20-18.40 in Session 3: Using Text Data, Publishing and Digital Assyriology.
ABSTRACT "The State of Publication of Ancient Near Eastern Researches using Digital and Computational Approaches"
In recent years, papers and/or books dedicated to digital and computational approaches for studying ancient Western Asia have significantly increased. With these contributions significant steps forward were made to foster an active and working dialogue among scholars involved in our fields and who deal with these practices. Such a dialogue is of course needed to prevent the dispersion of the single research experiences and to ensure future collaborations. Nevertheless, it is clear that it is still tough to build the bridge between scholars in favor of traditional practices and those who are familiar with digital and computational approaches, despite the obvious growth of contributions. Thus, the main question which needs to be investigated is how to improve the accessibility to a larger readership, consequently collaborations of researchers having diverse profiles, including the actors involved in the publication process. Answering this question should unfortunately highlight the lack of knowledge of new publishing formats by most of the researchers’ community, and above all whether the publications are in open access or not. Another topic which needs further consideration is the review process, since it requires both skills in these new and very diverse practices but also in a particular field of research (culture, philology…). Consequently, how to ensure the peer review evaluation? Last, the issue of publication ethics such as the ethical behavior of all actors involved in the publication process needs also to be defined.
Our starting point will be a quick overview of the current state of publications, including the readers’ profiles, in order to focus on future perspectives as well as cross-collaboration and new behaviors.