Open Access and archaeology in Italy: an overview and a proposal

Abstract

The aim of this work is to provide an overview of Open Access policies to archaeological data in Italy, focussing on the documentation produced during the archaeological excavation. These documents are often excluded from publishing, and then belong to the broad category of “grey literature”. To trace a framework of the Open Access initiatives managed or supported by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and for Tourism (MiBACT), it is necessary to outline the actors involved in the production of the archaeological records in Italy: the MiBACT, which has the task of protecting and valorising the archaeological heritage, the Directorate General for Antiquities, which plays a coordinating role, the Superintendencies, peripheral offices of the Ministry, The Universities and the professional archaeologists. The proliferation of various institutional platforms for the publication of archaeological records is nowadays a critical element: the information is highly fragmented and hardly retrievable on the web. Each platform follows its own way of storing and organising data and documents, and only in a few cases common standards, recognised at a national or international level, are adopted. To draw a state of the art on this issue, a framework of the Open Access journals and platforms already existing is provided, in order to highlight critical situations and new challenges and to suggest possible solutions.