What is SAVE?

SAVE stands for "Serving and Archiving Virtual Environments." Once launched, SAVE will be the world’s first on-line, peer-reviewed journal in which scholars can publish 3D digital models of the world’s cultural heritage (CH) sites and monuments. Research done with generous support from the National Science Foundation (NSF grant: 0535118) indicates that over 90% of the scholars making CH models think that creation of such an outlet is a high priority.

As its name suggests, SAVE aims both to preserve 3D digital CH models and to provide access to them for the scholarly public. SAVE can be seen as part of a larger trend to recognize our duty to preserve our new born-digital heritage. This recognition is perhaps most clearly expressed in the 2003 UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage.

Why is SAVE needed?

There are already several outlets where scholars can publish articles about their 3D models, illustrated by still shots or screen captures of video fly-throughs. SAVE offers scholars the opportunity of publishing their models to the Internet with full interactivity so that users can explore them at will. It also offers peer-review, and requires all models to be accompanied by metadata, documentation, and a related article or monograph explaining the history of the monument and its state of preservation, as well as an account of the modeling project itself. SAVE will furthermore provide secure transmission of the 3D models over the Internet, thereby protecting contributors' intellectual property.

SAVE is based on the model of "prosumption," a blurring of the gap between producers and customers in a situation where "customers participate in the creation of products in an active and ongoing way" (Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, 2006. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, p. 126). The classic example they cite is Second Life, which "has no preset script—and few limitations on what players can do. Residents create just about everything, from virtual storefronts and nightclubs to clothing, vehicles, and other items for use in the game" (ibid.).

SAVE might be thought of as Second Life for scholars. If Second Life harnesses human imagination to create a fictional world primarily for purposes of collaborative diversion and entertainment, SAVE intends to harness human creativity, disciplined by historical methodology, to recreate, with the greatest possible fidelity, the historical cultures that once actually existed across the globe. Thus the project of SAVE can be understood to mean collaboratively building up a virtual space-time machine that, absent true time travel, will offer scholars, students, and the general public the best opportunity we are ever likely to have to visualize the lost monuments and worlds of the past.

What will SAVE publish?

In addition to 3D models of sites and monuments of world heritage and related articles and monographs, SAVE will publish studies of issues relating to 3D CH models, reviews of 3D CH models published elsewhere, reviews of studies of 3D CH models published elsewhere, post-publication peer-review (i.e., mediated discussions about the foregoing publications).

The heart of SAVE is its collection of 3D models that are made available with full interactivity over the Internet. The user interface will offer three modes of accessing a CH model.

• Global. The first mode is “global”: it makes a schematic version of a CH model with simplified geometry and reduced texturing available in a KMZ layer in Google Earth. The KMZ file will be downloadable from the SAVE home page at no cost to users. Accompanying it will be a related KML file containing geo-referenced documentation and metadata giving users information about the evidence used to make the elements of the reconstruction, as well as links to other scientific on-line resources for the study of the monument.
• High Resolution. The second mode is “high resolution”: it makes the full model available with full interactivity, real-time lighting, and some simple tools (e.g., a virtual measuring tape and calipers). This mode is the most sensitive in terms of the protection of the creator’s intellectual property since it presents the full model without simplification. SAVE protects the intellectual property of its authors by using principles of secure remote rendering developed with the support of grants from the National Science Foundation (grants 0535118 and 0713295): instead of giving the end user a download of the full model, SAVE sends the user a video stream from a secure server. Each image in the stream is imperceptibly distorted in order to make cybertheft difficult or impossible. By providing secure transmission of the full model, SAVE hopes to encourage more cultural authorities and model creators to allow CH digital models to be published to the Internet with no sacrifice of detail.
• Collaborative. The third mode is “collaborative”: it presents a somewhat simplified version of the model enhanced with social tools such as avatars, VOIP, and instant messaging to facilitate the use of the model in teaching and research. Since each model supports the opening of a HTML browser, all the modes are mutually accessible to our subscribers: if the user is in the high resolution mode and wishes to see the archaeological documentation for a window or door, she can go to the global mode to obtain this information. When she is in the collaborative mode and wishes to take a measurement of in a room, she can switch to the high resolution mode.

CH models can be seen in two views: authorial and editorial. In the authorial view, the user sees the model in its original form (i.e., how it was built by a specific creator). In the editorial view, the user sees how the Editorial Board of SAVE has remixed elements of different models of the same CH monument made by two or more authors. The editorial view thus gives the end user the Editorial Board’s judgment of the “best of the best” available in visualizing how a particular CH site or monument should be reconstructed.

How can you contribute to SAVE?

Scholars wishing to publish their work in SAVE should contact the editor-in-chief for guidance about how to submit work for consideration by the editorial board. Please send inquiries to: bernard.d.frischer@gmail.com.

How will the peer-review process work?

Peer-review will pass through three phases:

• Technical review. Your contribution will be studied by SAVE’s technical staff to verify four points: the model is in a supported format (3D Studio Max, Maya, etc.); that it is well-made for efficient operation in real-time; that the requisite metadata, documentation and related article or monograph have been included; and that the standard SAVE intellectual property agreement has been signed.
• Review by subject experts. The work you submit will be examined by at least two scholars in the field using the system of double-blind reviewing: you will not know their identity and they will not know yours. The subject experts will be mark the work as “publish as submitted,” “publishable submit to revision,” or “not publishable.”
• Post-publication peer-review. A blog will be associated with each publication in SAVE, so that SAVE subscribers can comment on the model. The editorial board will monitor the logs to see if any criticisms or suggestions have been posted that might warrant a response by the creator of the model. The creator will have the opportunity to update or correct the model. Alternatively, if the creator decides not to accept a suggested change which the editorial board believes would enhance the model, the editorial board may itself add or commission an alternative version of the model (or of an element in the overall model) that reflects this suggestion (see above under “editorial view”).

Editorial Board

Arne Flaten (Coastal Carolina University): Peer-review

Philippe Fleury (Université de Caen): Roman topography and technology

Bernard Frischer (University of Virginia): Editor-in-chief

Alyson Gill (Arkansas State University): Greek archaeology; peer-review

Gabriele Guidi (Politecnico di Milano): 3D technologies

Yehuda Kalay (University of California, Berkeley): twentieth-century urban and architectural history

Karsten Lambers (University of Bamberg): Precolumbian archaeology in Latin America

Paolo Liverani (Università di Firenze): Classical art and archaeology

Nasser Rabbat (MIT): Islamic sites and monuments

Robert Vergnieux (Université de Bordeaux, CNRS): Egyptian archaeology

Questions & comments.

For further information, please contact Bernard Frischer, editor-in-chief, SAVE, bernard.d.frischer@gmail.com