JOURNAL CRISIS! Christophe Batsche, at the �cole Pratique des Hautes �tudes in Paris, e-mails:

The french CNRS (centralized administration for intellectual researches in France) is thinking to cut all financial credits to two major publications (at least, I hope, from our point of view) : the Revue de Qumran and the Revue des Etudes Juives. Since that suppression (which would probably mean the death of these two publications) is argumented by a biased system of reviewing quotations in international publications, perhaps could you ring the bell and ask our colleagues to send a few words to the director of the "Sciences humaines" department at the CNRS ?

email : Jean-Marie.Hombert@cnrs-dir-fr [see update below]

He adds:

There is currently a process of evaluation of human sciences reviews financially helped by the CNRS. Not a bad idea per se. You'll find all explanation (perhaps in english also, but I'm not sure) on the CNRS site :

http://www.cnrs.fr/SHS/actions/lettre.php.

The idea is to class all the reviews into three categories : 1. help maintained ; 2. help limited to electronic publication ; 3. help suppressed. The REJ falls in category 2 ; the RQu in category 3.

The evaluation is based on a system of quotations calculations in a number of international "references" reviews, which seems pretty objective and scientific. The problem is :

1) you can't avoid bias in the choice of the "reference" reviews. You dont get the same result whether you privilege history or linguistics. And, obviously, as French we certainly don't privilege religious studies area.

2) a review like RQu can have a real international diffusion and importance, but very few quotations, given the rather specialized field of knowledge it deals with.

I have sent the following e-mail to Professor Hombert:

Dear Professor Hombert,

I have just learned that the CNRS is considering cutting financial support to two critically important journals in Jewish studies: the Revue de Qumran and the Revue des �tudes Juives. These journals are mainstays of the field and it would be a great tragedy were they to be discontinued due to lack of funding. Revue des �tudes Juives is a venerable journal more than a century old which covers the whole range of the history, religion, literature, society, bibliography, and methodology of the study of Judaism. It has an international readership and range of contributors and its loss would leave a major gap in the academic study of Judaism and indeed in the field of Western history in general. Revue de Qumran is another international journal, which focuses on the Dead Sea Scrolls and is one of the major disseminators of scholarly information on the subject. Given the critical importance of the Scrolls for our understanding of the ancient history of Judaism, Christianity, the Bible, and religion in late antiquity, and also the widespread public interest in the Qumran discoveries, the cutting of this journal's funding would not only do great harm to all these academic fields, it would also send a very negative message to the public about the commitment of the CNRS to funding important work in the humanities.

All this being the case, I encourage you very strongly to resist any movement in the direction of cutting the funding of these journals.

I am posting this message on my weblog, Paleojudaica (address below in my signature), and also copying it to other specialists. If you have no objection, I would like to post your reply on the weblog as well.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I will report back when I hear from him. In the meantime, if you are a specialist in ancient Judaism or biblical studies, you will already know how important these journals are. I encourage you to e-mail Professor Hombert to encourage the CNRS to continue funding. It is worthwhile to emphasize the international importance of these journals; their significance for the fields of history and linguistic study in general, not just religious history; and the public interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the negative publicity that would result from the loss of RevQ.

If you are a nonspecialist, but are interested enough in the field to be reading PaleoJudaica, I would be very grateful if you too would send Professor Hombert a note expressing concern over this news. You might describe your own interest in these fields and let him know that it would dismay you to see that the CNRS is considering cutting funding for these important resources that help scholars advance our knowledge in these areas.

Anyone is welcome to use my message or any part of it as a template if that would help. I trust it goes without saying that all messages should be polite, respectful, and to the point.

Thanks!

UPDATE: (22 July): The e-mail address given above for Professor Hombert is incorrect. For the correct one go here.