Journal hails open access move

Posted on 6 October 2014

A peer-reviewed journal hosted by the University of York is to become open access making the results of a wealth of archaeology research freely available.

Male burial with grave goods (stone arrowheads and flake, cattle ribs) from Holešov, Czech Republic (Figure 5 from Šmejda, Internet Archaeology, doi:10.11141/ia.36.4)

Internet Archaeology which is based in the University’s Department of Archaeology, was established in 1995 as part of the JISC eLiB programme.

From this month its 130 institutional subscribers from the UK, USA, Australia and Europe will no longer have to pay the £160 a year subscription and the £7 charge for individual articles is also being scrapped.

The switch to open access will mean that the journal, which is published by the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), can increase the number of issues from the current two per annum.

Internet Archaeology editor Judith Winters said: "I am thrilled that Internet Archaeology is fully open access and that it has become one of the first journals to have transitioned from a subscription model. Independent journals can definitely play a role in this brave new world and flexibility has been the key.

“Being a small operation, we have been quick to respond to the rapid changes occurring in the wider scholarly landscape over the last few years. By the start of 2014, over 50 per cent of the articles we had published were open access. Parallel to this, we have also been receiving a rising level of author-funded submissions, so we felt that this was the right time to complete the move and focus efforts fully on developing our open access model."

Mike Heyworth, director of the Council for British Archaeology, added: “We are delighted that Internet Archaeology is now in a position to make a sustainable move to Open Access, which is fully in line with our aim of Archaeology for All. The e-journal continues to lead the way and we are very encouraged with the growing range of content and the widening readership.”

Further information:

For more information about Internet Archaeology, please visit http://intarch.ac.uk
For more information about the Council for British Archaeology, please visit http://new.archaeologyuk.org/
For more information about the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, please visit http://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/