The scientific journal PALEO was created in 1989 on the initiative of the Société des Amis du Musée National de Préhistoire et de la Recherche Archéologique (SAMRA) and of Jean-Jacques Cleyet-Merle, then the director of the institution. It is now supported and published by the National Museum of Prehistory, as part of its editorial and scientific policy. It had been given a category A ranking by the European Science Foundation (ESF), as part of the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) project, confirmed by that of the Haut Conseil de l’Evaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur (Hcéres), which emphasize a high scientific value.

The PALEO publication is supported by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication -Direction générale des Patrimoines, Service des musées de France and receives funding from the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales of the CNRS (InSHS).

This periodical and annual journal covers the entire field of the Paleolithic on a national and international scale and devotes itself to papers from multidisciplinary specialties connected to prehistoric archaeology: paleoanthropology, study of lithic and bone industries, portable or parietal Paleolithic art, archaeozoology, chronology and absolute dating, physical and biological palaeoenvironments, ethno archaeology, experimental archaeology, etc.

The scientific community contributes massively to its success with a very strong involvement, a guarantee of the quality of the articles’ content.

Indeed, PALEO is organized around three committees: editorial board, reading and scientific committees, made up of leading figures from the world of archaeological research, with a view to institutional fairness: French and foreign universities, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut National de Recherche en Archéologie Préventive (INRAP), Museum d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, etc…

The editorial board which guides the editorial policy under the responsibility of the publication director, Nathalie Fourment, the director of the Museum, carries out peer review, debates around the articles and make proposals for their improvements if necessary. For this, it also relies on a second reviewer chosen from the reading committee, also from the French and international scientific community.

The scientific committee, for its part, embodies the scientific guideline of the journal in its more international dimension; it is the guarantor of the seriousness and quality of the contributions.

The articles are generally published in French, sometimes in English, but always include at least abstracts in these two languages.

The journal is also available in online French and English versions, hosted on the openedition site for international readability. https://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/paleo/

As early as 1990, supplements - monographs, conference proceedings, collective publications, etc. - have enriched this collection with a dozen published works.