[Aztlan] FAMSI Journal of the Ancient Americas

[David Hixson]

Thank you for your comments, Mike.
 
I'll try to address as many of your points as I can...

First, this concept was originally the brain child of early Aztlan
members such as John Hoopes.  At that time it was called
"The Aztlan E-Journal".  A link to that resource is still available,
although some of the articles (including your paper) are no
longer linked through that resource.  Those authors are more
than welcome to move their manuscripts to the FAMSI
Journal.

http://web.ku.edu/~hoopes/aztlan/

The three moderators of the "new" Aztlan at FAMSI wanted to
revive this concept and place it on a more secure server at FAMSI.
We contacted John Hoopes and received his support for this endeavor.

While the three moderators of Aztlan all review the submitted texts,
the FAMSI journal is not peer-reviewed.  The description of our
policy most closely matches that of the "Working Paper" analogy you
offered.  Students, professors, and others are encouraged to submit papers
that otherwise might only be seen at select meetings, colloquia, etc.
Fully authorized re-prints of newsletter articles are also accepted, if
the editors of that newsletter provide their consent.

Hundreds of excellent papers are given at the national meetings every year.
Yet only a few dozen are ever published.  This is a venue for that data to
be distributed to a wider audience, yet remain the intellectual property
of the author (i.e., able to be published later in a more polished form in
peer-reviewed journals).

You can view for yourself the quality of papers accepted thus far.

http://research.famsi.org/aztlan/papers_index.php

As you can see, the formats are simple PDF's following the layouts
offered by the contributors.  Corporate formatting and indexing of the
texts are not available at this time.

Questions about the book review process should be directed to
John Schwaller directly.  I have read your recent comments about
the lack of book reviews within LAA and AM, and I fully concur with
your statements.  Hopefully the FAMSI Journal will provide an additional
outlet, compensating for the dearth of book reviews in peer-reviewed
journals.

-Dave
________________________________
David R. Hixson
Aztlan Co-Moderator
aztlandave at yahoo.com