Internet Archaeology Archive: Fifth annual report 1999-2000

1. Activities and Progress

i. Major objectives

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

continued to consolidate our position as the leading electronic journal for archaeology
put in place a mechanism for authentication and revenue collection
continued to promote electronic publication with major archaeological funding agencies
investigated further sources of revenue, such as advertising
continued to develop our business plan

ii. Main activities

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

producing Issues 6, 7 & 8;
putting in place a mechanism for institutional subscriptions to raise revenue to support the journal into the future
developing further themed issues for future publication;
promoting intarch-interest as an active discussion list;
commissioning a series of evaluations;
soliciting high quality contributions for subsequent issues;
establishing a series of academic Advisory Editors from around the world;
revising our editorial policy and producing guidelines for authors;
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;
continuing the metadata index to issues of the journal using the Dublin Core standard and depositing the metadata records with the Archaeology Data Service.

iii. Project outputs

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

publication of Issues 7 & 8 (see Appendix I for contents list), with Issue 9 currently in preparation;
revised editorial policy & guidelines for authors (Appendix VII);
subscription collection system with associated documentation (Appendix IX);
three evaluation reports (see Appendix VIII);
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 August 2000 the number exceeded 24,364, up over 7,000 during the year. Although our evaluation reports indicate that many of these are casual browsers rather than regular readers, we are still confident that several thousand readers come back to the journal several times each year. In the year from 1 April 1999 to 31 March 2000 the journal's web pages received over 719,549 successful requests for pages, an increase of some 56% over the previous year (see Appendix VI). Monthly hit figures are now running at an average of 40,000 per month.
The journal has continued to attracted contributions carrying external funding, including further reports on the important excavations at the Anglo-Saxon site at West Heslerton, supported by English Heritage.
We continue to be encouraged by the increase in the number of high quality scholarly contributions which are being offered for publication with the journal (see Appendix II). We have developed 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, featuring in a substantial colour article in The Sunday Times on the use of computers in archaeology during the course of the year, and a citation in Scientific American.
Following the introduction of institutional subscriptions for UK institutions in the *.ac.uk domain in May 2000 we have gained 14 university subscribers and one national institution (The British Museum) - at 29 August 2000. We anticipate some 20 institutional subscribers by the end of the year which is very encouraging given that there are only 27 archaeology departments in UK higher education.

2. Learning from the process of implementation

i. Staffing and skills range:

Judith Winters has continued to serve as the journal's Editor (working four days a week). We also employ a part-time Administrator and bring in a freelance Copy Editor as needed. 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, Administrator, Copy Editor) and a range of consultants with skills in technical development areas (e.g. databases, preparation of cgi scripts).

ii. Income generation and future funding:

The majority of our income is likely to come from subscriptions and we have proceeded on the basis that:

for the year 2000 institutional subscriptions only would be collected;
the annual charge would be in the order of 100 plus VAT ($180);
authentication would be ATHENS compatible;
subscribers would include overseas and non-HE institutions;
that a subscription service is more appropriate than a licensing model;
in subsequent years charging might be extended to individual readers, requiring any system adopted to be compatible with individual charging in the future

After discussion with a number of partners (see 'Charging options' paper in Appendix X) we have contracted SWETS to provide the necessary authentication via NESLI, using ATHENS for higher education institutions. IP authentication for other institutions is undertaken in house by the journal. The previous journal HTTP authentication has been maintained for individual access. Fulfilment is being undertaken by Turpin Distribution Services Ltd (now part owned by Swets).

Following discussion of the possibilities of revenue generation from sponsorship (see Appendix X) we are attempting to attract a small number of directly relevant 'banners' for the journal's home page and issue contents pages from archaeological book publishers and providers of archaeology postgraduate courses, although we do not expect this to generate large sums.

We also continue to pursue publication subventions and are in discussion with a number of archaeological projects about potential future publication in the journal using project funds to help finance the publication.

We remain confident that the journal will become self-supporting, although we are not yet 100% sure that sufficient funding will be available in the year after September 2001 (see Appendix IV).

iii. Project management:

The project is largely run through an Executive Committee, which now meets every month, with business between meetings largely being conducted by email. The Steering Committee meets bi-annually and maintains a strategic overview and responsibility for policy development (see Appendix V).

iv. Sustainability:

We are confident that the journal is sustainable in the long term. A number of national archaeological agencies are now actively promoting electronic publication and a significant culture change is under way which has already led to an increase in the number of high profile archaeological projects approaching the journal at an early stage to discuss potential publication.

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 experiences or central support from which we might have benefited. We have, however, benefited from direct contacts with a sister ejournal, Sociological Research Online, which has developed a comparable authentication and charging mechanism.

vi. Changes to our plan:

Our plans for the collection of subscriptions have slowly evolved during the year in discussion with a number of potential partners. We now have a mechanism in place for the *.ac.uk domain and plan its expansion to cover institutions in other parts of the world during the next year.

3. Evaluation results

i. Forms of evaluation

Three evaluation reports were commissioned during the year:

an Infologistix Ltd investigation of the previous year's access statistics, detailing trends, international usage, etc
a poll, and subsequent contacting, of librarians of non-subscribing academic institutions - conducted by a University of York MSc student
a review of on-line indexes and ejournals, encouraging links to the journal where none exist and the updating of out-of-date links - also conducted by an MSc student

ii. Results

The evaluation reports are attached as Appendix VIII.

4. Future development

i. Main objectives during the coming year

Publication of Issues 9 & 10. Our objective for the next reporting period will be the publication of Issues 9 & 10 of the journal. Issue 9 will be a further themed issue on the petrology of ceramics from the Near East utilising QTVR thin section slides.
Authentication and licensing. To continue the implementation of our established system for institutional subscription collection, expanding to cover North America and Australasia
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 reports from Infologistix to develop a more detailed understanding of the requirements of authors and users.
Expanding content to cover World archaeology. To attract further overseas contributions.

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 one further year. We hope to:

maintain production levels at two issues per year;
develop our readership to 30,000 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;
generate sufficient revenue from institutional subscriptions to 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 will 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 will underwrite staff salaries beyond the project end date.

Dr Michael Heyworth	Dr Julian Richards
Council for British Archaeology	Department of Archaeology
Bowes Morrell House	University of York
111 Walmgate	The King's Manor
York YO1 9WA	York YO1 2EP
tel 01904 671417	tel 01904 433930
fax 01904 671384	fax 01904 433939
email mikeheyworth@britarch.ac.uk	email jdr1@york.ac.uk

29 August 2000

List of appendices

Table of contents of seventh and eighth issues, 1999-2000
Forthcoming contributions
List of formal presentations undertaken 1999 & 2000
Financial report (to 30 April 2000) and projections
Steering Committee minutes
Web server statistics for Internet Archaeology (1 April 1999 31 March 2000)
Editorial policy & Guidelines for authors
Evaluation Reports: World Wide Web links; Institutional subscriptions (summary); Readership trends and patterns
Subscriptions announcements, Subscription order form & Subscription FAQs
Discussion document relating to revenue generation through advertising & Charging options paper

Appendix I

Table of contents of seventh and eighth issues, 1999-2000

Appendix II

Forthcoming contributions

Appendix III

List of formal presentations undertaken 1999 & 2000

September

16th - Bournemouth, EAA, `Publishing Archaeology in the New Millennium'. Judith Winters gave a paper in this session on `Internet Archaeology: where do we go from here?'.

December

13-14th - 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 Eduction.

2000

February

23rd - `Internet Archaeology: publishing beyond print' by Judith Winters. A talk on the opportunities and enjoyment of archaeology on the web, to the Friends of Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, Neuadd Rhos, University of Bangor, Wales.

April

6th Julian Richards presented a paper on behalf of the journal at the SAA conference in Philadelphia. Internet Archaeology: Where Next? by Julian D. Richards, Michael P Heyworth and Judith Winters.
6th: - Judith Winters made a presentation titled 'Internet Archaeology: publication beyond print' in the From Data to Information session at the IFA annual conference in Brighton.

Appendix IV

Financial report (to 30 April 2000) and projections

Appendix V

Steering Committee minutes

The Project's Steering Committee met on two occasions:

1 December 1999
5 June 2000

The 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 1999 - 31 March 2000

Appendix VII

Editorial policy
Guidelines for authors

Appendix VIIIE

Evaluation Reports:

World Wide Web links
Institutional subscriptions (summary)
Readership trends and patterns

Appendix IX

Subscription announcements
Subscription order form
Subscription FAQs

Appendix X

Discussion document relating to revenue generation through advertising
Charging options paper