Over on another blog, in response to a list of journals in various fields by the AHRC, an early medievalist commented about not knowing where to publish: "EME (Early Medieval Europe)" was given an "A", but all else was "B" or less in that author's estimation.
As anyone reading this blog knows, it is attached and part of The Heroic Age journal. Our desire is not to "B" or less. So I'd like to open a discussion of what makes a journal an "A". Board members and readers? Quality articles? Publishing in Paper? Institutional support? How can we make HA a better journal for the early medieval community to publish in?
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I'd have to say that medieval history appears to be well behind the times as far as e-journals go. A friend of mine who works in stock-market tech asked me, when I lamented lack of publication, whether the blog wasn't enough: he said, in fact, "how's publication different nowadays from just sticking something on the web and seeing who's interested?" and I had to try and explain the nonsensical lack of respect for electronic-only journals. My only explanation is that there must be a perception that if you can convince a publisher to commit to the expense of a print run, it's a kind of market peer review; there is judged to be an audience for it that will pay, whereas online audiences are hard to quantify. Mind you, the fact that The Heroic Age is a noble exception in terms of having continued to publish more or less on schedule with an increasingly ambitious remit in a field littered with electronic journals that have died as their single patron left the host institution (Chronicon at University of Cork, is now active again after an eight-year hiatus, but I didn't expect to find that when I went back to get the URL just now), and besides them and you, there's almost only the Medieval Review, which is only a review... So I think my suggestion would be, people will take a paper-issued journal (that they are confident will still exist in ten years; what if UCC had pulled Chronicon's webpages down a couple of years ago?) more seriously than an electronic one, for now at least. But if this changes you're in prime position to lead the field!
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