About the Journal

Aims and Scope

The journal aims to fill a gap in the Italian publishing scene, where journals dedicated to the world of archives mainly refer to 'written' archives, and wants to represent a virtual meeting place between the academic world, public and private institutions, foundations and associations. In the past, there have been journals dedicated to oral archives (e.g. ‘Fonti orali’, directed by Luisa Passerini from 1981 to 1984 and by Daniele Jalla from 1985 to 1987), but what is lacking today is an interdisciplinary point of reference that unites different fields of knowledge and, above all, brings together different actors. There is also a lack of a publishing venue that could enhance the archival work of organising and cataloguing oral sources. An often time-consuming and resource-intensive task, taking care of one's sound documents is instead a fundamental step to guarantee the transmission and dissemination of their contents, as well as the replicability of studies on them. The journal aims to put the spotlight on this activity usually carried out behind the scenes by all scholars of orality and voice, in the firm belief that a well-structured oral archive should be considered a product of research.

The journal seeks to provide a forum for bringing together a wide range of people working with oral sources as researchers, archivists, librarians, documentalists or ministerial actors involved in this field.

The aim of O(ral)Ar(chives) journal is to publish original papers concerned with oral archives from different perspectives, including research on linguistics, ethnomusicology, archiving and oral history. Moreover, OAr hosts overlay papers of oral archives: authors are asked to submit to a peer-review process both a presentation paper and the actual related archival effort. Through this procedure, OAr considers the latter as a scholarly contribution on a par with other article types. 

The topics covered by the journal comprehend, but are not limited to:

  1. the life cycle of the archives:
    1. the production of oral sources, e.g., data collection, fieldwork methods, language documentation, construction of oral archives; development of metadata schemes;
    2. the curation of oral sources,i.e., papers presenting oral archives (the so called ‘overlay archive/data papers’);
    3. the preservation of oral sources, e.g., methods for long-term preservation; maintenance of already existing oral archives; digitalization processes;
    4. the use and reuse of oral sources, e.g., research based on historical archives; recounts of oral archive material re-use for the sake of, e.g., temporary exhibitions, territorial promotion, etc.;
  2. cross-cutting dimensions of all the aforementioned phases:
    1. speech transcription, e.g., methodological and theoretical aspects of transcription;
    2. technological tools, e.g., presentations of novel software or hardware and benchmarks of new recording tools or speech processing technologies;
    3. legal issues, e.g., accessibility and anonymity of data, data protection and copyright issues;
    4. ethical aspects: e.g., giving back to the community; benefits of research for the community; interviewer-interviewee relationship.

Moreover, OAr will also host a “News” section in which information about novel initiatives concerning oral archives will be briefly presented for the sake of keeping the research community up to date. Finally, the journal will also offer an expanded, up to date bibliography through a collaborative group library. The journal aims at becoming a wider repository for literature and relevant sources which will constitute a reference for oral archives research.

Journal Sections & Criteria for acceptance

The journal publishes articles belonging to a very broad spectrum of disciplines, including - but not limited to - linguistics, archival sciences, cultural anthropology, oral history, ethnomusicology, sociology, psychology, law, and speech technology. OAr hosts two main sections also inspired to the lines of work leading to the constitution of the Vademecum per il trattamento delle fonti orali (Roma: Ministero della Cultura, Direzione Generale Archivi, 2023):

Examples of related works are:

 

Examples of academic contributions leading to the constitution of this section are:

An example of an overlay oral archive paper is:

 

Examples of related works are:

 

Examples of related works are:

 

Examples of works representing a good fit for this section are:

 

Examples of related works are:

 

Examples of related works are:

 

Examples of related works are:

OAr does accept proposals on works in progress. Please try to fit these works in one of the pre-existing categories. Ideally, a work-in-progress (or project) paper should cover methodological issues pertaining to the preliminary phases of data collection/storage/use (depending on the type of described work).

Alongside full-length articles, the journal welcomes proposals for special issues in all areas of oral archives and resources.

Coming to the criteria for paper acceptance, overall, OAr values open and original research the most. Authors are strongly encouraged to present contributions which follow transparency criteria and strive for reproducibility through, for example, the sharing of datasets and statistical coding in accessible repositories. Specific additional criteria are followed in the case of overlay papers of oral archives (section 1.b). For the evaluation of such contributions, the guidelines of Thieberger et al. (2015. Assessing Annotated Corpora as Research Output. In Australian Journal of Linguistics, 36, 1-21) will be critically adopted. Below are the evaluation criteria concerning the archival effort presented together with the article itself adapted from Fitzgerald, Colleen M. 2021. “A framework for Language Revitalization and Documentation.” In Language, 97(1): 1-11;

Accessibility

(i) deposited in a repository committed to providing long-term curation and access, including a persistent identifier and a citation form for items within the deposit;

(ii) has a landing page or file with a basic description;

(iii) includes access to metadata and a clear path to accessing the data in the corpus;

(iv) files are in formats that are nonproprietary;

(v) levels of accessibility are properly justified from a legal standpoint.

Quality

(i) the nature and amount of contextual and background information;

(ii) the structure of the deposit;

(iii) metadata quality;

(iv) the nature of linguistic annotation of the data;

(v) structural linking between raw data and their annotations (i.e. time-aligned transcriptions).

Quantity

(i) content;

(ii) amount of data.

Revisions of the original system are due to the context of our specific journal. For example, we do review overlay papers of archival collections whose access cannot be granted to the reviewers if this circumstance is effectively justified from a legal standpoint. Moreover, we do also review small collections of data if their content significance justifies their dimensions.

Note that, at the present time, OAr is not linked to, nor endorses any specific oral archive repository, so that authors are free to make their informed choice in this regard. Future changes in this regard will be communicated through this website.

Keywords

oral archives and resources, re-use of research data, replicability, accountability