Need guidance

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by ariel

What I am talking about is that there is no academically-oriented journal dedicated to the field and providing a soapbox for the individual researchers.

Arms and armour is, academically speaking, a tiny and unpopular part of the larger fields it sits in. In many universities, there are no researchers who would be interested in such a journal, so it's far from obvious that such a journal would operate at a profit that would interest commercial publishers. The plethora of "peer-reviewed" (in name only) pay-to-publish open-access online journals doesn't seem to include any such journal.

But your "no" is excessive - there are journals (and you named two yourself: Gladius and Arms & Armour). Not many - I can only think of, in addition to your two, Waffen- und Kostümkunde, Journal of the Arms & Armour Society, and Journal of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries (even more specialised!). There was Journal of the Armour Research Society, but AFAIK, it didn't survive. But you don't need a dedicated journal; relevant papers appear in archaeology, ethnography, history, military history, art history, and metallurgy journals.

The solution to the wide-readership problem mentioned above is to publish in a journal that lets you retain copyright or at least the right to post an eprint online (preferably on 3rd-party servers, rather than just your own or your employer's server).