Aardvarchaeology

The European Science Foundation has a project called the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH).

... there are specifities [!] of Humanities research, that can make it difficult to assess and compare with other sciences. Also, it is not possible to accurately apply to the Humanities assessment tools used to evaluate other types of research. As the transnational mobility of researchers continues to increase, so too does the transdisciplinarity of contemporary science. Humanities researchers must position themselves in changing international contexts and need a tool that offers benchmarking. This is why ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities) aims initially to identify, and gain more visibility for top-quality European Humanities research published in academic journals in, potentially, all European languages.

Through a peer-reviewed process, ERIH is grading European journals in the humanities.

The ERIH lists will help to identify excellence in Humanities scholarship and should prove useful for the aggregate benchmarking of national research systems, for example, in determining the international standing of the research activity carried out in a given field in a particular country.

Suddenly, humanities scholars will have to start paying a lot more attention to where they publish. In Norway and other countries, a department's funding is directly linked to the ERIH grade of the journals where its faculty publishes.

Grade A means global readership. Grade B means international readership. Grade C means national readership. Only good respected scholarly journals get graded at all. Here's a rundown of grade A and B journals focusing at least to a great part on Scandinavian archaeology (not including e.g. Mediterranean archaeology practiced by Scandinavians).

Grade A

• Acta Archaeologica
  
• Norwegian Archaeological Review

Grade B

• Current Swedish Archaeology
  
• Fennoscandia archaeologica
  
• Fornvännen
  
• Hikuin
  
• Iskos
  
• Journal of Danish Archaeology
  
• Kuml
  
• Lund Archaeological Review
  
• Viking
  
• Archaeologia Medii Aevi Finlandiae Monograph series
  
• Lund Studies in Historical Archaeology Monograph series
  
• Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen Aikakauskirja Monograph series
  
• Tor Graded despite being on hiatus since a decade!
  

So, all the Scandy countries except Iceland have grade B journals. Acta Archaeologica is an annual published in Copenhagen, and it does have the kind of global scope required for grade A. I'm a little surprised though that N.A.R. is graded A. I'm really interested in Norwegian archaeology, and yet I have only ever found reason to read one or two papers in that journal in my 15 years as a professional scholar. It seems to cater mainly to the theory crowd with which I do not mix willingly. On the other hand, Norway has only one grade B journal, which is likely to get inundated with manuscripts now from Norwegians who would like to keep their funding yet continue to write about actual archaeology.

[More blog entries about journals, ERIH, ESF, europeansciencefoundation; tidskrifter, ERIH, ESF.]