8 October 2021

Archaeological student research journal joins Scholarly Publications Repository.

In 2015 the journal Inter-Section was founded by a group of students and PhD candidates at the Faculty of Archaeology as a way to utilize the knowledge shared in essays, reports and theses written by students during the archaeology curriculum. Even though the theoretical and methodical issues these works address deserve a wider audience, transforming their contributions into scientific articles was a step not many students were eager to take, mainly due to unfamiliarity with the publication process. Inter-Section was set up as a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal to help students through each step of the process and make their work available to a wider audience. By joining the Scholarly Publications Repository, Inter-Section hopes to increase the visibility of the journal, and to ensure that its contents remain available in the long term.

The collection of Inter-Section articles can be found here. The first issues address a wide variety of topics, from an article about anatomical changes and their relation to the endurance running hypothesis, to the spatial organization in the ‘lively’ streets of Classical Olynthos. The next deadline for students to submit a proposal to Inter-Section is January 15th, 2022.

Benefits

The importance of student journals can’t be underestimated: they enthuse young academics for their subject and put them through all the stages of good academic practice from research to publication. These journals deserve to be seen and kept. However, as they are usually small in size and funds, and are mainly focused on output from a single university, it can be difficult to get the journals established within the scholarly ecosystem. Joining the university’s institutional repository is an important step in ensuring the longevity and reach of the journal.

In the past, the Leiden University Scholarly Repository has already taken up several student journals such as Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference, Leidschrift and TXT. These journals benefit from the existing repository infrastructure: permanent identifiers (handle) as url, focus on long term availability, high quality metadata that can be easily harvested, and being indexed on platforms like Google Scholar, in Open Access search engines, and the Leiden University Libraries Catalogue.