Annual Meeting of the American Name Society to Be Held in Portland, OR
Please note: the annual meeting of the American Name Society will be held in Portland, Oregon January 8–11, 2015. This represents a change in the location of the meeting.
Publication policy
NAMES has a policy of not publishing previously published material. Furthermore, NAMES has a requirement that submissions be submitted only to this journal. This means that authors may not submit an article to NAMES and to other journals simultaneously, i.e., the practice of “dual submissions.” We appreciate your cooperation.
Altmetrics revisited
In the editorial in NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics 62:2 (2014), 63–64, the term “altmetrics” (alternative metrics) was introduced to the readers of this journal together with a definition and description of the meaning of this neologism. More recently, Todd A. Carpenter has written a critical essay entitled “Stick to Your Ribs: Altmetrics — Replacing the Impact Factor Is Not the Only Point” in The Scholarly Kitchen January 23 2014 (<http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/01/23/stick-to-your-ribs-altmetrics-replacing-the-impact-factor-is-not-the-only-point> [accessed March 6 2014]). In his discussion of this emerging form of evaluation as an alternative to the impact factor rankings, Carpenter observes that:
Our community needs to move these pilots and discussions of alternative metrics into the stage of common definitions and standards. We need to come to consensus on what should be included and excluded from calculations. For example, we need clear definitions of what constitutes a “use” of a dataset or software code and how to quantify the applications of data from within a larger collection. Some of these determinations might be domain specific, but many of these issues can be generalized to broader communities. Because these resources can and often do reside in multiple repositories or resources, thought needs to be given to how metrics can be consistently reported so that they can be universally aggregated. Additionally, we will need commitment to be a level of openness about the automated sharing of usage data so that network-wide measures can be calculated. Efficient methods of real-time (or nearly real) data collection should also be considered an important element of the infrastructure that we will come to expect. While a central repository of data for anonymization purposes or for more robust analytics might be valuable, it probably isn’t a necessity, if we can reach agreement on data supply streams and open data-sharing tools and policy guidance.
It should be noted that there are numerous responses to Carpenter’s note, which merit attention for their alternative viewpoints. Finally, Mike Thelwall, Andrew Tsou, Scott Weingart, Kim Holmberg, and Stefanie Haustein have co-authored an essay entitled “Tweeting Links to Academic Articles” in International Journal of Scientometrics, Informetrics and Bibliometrics 17 (2013), volume 1, issue 1, an electronic-only journal devoted to the quantitative analysis of scholarly and scientific publications, which can be accessed via the following link: <http://cybermetrics. cindoc.csic.es/articles/v17i1p1.pdf> [accessed March 6 2014]). This essay provides additional empirical research on the notion of altmetrics as manifested in tweets.
Requirements for submissions to NAMES
Several recent submissions to the journal indicate that authors have not paid attention to the following requirement for submissions to NAMES. We ask that all authors read and comply with this prerequisite for submissions to the journal. Following these rules will facilitate the processing of submissions, and it will expedite editorial responses. This policy was decided at the meeting of the Executive Council of the American Name Society January 2011 and published in the Editorial in NAMES 59:2 (2011), 65.
NAMES is dedicated to publishing a broad diversity of previously unpublished scholarly articles and book reviews in the field of onomastics. Authors from every corner of the world are therefore warmly encouraged to submit their work. Please be aware, however, that NAMES requires all submissions to adhere to US American English grammar, punctuation, spelling, and style. All manuscripts must be scrupulously edited before submission to ensure the highest standard of academic writing. Work with numerous factual, typographical, and/or grammatical errors will not be accepted for peer review. Before submission, it is therefore strongly recommended that all manuscripts be carefully edited for style, content, and grammar by an experienced proofreader who is a native-speaker of US American English. Any contractual arrangement, which the author(s) may enter into will, however, be exclusively the sole financial responsibility of the author(s). Please be aware that the use of professional proofreading services will in no way guarantee the acceptance of a submission by the review committee and Journal editorial staff. However, the failure to appropriately edit a submission will automatically be considered sufficient grounds for immediate, unqualified rejection.
It should be noted that Maney Publishing Maney has an arrangement with the Charlesworth Group, which offers a 10 percent discount for Maney authors. The link is: <http://www.maneyonline.com/page/authors/languageediting>.