I’ve got a piece of scholarship that I was supposed to publicly present next Monday (3/16 – cancelled because of Covid-19) pretty much ready to go out to peer-review. Now I need a target journal for submission.
What I want:
Fast turnaround time. Context: It’s now 4.5 months since I gave the final final book manuscript and images to CUP for type setting [insert eye roll and hair pulling here]. My article in the American Journal of Numismatics 2018, was submitted in 2016 and I was told would be in the 2017 journal didn’t appear until 2018. Chapters in edited volumes I’ve submitted to in the past have taken up to seven years to appear.
Open Access. This is both an ethical point, but also about image costs, both in terms of headaches of time to get the permissions and also the actual costs, particularly with BM images. I also want my stuff to be read and not behind a paywall. Mostly I just ignore re-posting restrictions. I believe in begging forgiveness rather than asking permission when it comes to sharing my own work.
Respectability and Name Recognition. This is the flip side of above. CUP has a terrible turn around time for books right now because of how popular and well-respected they are. There own success on the reputation front is slowing production down to the speed of molasses. Also respectability and name recognition come with long histories of publications. Most “TOP” journals are not open access and have long delays in their turn around times because of their popularity.
So where are the compromises and middle grounds?
I’ve had a good experience publishing with Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, but equally feel its time to branch out. I want to try something new and see what other processes are like before publishing with them again. I also have a feeling and this is hopefully wrong that if I go back too many times to one publication that some how looks bad for me as an individual as if the relationship might be about favoritism not scholarship. This may be a personal paranoia but open access and new journals are a new frontier.
Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau – has a two year embargo open access, but authors can request PDF immediately, but because they charge the physical journal that rules out some creative commons images licenses, especially 3-D objects in the BM. There are also just once a year, not quarterly.
Arctos – has a one year embargo which poses same issues and again not quarterly.
What I really want is something as reputable and regular and fast as Histos, but with a more material culture focus.
I like the look of eTopoi BUT they only put out a couple articles a year. This doesn’t look like a journal that will most certainly survive, yet… Also they don’t seem to have history of numismatic contributions.
Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Antiquité has a long well established reputation in the field generally and says they publish in English BUT such appearances are very rare…
The New England Classics Journal has a nice long history and well established reputation and completely open access, but no Numismatic tradition and primary contributors tend towards early career scholars, so doesn’t feel a great fit.
I’m back to the idea that maybe I should compromise on my Open Access views…
Liv Mariah Yarrow 