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About

Aims and scope

Heritage Science is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research covering:

  • Understanding of the manufacturing processes, provenances, and environmental contexts of material types, objects, and buildings, of cultural significance including their historical significance.
  • Understanding and prediction of physico-chemical and biological degradation processes of cultural artifacts, including climate change, and predictive heritage studies.
  • Development and application of analytical and imaging methods or equipment for non-invasive, non-destructive or portable analysis of artwork and objects of cultural significance to identify component materials, degradation products and deterioration markers.
  • Development and application of invasive and destructive methods for understanding the provenance of objects of cultural significance.
  • Development and critical assessment of treatment materials and conservation of artwork and objects of cultural significance.
  • Development and application of statistical methods and algorithms for data analysis to further understanding of culturally significant objects.
  • Development of computational methods such as machine learning, 3D visualization and geographical information systems for the understanding and modelling of cultural objects.
  • Description of novel technologies that can assist in the understanding of cultural heritage.
  • Applications from social sciences and humanities, such as linguistics, musicology and geography, which include substantial computational, statistical or analytical content and are relevant to heritage studies.
  • Applications of archeometry where quantitative and instrumental methods are used for the study of human civilization.
  • Applications of geological and geochemical investigations relevant to human history.
Submissions must be of international rather than localized interest. All papers should demonstrate this in their background discussions and bibliography.

Submissions from cultures or regions that are less well-studied using modern scientific methods will be considered, even if the methods used are better established elsewhere, providing the work is technically sound and placed into international context.

Papers involving conservation science should report new methods or novel assessments of existing approaches that have general international interest. Alternatively, if using well-established approaches, these should be applied to objects or groups of objects that are of wide interest and have not commonly been previously conserved using the approaches reported.

Benefits of publishing with SpringerOpen

High visibility

Heritage Science's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Heritage Science offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Heritage Science and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in Heritage Science gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Heritage Science are included in article alerts and regular email updates. 
In addition, articles published in Heritage Science may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Heritage Science

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Heritage Science retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.

Open access

All articles published by the Heritage Science are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in the Heritage Science you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, SpringerOpen can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Heritage Science are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £1490.00/$1890.00/€1690.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Heritage Science are included in:

  • Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)
  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
  • AATA Online
  • Scopus
  • CAS
  • DOAJ
  • Academic OneFile
  • Health Reference Center Academic 
  • OCLC
  • Summon by ProQuest

The full text of every article is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by SpringerOpen on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Heritage Science operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.
The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Heritage Science should adhere to SpringerOpen's editorial policies.

Once your article is accepted, it will be processed by production and published shortly afterwards. In some cases, articles may be held for a short period of time prior to publication. If you have any concerns or particular requirements please contact the Journal.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Heritage Science

Articles in Heritage Science  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Herit Sci [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Herit Sci 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    2.5 - 2-year Impact Factor
    2.7 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.526 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.547 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)
    3.9 - CiteScore

    2023 Speed
    10 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    105 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage
    1,194,912 downloads
    904 Altmetric mentions

  • Click here for the report
    Click here to view which articles have been shared the most.