Attendance from the editorial and scientific committee: E. Andersson Strand, U. Mannering, K. Grömer, J. P. Wild, L. Bender Jørgensen, E. Wincott Heckett, J. Banck-Burgess, T. Stolkova, C. Merthen.
Attendance from the NESAT participants: more than 30
1. Election of a chairperson
No chairperson was elected for the meeting.
2. The report of the board for the period since the previous annual general meeting
It was noted by the meeting that Issue 58 was published at the start of January 2017. It was sent out to less than 100 subscribers of which more half are institutional subscribers.
Issue 46-57 are now on the website and can be downloaded for free.
Issues 1-45 are also now on the website and can be downloaded for free. They are also available in a three volume print which can be purchased from the University of Copenhagen webshop at a prize of c. 50 € each (c. 377 DKK) or at a special rate of c. 135 € for all three volumes (c. 1000 DKK) excluding postage. Altogether 1140 pages of still valid reading. The scanning and cleaning of the old issues were performed by Boris Pedersen and the layout for the printed version made by Sidsel Frisch, and funded by the Danish Research Council.
Kenneth Jensen manages the ATN/ATR website. We have made minor corrections and aesthetic changes to the webpage, but wait to make major changes.
All ATR authors should have received a PDF of their article.
We would like to thank the reviewers of the articles for issue 58 for all their hard work.
3. Presentation and approval of the revised account of 31st of December 2016
It was noted that the account looks relatively healthy in terms of being significantly in credit for the moment. The ATN funds consist of legacy monies from when the journal was based in Manchester and our subscription income. As the subscriptions for ATR58 in 2016 only just covered printing and postage of each issue the subscriptions are no longer providing any money for the society. All future expenses to maintain the homepage and other society activities will thus drain the ATN funds.
Current administrative running costs for ATR (separate from the printing/postage) are about 5,000 DKK per year. This includes Dropbox accounts, travel costs, website expenses etc. These costs will continue but the editorial board tries to keep them at a minimum.
We have now stopped sending out invoices for our institutional customers and they are now all obliged to purchase the issues on the University of Copenhagen webshop. Most universities have accepted this and are still subscribing although the subscription agencies have complained about the new procedure.
4. Decisions concerning individual and institutional subscription fee for the current financial year
Subscription numbers have gone down dramatically in recent years, and especially since we started putting back issues online for free with a one year delay. At the same time, the numbers of people downloading ATR from the website is extremely high. In 2016 more than 1,000 people downloaded material. We can conclude from this that private subscribers are today much more interested in the online material than the printed versions.
As printing and postage is the by far largest expense, and exceeds what we take in in subscription fees, the editoral board has now decided that from 2017 and onwards this task will be outsource to the University of Copenhagen webshop, which are also selling our back issues. It is a great relief that the editors can now focus entirely on the scientific work of creating the ATR.
The coming issue, ATR59, can be purchased at any time at the webshop, and will be sent to the subscriber when published at the end of the year. The prize for the issue ATR59 2017 will the same as for 2016, but from 2018 the prize will be negotiated each year with the webshop according to the expected costs for printing, postage and a minor administration fee. We expect the prize to be raised slightly, but instead the online version can be place immediately on the ATN homepage for a free download, and we need no longer to have a one year delay to encourage subscribers.
From 2008-2016 CTR has kindly hosted and supported the creation of ATN/ATR, and in particular funded our student helpers and paid the salary for Sidsel Frisch to make the different layouts. As Sidsel Frisch has graduated in the summer 2016, and are now continuing to another job we thank Sidsel Frisch for her enthusiasm and high quality work during the last six years.
We also thank CTR for its support, and the continued hosting of ATR at the University of Copenhagen. Now, Karina Grömer has taken over the creation of the layout, and she has already adjusted and improved the layout as it will look from issue 59 onwards. We thank Karina Grömer for taking over this important task.
5. Election of 5 members of the board for 2016
Joanne Cutler wishes to redraw as editor, and we thank her for her important contribution in the last year. The editors suggested Jane Malcolm-Davies from CTR at the University of Copenhagen and she was approved unanimously. It was further approved that all other editors and the Scientific Committee members continue their work in 2017.
6. Election of an auditor and 1 deputy auditor member for 2016
The current auditor and deputy auditor were approved unanimously.
7. Miscellaneous
It was noted that issue 59 will come out in winter 2017. The deadline for submissions was the 1st May 2017.
ATRs Facebook page are run by Margarita Gleba, Ida Demand and other who kindly post news and events. Everyone is welcome to post questions, comments and news items relating to archaeological textiles on the page.
Article submission numbers are high, but it would be desirable to attract a greater number of high-quality research articles.