Tag Archives: Journals

Conferences, Journals: h-index, Impact

Cultural heritage journals, especially digital heritage journals (and a few related conferences) don’t fare well at SJR-Journal Search. Compare their H-index and Quartiles to games journals and conferences. In the more VR side of things, Presence still does quite well but Virtual Reality journal is not doing as well as I expected.*

*CAVEAT: In many cases the latest figures seem to be from 2017 or 2018.

are there open access virtual heritage/digital archaeology journals?

Not so many virtual heritage open access journals (help me here!) but there are various open access archaeology journals:

  • The open access archaeology journal I first knew of (around 2004 I think I first heard of it?) http://intarch.ac.uk/ does have Author Processing Charges (APC) and I don’t know the cost of APC (I assume it varies based on page count) but it does also include 3D media asset. Now “All our content is Open Access”.
  • Now there is also Open Archaeology which only issues once per year, and accepts many graphic formats (but not 3D?) but what interested me was this request:It is important that authors include a cover letter with their manuscript. Please explain why you consider your manuscript as suitable for publication in the Journal, why will your paper inspire the other members of your field, and how will it drive research forward. However, there is a pricing paragraph on the right. Most confusing, is it open access and authors pay? In passing, there is an interesting issue entitled Topical Issue on Challenging Digital Archaeology.
  • There is also a wider ranging series of open access journals in ancient studies. I note also the open access and free articles in the JOURNAL OF ANCIENT HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY.
  • Frontiers in Digital Humanities is not archaeology-specific but does have a digital archaeology section so deserves a mention.As it includes experimental work I am not sure how it is rated as a quality journal output by educational institutes (Indexed in: Google Scholar, CrossRef) but in Australia very few open access journals in any field (especially Digital Humanities!) seem to receive the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) rating anyway! Frontiers have a tiered reader-decided impact-led publication system which I find rather interesting if puzzling.
  • There is also Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry Journal, which is a little more wide ranging, I believe, than the title suggests (although there is obviously an emphasis on the Mediterranean region) . It has been free open access PDF articles since 2014, and is issued three times a year.
  • American Journal of Archaeology is open access but only for book reviews, review articles, editorials etc. Eprint articles can be stored in an institutional repository.
  • There is also the Open Access Journal: Virtual Archaeology Review.
  • Doug’s archaeology blog lists archaeology journals and open access journals.
  • Please also consider the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology – looks interesting! “Journal of Contemporary Archaeology is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to explore archaeology’s specific contribution to understanding the present and recent past.” It features both open access and subscription access.
  • For more general publishing outlets in archaeology please consider these resources http://researchguides.uoregon.edu/anthropology/openaccess
  • Finally, I’d like to mention The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press including Digital Archaeology such as open access issue/proceedings (?) Archaeology 2.0. Open Access in general? I hope so!

Digital Heritage/Virtual Heritage Open Access Journals? A work-on! I wonder if there is enough of a market to push for a virtual heritage open access journal or if it is more realistic to dock such an idea under the arm of a more general archaeology or heritage open access journal.

For more game-related articles there is the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (but I don’t know if they still have APC); Game Studies and Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture, and so on.

update on Journals : SCR Journal Ranking for Heritage and Digital Heritage

I don’t know what you make of these results and your view of SJR rankings (which my university apparently use and consider), but some of these journal rankings surprise me! I am especially surprised at the current standings of Presence, Virtual Reality, and Digital Creativity.

Cultural Digital Heritage / Virtual Heritage

The current frontrunner in specialist digital cultural heritage appears to be Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage

In multimedia it appears to be User modelling and user-adapted interaction

In HCI the International Journal of Human Computer Studies is doing well but there are also several well ranked alternatives

Alternatives

Heritage alternatives

Philosophical

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 0.25

Gaming and VR

Debates on Open Access Publishing

Well this is food for thought and fuel for fires http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/jan/17/open-access-publishing-science-paywall-immoral

Open Access Publishing does seem to be spreading
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2012/oct/22/inexorable-rise-open-access-scientific-publishing

Major players
The Open Library of the Humanities (a new project)
http://www.openlibhums.org/

Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org

Directory of Open Access Books
http://www.doabooks.org

SAGE OPEN
http://sgo.sagepub.com

A blog on Open Science
http://openingscience.org/
NB it seems to be linked to the PLOS blogs, which by the way also blog on Culture and seems to be improving its data access

DARIAH.eu´s current Open Access Partners
There is a little intro at http://hypotheses.org/about/hypotheses-org-en or at DARIAH.eu

But there are dangers
Predatory Open Access Journals
http://metadata.posterous.com/tag/predatoryopenaccessjournals

The best game and virtual environment journals?

How do you measure the reach, quality and effectiveness of journals in the areas of game studies and virtual environments? Many of them do not clearly feature impact factors, but by using commercial software one may be able to get a better idea of how well they help the h-index of submitted papers. I won’t get into the debate here on open access journals but as some of the below journals are open access, and some are extremely expensive, this should also be a consideration, especially if one is writing also for a non-academic audience (such as game designers).

I have been reading a few articles on how book chapters do not get cited (Anderson, 2012; Bishop, 2012) and whether academics should write book reviews (Toor, 2012). In Virtual Heritage research many conferences are not fully published and indexed, while the book chapters are seldom cited.  There are some good articles out there on how to get published (Armstrong, undated), but why bother if one is not cited? Lack of citations probably also means that one is not read by a serious professional audience.

And I note in (my) area, some of the more famous journals appear to be

NB related VR/VE/ graphics journals impact factors here.

*I am on the editorial boards of the above journals.

UPDATE: you can compare the above journals at SCIMAGOJR website.