In this editorial, we reflect on the most read publications and some key highlights from 2024 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. Of those papers published in the journal last year, the 10 most read titles are listed in Table 1. The journal publishes six issues a year, and so the time that these publications have been available to read does vary, but the most read publications are distributed across the year's issues (Figure 1). The 10 papers listed in Table 1 give a sense of the range of published studies in the journal, covering both human and animal osteoarchaeology and a range of methods and approaches.
Considering article access data for published content can provide helpful reflection on publications that successfully engage wider interest. In the top 10 most read papers, whereas two are case studies, the significant majority are more complex pieces of work indicating that larger datasets tend to attract the most interest from academics in our fields. There is a fairly even balance of animal and human osteoarchaeology papers, indicating both a balanced authorship and readership across the main specialisms of the journal. Topic-wise, there are four papers on improving osteoarchaeological skills and practice (no. 1, 3, 6, and 10), and six papers on applying existing techniques to better understanding archaeological assemblages (no. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9) (Table 1). From a geographical perspective, where geography is relevant, a European focus does dominate the list, with one paper about New Zealand and another about the Levant. This is a subset of the broad geographical range of studies that the journal publishes from across the globe and may reflect a number of factors. We should consider the impact of open access publishing and the higher reads that these can achieve (e.g., Davis 2011), as all the research papers in Table 1 are open access. If papers were submitted by researchers without funding to support open access, then this could skew the geographic pattern we see in the most downloaded group. Research shows that article processing charges are a barrier to open access publication in particular for researchers from low-income countries compared to those from high-income countries (Smith et al. 2022).
The most full-text views in 2024 was achieved by Davis et al.'s (2024) photographic atlas for European freshwater and migratory fish remains (Figure 1). This work makes accessible a richly illustrated corpus to support the identification and analysis of these taxa. Photographic or illustrative guides and keys can play important roles in the different settings and stages of zooarchaeological analysis, from preliminary sorting of remains to final analyses. Davis and colleagues provide a researcher-friendly resource—one that can be used for supporting identifications when access to physical collections is not possible, can supplement comparative collections, or can be us
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