IADI: an open Interactive Atlas of Digital Images for the journal «Archeologia e Calcolatori»

Scientific literature understanding benefits from visual resources, which is even more evident in the case of material cultural heritage. In recent years, journals and publishing platforms have been increasingly offering extensive access to publications via the contextual provision of visual media, such as images and 3D models. The diamond open access journal 'Archeologia e Calcolatori', founded in 1990, started publishing its articles in 2005 on its website and has always paid attention to giving proper value and presentation to visual contents related to publications. Indeed, it maintained an online image gallery displaying colour plates from volumes until coloured images started being embedded in the articles' PDFs (since 2009). Then, in 2021, the journal added images and 3D models as resources together with publications and displayed them both as standalone content and in relation to articles. However, this later work did not include the previous thirty-year-long history of the journal, since it required close cooperation with authors. Thus a new dedicated web application was specifically developed to present a structured and visually appealing archive of about 4000 images. The paper illustrates this application, entitled A&C_IADI (Interactive Atlas of Digital Images).