Editorial: Journal Editor Transition and COVID-19 pandemic submissions

We write to provide an update on JAA article submissions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to let you know about some changes in the editorship of the journal. One of us, Annie Katzenberg, stepped down as co-Editor-in-Chief after four happy years with the JAA. This was planned as part of a staged retirement. It has been a pleasure to work with George Milner, Associate Editors Meghan Howey, Ted Banning, and Gustavo Politis, as well as members of the Editorial Board, authors, guest editors, and reviewers. Annie will continue to work on papers in the review process as well as two special issues that are nearing completion.

As of January 2021, Meghan steps into the co-Editor-in-Chief role, having seen many years of service on the Editorial Board and, since 2014, as an Associate Editor. That long service means she is quite familiar with the scope and aims of the JAA. Her special areas of expertise include spatial analyses and expanding interdisciplinary approaches to the study of past cultural landscapes. She is versed in using geospatial methods to explore site distributions, how people made their living, interacted with one another, and conceptualized their surroundings. This is a much-needed addition because the JAA receives many submissions featuring a spatial component, and they push the envelope of what can be said from regional site distributions.

Meghan will also take over the management of special issues for JAA, a task that Annie handled for the last four years. The process of evaluating special issues remains unchanged. Proposals are reviewed by all editorial personnel – Editorial Board members, Associate Editors, and co-Editors-in-Chief – and, if approved, individual papers are treated much like regular submissions. The only difference from normal papers is they are handled by the guest editors. These papers, which must stand on their own as significant pieces of work, are published as they are completed and later bundled electronically as a special issue. That is a distinct advantage to authors because their work can be published promptly without the necessity of waiting until the final contribution of a special issue has been reviewed and accepted. Although the JAA can only accommodate a certain number of special issues because there are only four journal issues each year, we encourage the submission of such proposals. Doing so is an excellent way to assemble enough papers to stake out a new research endeavor or innovative means of addressing a particular issue.

Some of you might have noticed that the editorial submission and review system has a new look and feel. Last August, it was the turn of the JAA to move from the old Elsevier system to a new one. For the most part, the change was seamless and, unlike a similar change a handful of years ago, papers were carried forward from the old to new systems. There are still some growing pains, but we are cooking along quite well at this point. We greatly appreciate the patience of the relatively few authors and reviewers who experienced the inevitable kinks that occur during the hand off from one computer system to the next.

For the entire JAA community – readers, authors, reviewers, editorial members, and publishing personnel – the past year has been like no other in terms of professional and personal disruptions, large and small, stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. As one might expect, the JAA has not dodged the effects of COVID-19. Perhaps the most noticeable outcome of the pandemic has been a marked increase in papers sent to the journal. For the April to December period, there was a 30% increase in submissions relative to the average number during the same months from 2016 to 2019. Apparently, archaeologists took full advantage of COVID-19 confinement to crank out papers. We noticed this trend shortly after lockdowns became common around the globe, and it has been confirmed in subsequent months (Milner and Katzenberg, 2020).

In Fig. 1 , monthly submissions for 2020 are compared to those for the 2016–2019 period. The horizontal black line, plotted at 1, indicates the average number of papers submitted per month for the four years preceding 2020. The red (2020) and blue (2016–2019) lines chart deviations from that baseline, expressed as a month’s total divided by the 2016–2019 average. Months above the black line are those when papers exceeded the 2016–2019 average, and those below the line are when submissions dropped below the four-year monthly average.

Fig. 1.

Monthly JAA submissions for 2020 (red line) are compared to those for 2016 to 2019 (blue line). The 2016–2019 monthly submission average is shown as a black horizontal line. Deviations from the four-year monthly average prior to the onset of COVID-19 are shown. For the 2016–2019 period, the submission pattern is explicable in light of archaeological teaching responsibilities and fieldwork opportunities. Submissions during 2020 from April onward were 30% higher than normal, and the number of papers varied considerably from one month to the next. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

As explained in our presentation of submission data early in the COVID-19 lockdowns, the 2016–2019 line (blue) is explicable in terms of archaeological fieldwork and university employment (Milner and Katzenberg, 2020). In normal times, JAA submissions, as shown by the four-year average for single months (blue line) relative to the 48-month average for the same set of years (black line), follow an explicable pattern (Fig. 1). The majority of submissions are from researchers working in North American and European institutions, so the shape of the curve is driven by their academic schedules and fieldwork. To start at the beginning of the year, January submissions are high. Presumably researchers devote some of their holiday season to finishing papers. The rest of the winter, stretching into spring, is when many archaeologists find themselves consumed by teaching, and submissions drop accordingly. The number of incoming papers picks up once again in mid-summer when researchers have time to catch up on their analyses and to write papers. At least that would be true of archaeologists whose attention is not otherwise diverted by fieldwork. During the late summer and well into the fall, papers are finished and packed off to the journal. By the end of the year, the summer flush of manuscript preparation is long past, the semester’s end is looming, and attention is diverted by upcoming holidays. Monthly submissions, of course, vary from one year to the next, but the aggregate pattern conforms nicely to what might be expected from university and fieldwork schedules.

The past year started off in much the same way, although JAA submissions during the first three months of 2020 (red line) lagged somewhat behind those of 2016–2019 (Fig. 1). Following the March COVID-19 lockdowns, the situation changed abruptly. Not only were many more papers submitted from April to December, the totals exhibited considerable monthly volatility. To be sure, separating papers into nine monthly categories, hence correspondingly small samples, contributes to the markedly irregular 2020 distribution from April onward. Some sense, however, can be made of what can only be regarded as a bumpy submission pattern. Early in COVID-19 confinement, many researchers finished their papers, perhaps mainly manuscripts that had been sitting for some time waiting for final touches. That would account for an immediate increase in submissions during April and May. The two-month-long trough during August and September could have been caused by archaeologists being faced with the time-consuming task of turning residence courses into online versions, a task that could not be postponed any longer. By October, researchers once again hit their stride, only to falter as usual during the final two months of the year. Here November and December are perhaps best considered together because of the difficulty in interpreting quirky-prone small samples.

Regardless of whether the monthly patterning for 2020 is real or not, it is clear that disruptions related to COVID-19 confinement greatly increased the number of JAA submissions from April onward. In that respect, the JAA is similar to what many, but not all, journals in other fields experienced (Alkhouri et al., 2020, Fox and Meyer, 2021, Hobday et al., 2020, Konsziolka et al., 2020, Maghfour et al., 2020, Squazzoni et al., 2020). To our knowledge, no comparable information for other archaeology journals has been published.

As the events of 2020 are unprecedented – and, with luck, will not occur again anytime soon – a further assessment of possible patterning in submissions is best undertaken through looking at data from multiple archaeology journals. Doing so is likely to even out peaks and valleys in JAA submissions, providing a better picture of archaeological paper completion during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

At the time of this writing we do not have sufficient information from the JAA to look at other COVID-19 publishing outcomes, such as possible shifts in the gender or academic rank of individuals submitting papers. Diving deeper will presumably reveal a mixed picture in terms of paper output as individual scholars have faced highly varied obligations and experiences since the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns. We know anecdotally that colleagues with children schooled at home are particularly stressed, as are those who have fallen ill or provide primary care for sick family members. It can be anticipated that such responsibilities have fallen disproportionately on female researchers (Staniscuaski et al., 2020). Compilations of data from journals in diverse fields have found that there has been a mixed, but generally adverse, impact on women during the COVID-19 lockdown period (Andersen et al., 2020, Cushman, 2020, Fox and Meyer, 2021, Gabster et al., 2020, King and Frederickson, 2020, Pinho-Gomes et al., 2020, Wehner et al., 2020). Calls have been made to address such problems in academia, especially as they have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Malisch et al., 2020). To our archaeological colleagues who might be overwhelmed by the idea that submissions have increased during the past year, it suffices to say that you are not alone in the struggle to balance your personal and professional life during this trying time.

As tempting as it might be to regard the increase in paper submissions in the JAA, and presumably other archaeology journals, as a good outcome, the pandemic will certainly have major downstream effects on the discipline. That is especially true of the generation of new archaeological data because field, laboratory, museum collection, and library archival work have been curtailed through travel restrictions and the temporary closing of research institutions. Time will tell, but the immediate outlook is bleak as we face another summer when the number of field projects will be greatly diminished. The situation may well worsen as younger scholars, in particular, struggle with a tightening job market as universities face fiscal constraints and program adjustments following COVID-19 disruptions.

Assuming that the JAA is not unique among archaeology journals in experiencing a great increase in the number of incoming manuscripts – and there is no reason to think it is indeed atypical – reviewers have almost certainly felt the pressure of receiving more invitations to assess manuscripts than normal since April. We have no hard data readily at hand, but it has become harder to find reviewers for papers as the year progressed. Beset by the demands of work and family obligations, among other uncertainties and disruptions caused by COVID-19, it is not surprising that people decline to review manuscripts or take longer than usual to evaluate them. While we have done what we can to expedite matters, authors must realize that in extraordinary times the review process simply does not move forward as smoothly as it has in previous years.

We wish to close by thanking our authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, and Associate Editors for all their hard work that has made the JAA what it is today. Most importantly, we wish you all the best during these trying times. Please stay safe and healthy.