published by the Society for Archaeological Science, and so we could try to get together and pressure them to change their publisher when their current contract ends. I'd rejoin the Society just for that. How about you?

Student Archaeology Journals

Two new student archaeology journals seem to have had successful launches.

Inter-Section: Innovative Approaches by Junior Archaeological Researchers has its first issue out. It is based at the University of Leiden, which, unusually for Europe, has an active program of New World research. The journal's home page is here. The journal has an attractive interface and was professionally designed. I didn't try to download articles or the whole number, so I don't know if it's possible, but it seemed easy to read online.

The International Journal of Student Research in Archaeology also looks very professional and attractive. It's first issue can downloaded whole from Dropbox, and individual contributions are apparently available on Academia.edu. It does not appear to be connected to a single university,and the students running it are quite an international group, though perhaps predominantly European. Love their logo, the crossed pen and trowel. The pen is mightier than the trowel, of course.

It's always great to see young folks engaged, ambitious, and making things happen.

The hard part will come with the transitions, as students leave and are replaced by new generations. Students are by their nature transient (or should be, although we all know that one permanent graduate student), and therefore it is hard to create continuity within the flux. All professors probably see how student organizations die and resurrect every few years as classes graduate. It is often difficult for the faculty to recruit new student leaders for organizations. I'm not sure what would happen with organizations that are not based in a single institution. I'm not saying continuity is impossible for students, but they will need to work at it actively, worry about it, develop a plan, have a policy. 

Where's my cane? I need to shake it someone.

Good luck to both journals!

Wiley's Manuscript submission system

Am I the only one who hates the manuscript management systems used by the big publishers? I asked this once before, in a rant about the Elsevier system, but I received no response. Now I've had a similarly unpleasant experience with what I think is Wiley's system, although in this case I was simply trying to submit a peer-review of an article.

First I found through trial and error that I had to change not one but two of my browser settings just to get the site to work. Then I had to change my password because they revamped the website and my old password, which was difficult to find, wouldn't work. Then they tried to force me to create a profile. Then I closed my browser and gave up. That's just far too much crap to go through for the privilege of reviewing an article. I thought nothing could be worse than Elsevier's website, but  I may have been wrong.

This probably all sounds petulant and querulous, but how much hassle should I put up with for the privilege of doing free work for a huge multinational corporation?

Peer review is a form of unpaid community service upon which these journals rely, so I am frankly astonished that the highly paid executives running these companies would make it harder for scholars to perform it.

It's crazy enough that I donate my time so that these corporations can get richer. I'm not inclined to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. I'm happy to contribute to the advancement of science if the journal is published by a scientific society, but doing it for commercial publishers is just getting silly.

More on Archaeology Journals, Maney, and SNIPs

Maney is a publishing house that has been been acquiring quite a few archaeological journals. For example, they now publish the Journal of Field Archaeology, Lithic Technology, and quite a few others. I noticed today that some of the journals report something called their "Scopus SNIP." Never having heard of it, I looked it up. Evidently, SNIP stands, not for single nucleotide polymorphism, but for "source normalized impact per paper." Some of the Maney journals do not list this metric, but I don't know why. The metric is, I assume, produced from Scopus data, and the journals that don't have it (e.g., Ethnoarchaeology) are indexed in Scopus, so I'm not sure what the issue us. The same journals are also absent from the Scimago journal rankings (see previous post), which are also based on Scopus data. Perhaps they haven't been indexed in Scopus long enough to produce the metric, but I really don't know. I do know that the number and complexity of journal metrics is quickly becoming bewildering.

One of the new Maney journals is named STAR: Science and Technology of Archaeological Research, which is published in association with the Society for Archaeological Science (SAS). The SAS, then, sponsors not only the prestigious Journal of Archaeological Science, but also the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, a new periodical published by Elsevier that seems to be on its second issue. STAR, however, is open-access, so that may distinguish it from the two Elsevier journals sponsored by the SAS.

Note that the first link in this post should take you to a page showing 43 of the Maney archaeology journals. The content at that link is open and free until April 26th. Take a look. I flipped through Ethnoarchaeology and Lithic Technology and found a bunch of interesting articles I had not seen before.


 

More on Archaeology Journal Impact Factors

I have created a stable page on this blog in which I provide links to the Scimago rankings and impact data for about 80 of the highest ranked archaeology journals. I hope this may be a useful resource for others who are curious about publishing in our field or, like me, are trying to choose a journal.

I regret to say that I left our old darling the Numismatic Chronicle off the list. Like you, when I hear someone mention The Chronicle, I immediately think of numismatics, not the Chronicle of Higher Education.But as its primary focus is not archaeology, I could not justify including it on the list.

Scimago lists over 200 archaeology journals, and I'm sure many others exist but are too obscure to garner bibliometric attention. Many of the 200-odd journals appear to have small impacts, but archaeologists do generate a lot of significant data that need to find a home. With all these journals, you would think it easy to get published, but a journal's impact and prestige are not correlated--according to my anecdotal experience--with the fairness or finickiness of peer-reviewers or editors.

I would love for you to let me know if the links on the new page are helpful to you.

Thanks!

Archaeology journal impact factors

I'm trying to decide where to submit an article, and therefore I was checking some journal impact factors on the Scimago site. I discovered they have a nice little widget that will produce a graph of a journal's impact information on your website. Here are some examples in no particular order:

1. Journal of Archaeological Science




2. Journal of Archaeological Research




3. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory




4. Cambridge Archaeological Journal




5. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology



6. World Archaeology




If you click on the graph, the link will take you to the journal's page at the Scimago site, which has lots more information. 

Note that, after many years of dominance, the Journal of Archaeological Science has been surpassed in its SJR rating by the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, albeit by a tiny margin. By the older and better known H-index, the Journal of Archaeological Science still leads by a large margin (64 to 37). These measures are based on data through 2013, which are the latest available because of the inevitable lag in citations to articles.

I'll be curious to see whether these graphs update automatically. I suspect they will because they are links, not embedded images. So, check back frequently! Let me know if you want me to include other journals to this rather random cavalcade.

Another New Open Access Archaeology journal

In sharp contrast to the journal I discussed in the previous post, the new journal Open Archaeology is published by the ancient and venerable house of De Gruyter. It is an annual, but as it appears to be exclusively online (and Open Access), I'm not sure why. Storage is so cheap that one could post a large number of contributions throughout the year and/or divvy them up into multiple issues. I'm not sure I understand the advantage of calling it an annual, creating deadlines, and putting out one issue per year. But then I've never edited a journal.

They appear to have published but one issue so far, for 2014, and it has but two articles in it. They are evidently planning a new issue, probably for the coming year, on "challenging digital archaeology," which is certainly a provocative topic.

I've often wondered whether an open access model would work in archaeology. There is certainly plenty of demand for more publication venues--we don't typically have space to publish everything that we would like--hence the enormous gray literature. But I doubt that open access is a useful solution for archaeologists because we don't have money to pay the page charges. If cultural resources management companies pressed their clients to pay for page charges, that could provide an important outlet for disseminating their plentiful research.

Questions about a new Open Access Archaeology Journal

I recently came across a new archaeology journal that I hadn't heard of.

The Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology is one of a slew of new journals started by the American Research Institute for Policy Development, which, according to the website, was founded in 2011. With the explosive proliferation of journals, some apparently being published in back alleys in remote corners of the world by organizations with obscure motives and few policies, it pays to be careful before submitting manuscripts. I'm not sure how to determine if a journal or its publisher is bona fide, especially if it's too young to have a reputation or an impact factor. The organization has a slick, professional-looking web site, but my suspicions were raised when I couldn't find any concrete information on the website about who actually owns or runs the organization. Who is the CEO or Executive Director? Who is on the Board of Directors? Where is the money coming from? It's address is listed (in one place) as 40 Monticello St., Monticello, NY 12701. I've been in Monticello, and it's a one-horse town in upstate New York. In fact, that would be complimenting it. It was a one-horse town before the Borscht Belt died of indigestion. I doubt there are any international research institutes or consortia there.

At least one blogger has raised questions about this publisher, and authors seem to be having problems with them. The discussion at the latter link indicates that some researchers have had their papers peer-reviewed and accepted without revisions in a week, which is almost impossible and not credible. Another researcher says his article was accepted but was not published by the promised date. The blogger at the first link, Jeffrey Beall, curates a list of sham or predatory publishers, and he concludes "In my opinion, the American Research Institute for Policy Development is a sham, and I strongly recommend against submitting papers to it or having any association with it." It may be relevant that one of the members of the Editorial Board of the archaeology journal has allegedly had an article retracted for plagiarism. Several other members are apparently not anthropologists or archaeologists--they seem to be affiliated with education, English, or sociology faculties.

Have a care. Not all seems right with the publisher.

New Book: The Ancient Maya of Mexico hits the streets and newstands

The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands, edited by Geoffrey Braswell, is now available from the publisher, Equinox, and of course, like everything in the universe, from Amazon.

The volume emerged from symposia in honor of our doctoral dissertation advisor, E. Wyllys Andrews V. Congratulations to Geoff for producing such a handsome and intellectually distinguished volume.

Thanks for everything, Will!

New Book Hot Off the Presses

Walter Witschey and I have published a new Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica in Rowman and Littlefield's historical dictionary series. Yesterday I discovered that it had come out in print when I got a box containing my complimentary copies. Yeah! It's dated 2012, although in fact it must have been physically printed last year. It's a good-looking volume, thanks in part to Walter's skill as a photographer. His photo of the Caracol on the cover came out very nicely. Thanks, Walter, for your collaboration. It was fun!

Here's the URL for the book on the publisher's web site: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810871670, or you can click on the title above.

Here's the link to the book on Amazon.com.