About
Focus and Scope
Open Quaternary is an international peer-reviewed venue for contributions that consider the changing environment of the Quaternary, as well as the development of humanity. This scope is intentionally broad, and covers a range of specialisms such as geomorphology, palaeoclimatology, palaeobotany, palynology, vertebrate and invertebrate palaeontology, zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology, biological anthropology and Palaeolithic archaeology.
Special Collections
Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page. Full attribution to guest editors and/or supporting organisations will be given. If you are interested in proposing a collection to the journal, please download the special collection proposal form for more information on what details we need to assess the proposal. Please send the proposal to editor@openquaternary.com.
Publication Frequency
The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There is no embargo on the journal’s publications. Submission and acceptance dates, along with publication dates, are made available on the PDF format for each paper.
Authors of articles published remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.
Authors are encouraged to publish their data in recommended repositories. For a list of generic and subject specific repositories that meet our peer review criteria, visit the Open Access Directory or datacite.org.
Indexing, Archiving and Dissemination
Ubiquity is committed to making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. As such all content is archived via the PKP Preservation Network to ensure long-term availability.
Ubiquity supports open and transparent practices in scholarly research and is a signatory of The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a global initiative to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. In accordance with DORA, Ubiquity makes available a range of article and journal-level metrics to avoid over-reliance on any single assessment tool.
Our journals use OPERAS metrics - an open source platform that Ubiquity has helped develop as part of the HIRMEOS project, originating from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. OPERAS metrics provides a comprehensive and transparent mechanism for collecting and aggregating article usage metrics.
Journal statistics (including submission numbers, the acceptance rate, and turnaround times) are provided and updated annually.
Evaluation and Impact
- Scopus CiteScore: 1.7 - 65/377 Archaeology (2024)
- Scimago H-index:15 (2024)
- Scimago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.236 (2024)
Indexing and Discoverability
The journal is indexed by the following services:
- Web of Science, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, Zoological Record
- Scopus
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals
- BDS Bibliographic Data Services
- Center for Open Science
- Chronos
- CNKI
- EBSCO (Host and Knowledge Base)
- Ex Libris
- Google Scholar
- J-Gate
- OCLC
- OpenAIRE
Additionally, the journal is included in Jisc's Open Policy Finder and all article metadata and references are deposited with Crossref.
As the journal grows, additional indexes will be added. If the journal is not indexed by your preferred service, please contact us or alternatively by making an indexing request directly with the service.
Archiving
To ensure permanency of all publications, this journal also utilises CLOCKSS, and LOCKSS archiving systems to create permanent archives for the purposes of preservation and restoration.
In addition, the journal is available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.
Journal Statistics
Core journal statistics for the 2024 volume:
| Submissions received1 | 23 |
| Reviews requested2 | 85 |
| Reviews received3 | 47 |
| Total Rejections4 | 7 |
| ...of which, Desk rejects5 | 3 |
| Acceptances6 | 7 |
| Acceptance rate7 | 50% |
| Time from submission to publication8 | 200 days |
Definitions
1Number of new articles received by the journal
2Number of peer review invitation emails that were sent out
3Number of completed peer review reports received
4Total number of articles rejected (including desk rejects)
5Number of articles rejected prior to peer review
6Number of articles that received a 'Accept for publication' decision
7Number of acceptances, as a percentage, against the total number of final decisions
8'Mean' average from submission to publication for all publications in the volume
Annotation and post-publication comment
The journal platform permits readers to leave comments on the publication page. Readers need an account to leave comments. The journal platform also includes in-browser annotation and text highlighting options on full text formats via hypothes.is. Readers have the option to make these publicly available, available to a group, or private.
Advertisement policy
The journal does not normally display adverts. On occasion, the editorial board may decide to display advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. upcoming conferences). All advertising space is provided free of charge and the editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts not related to the journal.
If you wish to propose a potential advert then please contact the editorial team. All advert images will have to be provided to the publisher.
Journal Ownership
Ownership of the Journal title and all associated branding and intellectual property is held by Ubiquity Press. The journal website design and associated technical infrastructure to host the journal is retained by Ubiquity Press Ltd.