THE JOURNAL AUSTRALIAN ARCHAEOLOGY HAS JUST BEEN RANKED AS A TIER 'A' JOURNAL BY THE AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL

s.ulm@uq.edu.au

Australian Archaeology has just been ranked as a ‘Tier A’ journal by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in the Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) journal list that will be used to evaluate research as part of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. This is a welcome addition to the journal’s rank in the top band of journals (an ‘A’ category) in the initial listing of the European Reference Index for the Humanities alongside journals such as World Archaeology, Antiquity and the Journal of Archaeological Science.

In the ARC rankings, journals have been placed into four tiers (A*, A, B and C) on the basis of the overall quality that each has for a particular discipline. Tier A journals represent the top 20% of all journals in quality and are described thus:

The majority of papers in a Tier A journal will be of very high quality. Publishing in an A journal would enhance the author’s standing, showing they have real engagement with the global research community and that they have something to say about problems of some significance. Typical signs of an A journal are lowish acceptance rates and an editorial board which includes a reasonable fraction of well known researchers from top institutions (http://www.arc.gov.au/era/tiers_ranking.htm).

As an ‘A’ journal, AA joins journals including Antiquity, Archaeology in Oceania, Journal of Field Archaeology and World Archaeology. The final rankings for all journals can be found at http://www.arc.gov.au/era/journal_list.htm.

The increasing quality of AA was also recognised during the year through AA’s inclusion in both the ISI Web of Knowledge and SCOPUS, the world’s leading research publication indexing services. As part of the ISI Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters), AA is indexed with journals such as Cambridge Journal of Archaeology, Historical Archaeology and Journal of Archaeological Science. SCOPUS (Elsevier) indexes major journals such as Geoarchaeology and International Journal of Historical Archaeology. Both ISI and SCOPUS host comprehensive search facilities, citation analysis tools and other bibliometric analyses which will be invaluable to both readers and authors. Inclusion in ISI and SCOPUS builds on AA’s growing profile in the international research community and complements existing indexing of the journal in Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS), Anthropological Literature and Anthropological Index Online.