[open-archaeology] Immediate open access publications of CAA proceedings?

Wed May 9 12:24:11 UTC 2012

As Publication Officer of CAA, I think this is my call ... While Ben is certainly right where it concerns publications of the past, we have managed to publish the 2011 Proceedings within one year, and you can download the open access volume from here: http://www.aup.nl/do.php?a=show_visitor_repository&m=29. We will do the same for 2012 and 2013. Unfortunately however, we are still dependent on publishers to do the printing, and on local organizers to organize the reviewing and editing. In the past these factors have proved to be the major obstacles to quick publication. The CAA Steering Committee therefore has now taken a much more active role in this, by setting up new standards for publications, designing a conference management system for the years to come, and creating a larger pool of reviewers (for which you are all invited if you are not already in there - just drop me a line). However, this process is not finished yet, and a lot of elements in it still need to be improved.

There are no plans yet to switch to a completely digital publication process. This is because there has never been a majority within the CAA membership to go this way, and the members of CAA actually need to approve of such changes. Having said this, we will make the old proceedings available through open access this year, and we will consider fully digital proceedings after 2013.

Hope this makes things clearer,

Best wishes,

Philip Verhagen

-----Original Message-----
From: open-archaeology-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:open-archaeology-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin Ducke
Sent: woensdag 9 mei 2012 13:58
To: open-archaeology at lists.okfn.org
Subject: [open-archaeology] Immediate open access publications of CAA proceedings?

Dear List,

While the CAA remains the most important forum
for new research and developments in computational
archaeology, the mode of publication has unfortunately
not changed with the times as much as it should have.
Most of the research presented at CAA conferences has
a "scientific half life time" of 6 months or so, but
proceedings take 2-4 years for publication on average.

This means that current research is not available for
proper academic citation and will be outdated by the
time it is. There have been plans to change this for
years now, but no solution has surfaced yet.

I have been frustrated by this countless times
in the past, and I imagine that I am not the
only one who is dissatisfied with the current
situation: Who needs costly, slow, printed
conference proceedings in this day and age?

I believe the way to go is this:

   http://www.stadtarchaeologie.at/?page_id=1678

... if they can do it, why can't CAA?

The question is: what to do in order to speed up
the necessary policy changes? How about addressing
a petition to the permanent CAA organizing committe?

Anyone here in the know what's going on behind the
scenes, at the CAA steering committee, regarding this
topic?

Best,

Ben

-- 
Benjamin Ducke
{*} Geospatial Consultant
{*} GIS Developer

   benducke at fastmail.fm

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