Internet Archaeology Archive: Fourth annual report 1998-99

1. Activities and Progress

i. Major objectives

During its first year of continuation funding the project focussed on the transition from an eLib project to a self-funding service. With this in mind we have focussed on:

• consolidating our position as the leading electronic journal for archaeology
• assessing user attitudes towards charging
• investigating mechanisms for authentication and revenue collection
• promoting electronic publication with major archaeological funding agencies
• developing our business plan

ii. Main activities

Our main activities during our fourth year focussed in the following areas:

• producing Issues 5, 6 & 7;
• developing a new modern look for the journal;
• developing themed issues, including publication of our first themed issue on the issues surrounding hypertext publication of archaeology, in Issue 6;
• promoting intarch-interest as an active discussion list;
• commissioning an independent evaluation;
• soliciting high quality contributions for subsequent issues;
• promoting the journal at national and international conferences;
• establishing the reputation of the journal with national funding bodies, including English Heritage, Historic Scotland and the AHRB;
• running and contributing to professional workshops on electronic publication;
• undertaking a metadata index to the first six issues of the journal using the Dublin Core standard and depositing the metadata records with the Archaeology Data Service;
• investigating mechanisms for raising revenue to support the journal into the future including authentication, subventions, licensing and institutional and individual subscriptions.

iii. Project outputs

In line with these activities, our main outputs have been:

• publication of Issues 5 & 6 (see Appendix I for contents list), with Issue 7 currently in preparation;
• an evaluation report from Infologistix (see Appendix VII);
• workshops on electronic publication and conference presentations (Appendix III).

iv. Particular successes

• The number of registered readers continues to grow at an impressive rate. By the end of July 1999 the number exceeded 17,440, a second annual increase of more than 100%. Although our evaluation report indicates that many of these are casual browsers rather than regular readers, it still identified 2-3,000 readers who come back to the journal several times. In the year from 1 April 1998 to 31 March 1999 the journal's web pages received over 459,000 successful requests for pages, an increase of some 23 0% over the previous year (see Appendix VI). Monthly hit figures are now running at an average of 35,000 per month.
• The journal has continued to attracted contributions carrying external funding, including a report on the important excavations at the Anglo-Saxon site at West Heslerton, supported by English Heritage.
• We have also been encouraged by the continued increase in the number of high quality scholarly contributions which are being offered for publication with the journal. We are developing the concept of themed issues and we believe it is an indication of the increasing acceptance of electronic publication in archaeology that many leading scholars are now accepting our invitations to publish in the journal.
• The journal has continued to gain external recognition, most recently being awarded a Special Mention in the prestigious Charlesworth Award for electronic journals (1998).

2. Learning from the process of implementation

i. Staffing and skills range:

The project was fortunate to gain Judith Winters as its new Assistant Editor. Judith was a founder editor of the Sheffield postgraduate Internet journal of archaeology, Assemblage. She has brought fresh perspectives and great enthusiasm and dynamism t o the Internet Archaeology office. At the end of June 1999 the founding Managing Editor, Dr Alan Vince, resigned from the journal to concentrate on his freelance consultancy business. Alan made a tremendous contribution to the establishment of Internet Archaeology as a stable and successful product with an international reputation. Judith has subsequently been promoted to Editor. We recognise that the project depends upon our ability to maintain a number of part-time staff with a range of skills (e.g. Editor, Assistant Editor, Administrator) and a range of consultants with skills in technical development areas (e.g. databases, preparation of cgi scripts).

ii. Income generation and future funding:

We have experienced difficulties in identifying a suitable partner to assist with user authentication and revenue collection. Initial discussions with a number of possible partners, including Ingenta and the Charlesworth Group, have failed to develop because of the inability of the partner to supply an appropriate system. Any authentication system has to recognise that a significant proportion of our readership in non UK-HE (see Appendix VIII). ATHENS, as currently implemented, is inadequate for our n eeds, but at the same time any system we - or our partners - develop has to be ATHENS compatible. We continue to take negotiations forwards with NESLI and SWETS but are not optimistic that there is yet a product which is adequate for our needs.

iii. Project management:

This year the project team implemented a number of changes in the way the journal is run. The Executive Committee, which now meets every month, is effective in managing the journal, with business between meetings largely being conducted by email. Th e newly-expanded Steering Committee meets bi-annually in April/May and October/November and maintains a strategic overview and responsibility for policy development.

iv. Sustainability:

There are indications that there has been significant culture change within the archaeological community over the last year. A number of other electronic journals for archaeology have been launched. Some have sought to fill more specialised niches, al though some overseas products appear to be trying to emulate our success. Users seem less concerned about the longevity of electronic publication, partly since the journal is now in its fourth year, but also as an effect of the work of the Archaeology Dat a Service. On the other hand, some funding agencies are concerned about the increased costs of electronic publication. Although electronic articles are generally cheaper than their direct print equivalents, most authors and readers have higher expectation s of electronic publication and therefore have come to expect multimedia features and searchable databases. Consequently, funding agencies are also considering more direct equivalents to print reports, such as PDF versions.

v. Influences of eLib and other programmes:

Although several university librarians and a number of those in JISC have expressed interest in our search for solutions and have provided useful support, it is our experience that the eLib programme itself has offered little in terms of shared experi ences or central support from which we might have benefited.

vi. Changes to our plan:

Given the difficulties in identifying a means of collecting subscriptions our Steering Committee has proposed that for our first year of charging we should implement a limited pilot, embracing institutional subscribers only. We are still exploring how this can be achieved.

3. Evaluation results

i. Forms of evaluation

We continue to evaluate the use and impact of Internet Archaeology. This information helps us to plan better both the articles we publish, how we present them and the technologies which we use. We have used a range of evaluation strategies to collect this information, including:

1. Analysis of access and error log data
2. Informal feedback
3. Feedback via the Journals mailing list, intarch-interest
4. Feedback to and from the Steering Committee
5. An independent evaluation report commissioned from Infologistix Ltd

ii. Results

The Infogistix Report attached as Appendix VII provides an assessment of the full range of user evaluation, of both authors and readers.

4. Future development

i. Main objectives during the coming year

• Publication of Issues 7 & 8. Our objective for the next reporting period will be the publication of Issues 7 & 8 of the journal.
• Authentication and licensing. To establish and implement a means of collecting revenue from readers.
• Further development of Subvention Funding. To attract articles of high scholarly content which bring publication subvention funding from the research sponsoring agencies.
• Further evaluation. To build on our evaluation report from Infologistix to develop a more detailed understanding of the requirements of authors and users.

ii. Planned changes in overall direction

We do not anticipate any major changes in editorial direction. We are putting continued emphasis on increasing our readership, revenue generation, and increasing the number of quality contributions being offered to the journal.

iii. Development beyond project time frame

The journal has core funding for a further two years. We hope to:

• maintain production levels at two issues per year;
• develop our readership to 20,000 registered users of whom 75% visit the journal more than once every two months;
• increase the number of overseas contributions we can attract to the journal;
• establish a means of collecting revenue from readers which will cover two-thirds of our costs by September 2001; and,
• attract articles of high scholarly content which bring publication funding from the research sponsoring agencies which will cover one-third or our costs by September 2001.

The core funding is declining and our predictions for revenue have been reduced to take account of the delays in introducing a charging mechanism. Nonetheless, we have also reduced our costs (principally through a reduction in staffing levels) and so w ill remain viable until at least September 2001.We believe we are on target to turn the journal into a self-funding product. The University of York has indicated that if we can produce a viable business plan and demonstrate realistic income streams it wil l underwrite staff salaries beyond the project end date.

6 August 1999

List of appendices

1. Table of contents of fifth and sixth issues, 1998-1999
2. Forthcoming contributions
3. List of formal presentations undertaken
4. Financial report (to 30 July 1999) and projections
5. Steering Committee minutes
6. Web server statistics for Internet Archaeology (1 April 1998 31 March 1999)
7. Evaluation Report, by Infologistix Ltd
8. Future Income Streams; briefing paper by J D Richards

Appendix I

Table of contents of fifth and sixth issues, 1998-1999

Appendix II

Forthcoming contributions

Appendix III

List of formal presentations undertaken 1998

September

• 23rd-27th: Sweden - Julian Richards represented the journal at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the European Archaeological Association, in Goteborg, Sweden. He spoke on issues of Digital Preservation & Electronic Preservation as well as contributing to t he EAA Round Table on 'Archaeology and the Internet'.

November

• 26th: London - Judith Winters talked briefly about the journal at the Fifth ALPSP (Association of Learned and professional Society Publishers) 'Publishing and the Internet' Seminar, when the journal received a Special Mention in the Charlesworth Group A ward for Electronic Journals for issue 5.

December

• 7th-8th: UK - Judith Winters, Val Kinsler and Alan Vince ran a course on 'Publishing Archaeology on the Web: an introduction' at the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education

January 1999

• 28th-31st: UCLA, Los Angeles - Mike Heyworth and Julian Richards represented the journal and spoke at a workshop on electronic publication in archaeology.

April

• 14th-18th: Julian Richards spoke at the Annual Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference, Dublin.
• 19th-20th: UK - Judith Winters spoke on 'The Electronic Journal: publishing archaeology on the web' as part of the course 'An Introduction to Archaeological Publishing' at the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education.

May

• York - Judith Winters spoke about and demonstrated the journal to the IFA Workshop on 'Writing for Archaeologists' at the King's Manor, University of York.

June

• 17th: Edinburgh - Judith Winters spoke about Internet Archaeology at the meeting at Longmore House (Historic Scotland) on 'Publication and Archiving'. Alan Vince also demonstrated the Wickham-Jones and Dalland article in issue 5 to the audien ce.

Appendix IV

Financial report (to 30 June 1999) and projections

Appendix V

Steering Committee minutes

The Project's Steering Committee met on two occasions:

• 4 November 1998
• 29 April 1999

The newly enlarged Steering Committee incorporates the functions of the former Editorial Board and Technical Panel. It now meets on a bi-annual basis.

Appendix VI

Web server statistics for Internet Archaeology

1 April 1998 31 March 1999

Appendix VII

Evaluation Report, by Infologistix Ltd

Appendix VIII

Future Income Streams; briefing paper by J D Richards

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