The LEAP projects

LEAP II: Aims and objectives

The project will (a) use the existing infrastructure of the e-journal Internet Archaeology to provide four sustainable exemplars of multi-layered e-publications and e-archives of broad interest to an international audience, and based upon projects hosted in North American institutions, and (b) develop an online mechanism, linked to the journal, which facilitates and encourages comment and debate.

A series of secondary objectives will:

• Provide a novel and imaginative additional form of dissemination for a number of existing research projects based in North American institutions.
• Raise the profile of electronic publication and digital archiving within the North American scholarly community.
• Further investigate the ways in which e-publications can be interactive, multi-layered and underpinned by supporting data, in a range of formats - databases, GIS, VR, digital audio and video etc.
• Explore questions of linking between distributed archives and publications, potentially linking the papers in Internet Archaeology with North American repositories.
• Build upon the experience and best practice developed as part of the LEAP project.

Project Information

The use of ICT is relatively advanced in archaeology and there is a rich variety of data formats, including text and colour images, and also databases, GIS, VR visualisations, video, and geophysics. Furthermore, data usually exist in such quantities that printing is prohibitively expensive and only a subset can be published. Given that archaeological research often involves the destruction of the primary evidence there is a strong professional ethic to "preserve by record" and to maintain an archive which can be used to test and refine published interpretations. As yet there are few exemplars of linked publication and archives.

Traditional publication of research projects often comprises a series of journal papers, a popular summary, an academic monograph, and sometimes an offline research archive, which is rarely accessible. There are growing numbers of online databases, but these are rarely linked directly to interpretative analyses. In addition, the Arts and Humanities community has no conceptual framework for evaluating online databases, which results in uneven and unsystematic rewards for those that create them. Given that supporting data are invariably in electronic format, e-publication allows the combination of different forms of dissemination and the adoption of an integrated approach.

This project aims to explore some model solutions and offers a timely opportunity to build upon existing expertise gained within Internet Archaeology and to promote these solutions more widely within North America. The underlying issues of the dissemination and preservation of e-publications and e-archives are central to emerging ICT strategy in the Arts and Humanities community and the successful exemplars will help inform that debate.

Selection and financial support

Successful exemplars will be chosen from across the discipline and will be selected by Internet Archaeology staff under the guidance of the journal's Advisory Committee. Priority will be given to projects within the fields of Archaeology, Classics, Ancient and Medieval History and CRM as long as the subject falls within the editorial scope of Internet Archaeology.

Internet Archaeology is offering $6600 to successful applicants, to facilitate publication and archive preparation. We envisage that PIs might use this to buy time out of other duties in order to write/prepare the article and archive, or to employ an assistant to prepare this under their direction. This funding is an opportunity to develop a novel interactive publication of your key findings and an electronic 'front end' to your digital archive.

Payment will be made to successful applicants in two stages, initially after the signing of an author licence with the journal ($3300), and a second, final payment on final submission of all material ($3300).

Editorial and technical support

Each exemplar will be allocated up to two months' worth of dedicated journal editorial support to explore novel strategies for e-publication and to bring the article to publication (including mark-up and managing of the peer review process). By placing this project within Internet Archaeology it is possible to make cost-effective use of existing infrastructure, including hardware, software, human expertise and resources, and procedures. The contents of the journal are peer-reviewed and archived with the Archaeology Data Service. The archive component of the exemplar will be hosted by an appropriate US-based digital repository (e.g. tDAR at Arizona State University), or by the ADS, and funding is also available for the archiving element.

Users will encounter the project outputs by entering at either publication or archive level, and be able to navigate seamlessly within and between them at many levels.

Timing

The successful exemplars will be scheduled to allow each a six-month focus. It will however be necessary to impose a strict timetable to achieve the publication of each exemplar. One exemplar will be published per journal issue over the course of two years.

Exemplar 1 priority will be given to a project that is almost complete. Exemplar 1 should be submitted in full by April 2009 so that it reaches publication in Autumn 2009.

Preliminary Timetable

Intellectual property issues

Each author will be required to sign a standard Internet Archaeology author licence. This ensures that you own and retain copyright of the content of the article, but that the journal claims copyright of the delivery interface. Authors are expected to undertake any additional copyright clearance required themselves. No royalties are payable.

Where the digital archive is to be curated by ADS, each author will be required to sign a standard ADS deposit licence to ensure that they are the copyright owner of the resource, or have the permission of the copyright owners to deposit it. This licence gives the ADS the right to disseminate and preserve the resource, whilst the depositor will retain copyright. If the archive is to be held by another repository the project will take steps to ensure that equivalent protections are in place.

Submitting your Proposal

Please contact the Editor, Judith Winters (editor@intarch.ac.uk), as soon as possible to discuss suitability of your project before submitting your proposal.

Full proposals should be received no later than 26th January 2009 and should be emailed to: editor@intarch.ac.uk. Full proposals should consist of: an expression of interest, an IA article proposal (see our editorial policy and submission guidelines), details of the archive contents (see ADS's Guidelines for Depositors for the type of information the digital archive is likely to require) and a proposed delivery timetable. Selection will depend upon how far proposed contributions meet the project objectives.

THIS CALL HAS NOW CLOSED

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