Internet Archaeology recognizes the value of researchers sharing their results in ways that allow others to reproduce their findings and reuse their methods and data in new research. With the increasing volume of data and computational complexity of methods in archaeological research, in many cases it is not possible to communicate many important details of a research project within the limitations of a journal article. This can make it difficult to assess the credibility of research results, and to efficiently reuse and extend them. To address this challenge, Internet Archaeology encourages authors to make the data and methods associated with their journal article publicly available. In recognition of authors' efforts to make their research output more accessible, published articles are eligible to earn one or both of the following badges in recognition of open scientific practices.
Open Data badge
Open Materials badgePeer reviewers will be asked to comment on the the presence of citations to repositories of data and materials in submitted drafts and will recommend to the editor if the manuscript can be awarded badges. The editor's decision will be final. Badge icons will be displayed on the summary page of the article. The badge images used on articles will be those produced by the Center for Open Science which are freely available for anyone to use with attribution of their source.
Qualifying public, open-access repositories are committed to preserving data and research materials and keeping them publicly accessible via the web into perpetuity. The following repositories meet our requirements and are recommended for the archiving of data and materials. Please contact us if you would like to use another repository or recommend that we add it to our list.
Personal websites and most departmental websites do not qualify as repositories and are not acceptable.
There are circumstances in which it is not possible or advisable to share any or all data or methods publicly. For example, there are cases in which sharing research data would be culturally insensitive or place archaeological sites at risk. The editors encourage authors to include a brief explanation in their articles to explain to readers why these materials may be unavailable or only partially available. Badges may still be awarded for partial availability at the editor's discretion.
The authors are responsible for ensuring they have permission from their collaborators to publicly archive research materials. Similarly, authors who wish to publicly archive third-party material in their data and materials, must ensure have the proper authority or permission agreement in order to do so.
Authors are also responsible for attaching a license to their data and other materials. We suggest datasets and other materials are provided with an open licence. See http://creativecommons.org/choose/ for more details. Our default licence is CC-BY 3.0.
Data are important products of the scientific enterprise, and they should be preserved and usable for decades in the future. Internet Archaeology recommends that the deposited data and other materials include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format (eg. plain text formats such as txt instead of doc or docx, and csv instead of xls or xlsx). The deposited data must also be labelled in such a way that a 3rd party can make sense of it (e.g. sensible column headers, descriptions in a 'readme' text file). A 'readme' file is a plain text file that describes the contents of your data, generally listing each file or group of similar files with a description of its contents. Some archives undertake this migration work on your behalf.
We recommend that materials documenting data analysis methods should be usable with open-source software to reduce barriers for future users. Programming code (eg R or Python) should be accompanied by its version history (eg. a git, mercurial or subversion, etc. repository) to enhance transparency and reproducibility.
We are grateful to Ben Marwick who compiled the first draft of these guidelines.
Internet Archaeology is an open access journal based in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Except where otherwise noted, content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY) Unported licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that attribution to the author(s), the title of the work, the Internet Archaeology journal and the relevant URL/DOI are given.
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