VITA ANTIQUA ISSN 2522-9419 (Online), 2519-4542 (Print)
Center for Paleoethnological Research
VITA ANTIQUA 16, 2025, Tangible Heritage of Ancient Times : approaches, contexts, interpretations
Anna Radchenko¹, Simon Rsdchenko 2
Archaeology on paper: scientific professional publications in Ukraine and whst is (not) happening to them
1 PH “Akademperiodyka” of the NAS of Ukraine
2Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger
1ORCID: 0000-0002-0276-6398
2ORCID: 0000-0003-2970-5373
¹ORCID: 0000-0003-3783-6277
DOI:
ABSTRACT
The paper examines the three most highly ranked periodical publishing bodies dealing with Ukraine's archaeological content — Arheologia, Archaeology and Early History of Ukraine, and EMINAK. Focusing on academic papers as the main way to present research outcomes, it provides a scientometric study of these periodicals to examine processes in Ukrainian archaeology to the extent they are expressed in publications. The paper perceives scientometric research as a reliable way to spot internal and external trends of the journal, and compare them to their analogies in the publishing bodies abroad, tracing the directions for future modification and development.
We applied conventional and self-developed tools to perform a coherent study of Ukrainian journals, revealing trends and approaches in authorship, thematic choices, and titling creativity of published papers. These methods showed a coherence and fascination in material-based study and material publication of Ukrainian journals, especially compared to European ones. Moreover, a comparatively low level of titling creativity emphasizes the undertheorization of the data and an established tradition to focus on empirical work instead of the interpretational publication. In contrast to the European writing model, Ukrainian authors follow a fixational approach to presenting material instead of analytical and synthetic. In addition, the metadata are often selected in order to exclude external readers rather than include them, as European scholars aim to do.
This paper draws the connection between such state of the art, the low quantity of theoretical and methodological research in Ukraine, and the relatively low topicality of academic papers published by Ukrainian archaeologists in their domestic periodicals. We claim that the absence of consistent and rigorous theoretical work affects the overall level of scholarly publishing in Ukrainian archaeology and leads to an increase in the thematic and methodological gap between Ukrainian and European archaeology. Moreover, in our view, this is a symptom of social unawareness and passivity of Ukrainian archaeology as a discipline, which might lead to severe empiricism and problems for the field shortly. In the paper's final part, we provide some general reflections on the matter and advice on how Ukrainian archaeological academic journals can contribute to overcoming the current crisis.
Keywords: scientometric analysis, bibliometrics, peer-reviewed journal, citation, word frequency, science theory, archaeology.
Lenguage: Ukrainian
ПДФ
Cite us:
Chechulina, I.O. 2025. Archaeology on paper: scientific professional publications in Ukraine and whst is (not) happening to them. VITA ANTIQUA, 16. Tangible Heritage of Ancient Times : approaches, contexts, interpretations.
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