Conference announcement: Open Science Practices in Environmental Archaeology

I’m excited to announce that the 2020 Association for Environmental Archaeology spring conference will be taking place at All Souls College, University of Oxford, on the subject of Open Science Practices in Environmental Archaeology.

 

Saturday 28^th March, All Souls College, University of Oxford

All aspects of Environmental Archaeology have a shared reliance on the creation, curation and analysis of quantitative datasets – from counts of molluscs and pollen, to isotope ratios and morphometrics. Too often, this data is hidden behind paywalls, difficult to reuse or simply not made available. This conference will discuss the current state of data in Environmental Archaeology and how open science practices can improve the reliability and reproducibility of research. Issues to be discussed include the standardisation of data recording, data sharing, data repositories, linked open data, the creation and longevity of databases and reproducible analysis (Rstats). Papers are also welcomed on any aspects of open research, including open methods, open data, open access publishing and open education across Environmental Archaeology (as broadly conceived).

Please send a title and abstract of up to 250 words to aea2020spring@gmail.com by 6^th December.

For more information see http://envarch.net/events/aea-spring-meeting-2020-open-science-practices-in-environmental-archaeology/

 

Conference Organisers:

Lisa Lodwick
Tom Maltas
Tina Roushannafas
Rubi Wu

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TAG 2019 Session at UCL

I’m excited to be co-organising a session at the 2019 TAG Conference at UCL with Zena Kamash (Monday 16 – Wednesday 18 December 2019). The full session line up will be announced soon with plenty of exciting speakers, but here’s the session abstract:

Publishers and editors together form one of the most powerful gate-keeping groups in archaeology and academia more broadly. In this session, we invite authors, editors and publishers to discuss the power imbalances in publishing practices, both in the current landscape of neo-liberal universities and throughout the professionalization of archaeology during the twentieth century, and to explore what measures can be employed to bring about more publishing parity. Potential topics for discussion include:

Diversity

• How can we ensure that under-represented groups have equal access to publishing?
• What data exist to explore issues of diversity amongst e.g. authors, editorial boards, reviewers, commissioning editors etc?
• What are the relationships between moves to ‘decolonise’ curricula and publishing?
• Are there models and approaches in different disciplines from which archaeology might learn?

Open Access (including, but not exclusively, Plan S)

• What might an Open Access future look like for archaeology?
• Would an Open Access future entrench current power imbalances or bring about more equality?
• Are there different sets of issues for e.g. journal and book publishing? To what extent might this be driven by current or future REF plans?

Data sharing

• Who has financial access to digital repositories such as the Archaeology Data Service?
• How do issues of career precarity link to data sharing?
• In what ways and to what extent are senior gate-keepers in journals playing a role in improving data sharing?

Language

• There are significant access problems around language – are there potential tech solutions to these issues?

Canon vs textbooks vs public-facing (trade) books

• Who gets to write the key parts of the canon?
• Are textbooks and public-facing (trade) books of more importance for wider communication of archaeology? But under-respected within academia?
• What are the relationships between publication venue, publication format, accessibility and curriculum development? What are the power networks controlling inclusion or exclusion from reading lists?

Organiser details:

• Zena Kamash – Royal Holloway University of London
• Lisa Lodwick – All Souls College, University of Oxford