Journal Sections

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):

• 1. The life cycle of the archives. This section concerns all the main phases of an oral archive lifecycle. While oral data production, conservation and use/reuse deal contain both theoretical and experimental thematic contributions, oral data curation is devoted to hosting oral archive overlay papers together with relevant coordinates for the access to the curated materials.
  • 1.a Oral data production. This subsection welcomes theoretical and experimental papers on oral data collection strategies and oral archive constitution methodology <see related works>.
  • 1.b Oral data curation. This subsection aims to present already constituted, peer-reviewed oral archives. Access coordinates to the oral archival material are published together with the presentation paper. This section acts as an overlay data journal giving academic credit to the contributor's efforts to effectively archive his/her oral data. OAr will evaluate both the presentation paper and the process leading to the constitution of the published archive <see related works>.
  • 1.c Oral data conservation. This subsection has the main goal of inviting contributors to propose papers on methods favoring oral data preservation, from analog carrier restoration, to digitization, pipelines for digital data migration, and data storage sustainability <see related works>.
  • 1.d Oral data use and re-use. This subsection is concerned with how oral data is used and possibly re-used by the scientific community and the general public. In particular, it calls for research papers taking advantage of already constituted oral archives, a clear example of which could be real-time sociolinguistic analyses on specific features. Moreover, it also welcomes methodological reflections and recounts on artistic, dissemination and/or promotion activities stemming from the re-use of oral archival materials, such as immersive exhibitions or audio walks <see related works>.
• 2. Cross-cutting dimensions. OAr is also interested in topics which are, in particular: speech transcription, speech technology, legal issues and research ethics.
  • 2.a Speech transcription. This subsection puts under the spotlight theoretical reflections and operative proposals concerning speech transcription. Note that 2.a aims to propose contributions whose primary focus is to advance the academic discussion on transcription techniques. Nonetheless, transcription might be an important component of papers which are not mainly dedicated to it. For example, transcriptions can be proposed as part of an overlay paper of an oral archive whose contents are exemplified textually (section 1.b) or part of a research paper grounded in methodologies heavily dependent on content analysis, such as discourse analysis (1.d); moreover, transcriptions might be presented as examples of the efficacy of dedicated tools (below, 2.b) <see related works>.
  • 2.b Speech technology. This subsection invites contributors to submit presentation papers, benchmarks, effectiveness and usability tests of new tools for speech recording, speech processing and archiving technologies. This will help the research community orient itself in a constantly evolving pool of operative choices <see related works>.
  • 2.c Legal issues. This subsection deals with comments and proposals on how to confront legal issues, including Intellectual property and data protection ones, pertaining to all the phases of an oral archive lifecycle: for example, personal data processing requirements, including informed consents (connected to 1.a), access or deposit criteria (connected to 1.b), rights to digitize analogue carriers (connected to 1.c), licensing (connected to 1.d), choices concerning the technical tools to be used <see related works>.
  • 2.d Research ethics. This subsection welcomes critical discussions on ethical aspects of doing research pertaining to the human voice. Examples of pertinent topics are research results dissemination, strategies for promoting positive advantages for the communities involved in the research process, planning and managing virtuous relationships between the researchers and the informants <see related works>.