Open Access week is an ideal place to highlight the exciting new introduction of Open Access Data Papers to Internet Archaeology's repertoire.

Internet Archaeology is an independent, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed e-journal for archaeology that has been publishing online since 1996. Internet Archaeology is a hybrid Open Access e-journal, which means that authors (or in most cases, their research supporters, funding bodies or affiliated institutions) can pay article development costs/publication fees so that that content is not subject to a subscription.

The contents of the journal are archived with its sister service, the Archaeology Data Service, (ADS) whose remit is the long-term preservation of digital research materials. The ADS also supports research, learning and teaching with freely available, high quality and dependable digital resources.

However, sometimes the level of recognition gained from depositing your research data with an accredited repository like ADS is limited, so in an attempt to redress this for the archaeological community, Internet Archaeology is working with several trusted repositories, including ADS, tDAR and Open Context, to establish a series of published, peer-reviewed, open access 'data papers'.

What is a Data Paper?

A data paper is a short, peer-reviewed publication that is designed to raise awareness of your dataset and its re-use potential. A lot of effort goes into into creating data and a data paper in Internet Archaeology allows the data creator to get credit for it, publicise it, and to share it with the community. A data paper describes the contents of your dataset (already or soon to be deposited with an accredited repository), the methods used to create that dataset and most importantly, what further avenues of research are possible.

A data paper is an extension of the 'integrated publication' model Internet Archaeology has already been developing with ADS  which integrates data within an articles narrative. A data paper differs from a normal article in that the paper is much shorter and so able to be published more quickly. An innovative aspect of a data paper is that it also explicitly credits the referee of the paper and makes their comments available for all to read. A data paper may be used to complement and enhance a related IA publication or help add context to a standalone archive.

The main points that define a data paper are:

• It describes the content and the re-use potential of a particular dataset hosted in a repository (usually by the same authors)
• The data paper is accompanied by an unanonymised referee (peer) statement on the data's re-use potential and significance
• It is an edited, Open Access publication, disseminated under a CC-BY licence
• It is assigned a CrossRef DOI
• It links back to the original deposited dataset

Read more about how to publish a data paper in Internet Archaeology here..

Or see Internet Archaeology's first published data paper by Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Jeffrey Fleisher.

The Archaeology Data service is also celebrating Open Access Week by publishing a new archive every day so keep an eye on @ADS_Update twitter feed or the ADS Facebook page for updates.