











































Forensic Anthropology Vol. 1, No. 1: 1–3
DOI 10.5744/fa.2018.0001

© 2018 University of Florida Press

Overview and Scope of the Journal

Welcome to Forensic Anthropology, the only journal devoted 
to the advancement of the science and professional develop-
ment of the fields of forensic anthropology and forensic 
archaeology. Forensic Anthropology is an inclusive venue cre-
ated to foster professional discussions about research, policy, 
and the application of forensic anthropology globally. Issues 
will (at least initially) be published quarterly and available in 
electronic and print format. Subscription information, sub-
mission instructions, and other details can be found on the 
journal’s website: http:  //journals  .upress  .ufl  .edu  /fa.

Although forensic anthropology is typically defined as the 
application of (primarily biological) anthropological meth-
ods and theory to medicolegal contexts, the modern appli-
cation of forensic anthropology is both anthropologically 
holistic and interdisciplinary in nature. The field encom-
passes methodological and theoretical aspects of biologi-
cal anthropology as well as archaeology and sociocultural 
anthropology. Many of the current methods used in forensic 
anthropology stem not only from the anthropological sci-
ences, but also from chemistry, engineering, biomechanics, 
biology, and other natural and social sciences. Moreover, the 
scope and application of forensic anthropology is increas-
ingly broad. While forensic anthropological casework most 

often involves the analysis of unidentified skeletal remains 
and skeletal trauma in a medicolegal context, it is also applied 
in contexts beyond traditional medicolegal questions, includ-
ing addressing legal claims related to the remains of native 
populations and resolving humanitarian investigations such 
as war crimes and mass disasters. In recent years there has 
been growth in educational programs dedicated to forensic 
anthropology. This has prompted a significant increase in 
research and the number of publications in the field, with 
articles appearing in a wide variety of periodicals and edited 
volumes related to forensic science, anthropology, medicine, 
anatomy, and imaging, among others.

Given the broad scope and academically prolific nature 
of modern forensic anthropology, a scholarly venue is needed 
that embraces and caters to this holistic, multidisciplinary, 
and research-rich field. Journals focused primarily on anthro-
pology or forensic science are insufficient to meet the needs 
of the discipline, and the publication of relevant research in 
numerous (and sometimes disparate) journals makes it chal-
lenging to stay abreast of the latest developments, requiring 
professionals to locate, maintain subscriptions to, and rou-
tinely review a wide variety of scholarly journals. Forensic 
Anthropology therefore aims to be an inclusive and central-
ized venue, emphasizing research and technical advance-
ments related to all facets of forensic anthropology. Topics 
of interest for this journal include osteology, skeletal biology, 
modern human skeletal variation, and forensic archaeology, 
though contributions in any area that promote, advance, or 
enhance the field will be considered. The instructive quality 
of case studies is recognized, and we therefore encourage the 
submission of case reports with academic or educational 
merit. The journal will also publish relevant book reviews 
and consider pertinent review articles.

We are dedicated to high-quality content and a rigorous 
review process. All reviews are double-blind, meaning review-
ers are blinded to the manuscript author, and authors are 
blinded to the reviewers. This process ensures that reviews are 
fair, with minimal bias. While performing peer reviews can 

INTRODUCTION

Forensic Anthropology
A Journal for our Discipline

Nicholas V. Passalacquaa* ● Angi M. Christensenb ● Joseph T. Hefnerc

aAnthropology and Sociology Department, Western Carolina 
University, Cullowhee, NC 28723, USA

bFederal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory, Quantico, VA 22135, 
USA

cDepartment of Anthropology, Michigan State University, East 
Lansing, MI 48823, USA

*Correspondence to: Nicholas V. Passalacqua, Anthropology and 
Sociology Department, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 
28723, USA 

E-mail: passala5@gmail  .com
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the authors and do 

not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the FBI. 
Names of commercial manufacturers are provided for identification 
purposes only, and inclusion does not imply endorsement of the 
manufacturer or its products or services by the FBI.

http://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa
http://passala5@gmail.com


2 Introduction

be time consuming and tedious, it is a very important part of 
the scientific publication process, and we encourage our col-
leagues to assist in these reviews. We aim to maintain a 
repository of professionals interested in, and dedicated to, 
high-quality reviews, and anyone interested in serving as a 
reviewer is encouraged to contact the editors. We are also com-
mitted to ethical publishing standards; authors and reviewers 
must adhere to the ethics in publishing guidelines put forth by 
the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE 2017).

The Editorial Board and Organizational Partners

The inaugural editors of Forensic Anthropology are Nicho-
las Passalacqua, Angi Christensen, and Joseph Hefner, who 
several years ago began discussing a possible journal with 
colleagues and researching potential publishers based on the 
perceived need for a venue dedicated to the discipline. This 
was largely the result of frustration with currently available 
venues, combined with the recognition of the large number 
of forensic anthropology papers published annually. To facil-
itate the journal’s success, and to demonstrate its aim of 
inclusiveness, organizational partners were invited to assist 
in supporting, representing, and promoting the journal. Cur-
rent organizational partners include the American Board of 
Forensic Anthropology (ABFA), the Asociación Latinoamer-
icana de Antropología Forense (ALAF), and the Society of 
Forensic Anthropologists (SOFA). Organizational partners 
have representation on the Forensic Anthropology editorial 
board and receive subscription and promotion benefits. We 
thank them for their support. In addition, an editorial board 
comprised of associate editors was selected to represent 
the diverse specialties, interests, workplaces, and geogra-
phy of forensic anthropological practice. The current edito-
rial board includes: Gregory Berg (book review editor), Popi 
Chrysostomou, Christian Crowder, Derek Congram, Paul 
Emanovsky, Michael Kenyhercz, Alexandra Klales, Jenni-
fer Love, James Pokines (ABFA representative), Brian Spa-
tola (SOFA representative), M. Kate Spradley, Carl Stephan, 
and Ivana Wolff (ALAF representative). We welcome the 
assistance of our colleagues in making Forensic Anthropol-
ogy a success, and encourage participation and feedback. 
Please contact the editors or a member of the editorial board 
with any questions.

Impact Factor

We recognize the importance to some of our colleagues (and/
or their employers) of publishing in a journal with a high 
impact factor. The impact factor of a journal (which was orig-
inated by Eugene Garfield in the mid-1900s [Garfield 2006]) 
is a metric used (ostensibly) to assess a journal’s relative 

importance or contribution to a field of study. The overall 
importance and relevance of a journal’s impact factor is a 
matter of some debate. Because a journal’s impact factor is 
a function of citations to all articles published in a journal, it 
does not reflect the quality of any specific article or author 
(The PLoS Medicine Editors 2006). Moreover, a journal’s 
impact factor can be easily skewed by one or two highly cited 
articles, and journals that publish larger quantities of articles 
may have lower impact factors than journals that publish 
fewer articles (Campbell 2008). An impact factor does not 
reflect how well read a journal is or its influence on policy 
(The PloS Medicine Editors 2006). Therefore many feel that 
impact factors are given too much weight considering they do 
not actually measure the importance of a journal or the impact 
it has on a discipline. Others have suggested that perhaps 
such assessments should be adjusted to account for variables 
such as specialty, citation density, and half-life (Garfield 
2006). A journal’s impact factor for a given year is calculated 
as the citations during that year (published in journals indexed 
in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science) to all articles pub-
lished by the journal in the previous two years, divided by 
number of articles published in the journal in the previous 
two years deemed to be “citable” by Clarivate Analytics.

Despite limitations, the influence of impact factors on 
authors is recognized, and we therefore wanted to address 
this topic with our readership. Given that the first issue of 
Forensic Anthropology is being published in 2018, it will be 
eligible for an impact factor after the year 2020. The impact 
factor for 2020 will be calculated as the number of published 
citations in 2020 to all articles published in Forensic Anthro-
pology in 2018–2019, divided by the number of citable arti-
cles published by Forensic Anthropology in 2018–2019. 
Examples of recent impact factors related to forensic anthro-
pology are provided below (2016 Journal Citation Reports©).

Journal of Forensic Sciences: 1.127
Forensic Science International: 1.336
American Journal of Physical Anthropology: 2.552
International Journal of Osteoarchaeology: 1.038
Journal of Anatomy: 2.182
Journal of the American Medical Association: 37.684

Looking Forward

It is with great pleasure that we introduce this new journal, 
and we appreciate the support and enthusiasm we have 
already received from many of our colleagues. We look for-
ward to the continued success of Forensic Anthropology, 
knowing that it will depend on support from the forensic 
anthropological community. We thank our current contribu-
tors, reviewers, and associated editors, and we look forward 
to many more issues of Forensic Anthropology.



Introduction 3

References

2016 Journal Citation Reports.© Clarivate Analytics; 2017.
Campbell P. Escape from the impact factor. Ethics in Science and 

Environmental Politics 2008;8(1):5–7.
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). http:  //publicationethics 

 .org  /. Accessed August 23, 2017.

Garfield E. The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. 
Journal of the American Medical Association 2006;295(1): 
90–93.

The PLoS Medicine Editors. The impact factor game. PLoS Medi-
cine 2006;3(6):0707–0708.

http://publicationethics.org/
http://publicationethics.org/

