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Dec 21

Wanted: Anthropology Minded Museum Directors

There are a number of museum directorships of relevance to anthropology and folklore studies open right now. The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University and the Museum of Anthropology at Northern Illinois University are among them.  Most relevant to me, because the museum is so central to my graduate teaching and my collections research, is the Mathers Museum of World Cultures at Indiana University. I especially hope that a large group of strong candidates apply for the Mathers Museum position. It will be exciting to see where each of these institutions head when they welcome their new leaders.

Nov 29

Speaking of Society-University Partnerships, Check out what the Linguistic Society of America is Doing

Speaking (in my previous post) of scholarly society-university partnerships to advance non-toll access scholarly communications, check out what the Linguistic Society of America is doing in its eLanguage program. With partners, the LSA is “co-publishing” six gold OA journals and facilitating access to the archives for two more (IPrA Papers in Pragmatics, which became Pragmatics. Note that IPrA Papers in Pragmatics was founded and edited (1987-1990) by linguistic anthropologists Alessandro Duranti and Bambi Schieffelin.).  The other journals are Constructions, Dialogue & Discourse, Journal of Experimental Linguistics, Journal of Mesoamerican Languages and Linguistics, Linguistic Issues in Language Technology, and Semantics and Pragmatics.

In addition to a range of LSA and non-LSA affiliated groups, university/government partners behind these journals include:  the Ministry of Science and Research of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Stanford University, MIT, and University of Texas-Austin.

I feel foolish that I am only learning about this amazing effort now. (I have been away from my own linguistic anthropology work for some time…) A full prospectus (dated Septemebr 15, 2006!!!) is accessible here on the LSA website. The journal portal itself is here at http://www.elanguage.net/.

The effort appears to be thriving.  Congratulations to the LSA and its partners!  (I am going to have to weave this effort into my revision of my AAA paper on society partnerships.)

Nov 28

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MLA Parternering with CUNY in Important Scholarly Communications Initiative: Commons in a Box

On the basis of my work on the Open Folklore project, I have spoken on a number of occasions in recent weeks about potential and power of scholarly societies partnering directly with universities in the development of tools, protocols, strategies, and projects in the scholarly communications domain. Along these lines, I am especially interested in the news that the Modern Language Association will be a partner in the Commons in a Box project announced by The City University of New York. This project brings together the open source tools already being used by CUNY Academic Commons and will make them available and easily installable at other institutions. For the MLA and its 30K+ members, these software tools will be the basis for MLA Commons. Read all about it in Audrey Watter’s story at Inside Higher Education.  Congratulations CUNY! Congratulations MLA members!

For an account of my presentation to the Digital Anthropology panel at the recent AAA meetings, where I spoke about university library+scholarly society partnerships in light of the AFS+IU Libraries partnership on Open Folklore, see the detailed summary published by Daniel Lende at Neuroanthropology.

Nov 23

ACLS Publishes 2011 Haskins Prize Lecture by Henry Glassie in Print and Video [Free Online]

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has published the textual and video versions of the 2011 Haskins Prize Lecture by Henry Glassie, College Professor of Folklore Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington. “Named for the first chairman of ACLS, the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture has as its theme “A Life of Learning.” The lecturer is asked “to reflect on a lifetime of work as a scholar and an institution builder, on the motives, the chance determinations, the satisfactions (and dissatisfactions) of the life of learning, to explore through one’s own life the larger, institutional life of scholarship.”” Professor Glassie delivered his Life of Learning lecture during a meeting of the ACLS in Washington, DC on May 6, 2011. The first folklorist recognized with the Haskins Prize, Professor Glassie was preceded in the lectureship by many scholars of distinction, including William Labov, Clifford Geertz, Natalie Zemon Davis, John Hope Franklin, and Mary R. Haas.

Congratulations again to my friend, colleague, and teacher Henry Glassie on this remarkable honor.

Nov 19

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On Green OA and the Future of AAA Publishing at #AAA2011

Yesterday I participated in the forum on the “Future of AAA Publishing” that was staged during the 2011 American Anthropological Association meetings. I joined this event because I was asked to do so by Michael F. Brown, a fine colleague who would is working hard to be helpful in the organization’s scholarly communications vision quest. My prepared remarks from the event are offered below CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0). Readers of my statement will see that I did not really address the future as much as try to engage the muddled present. I care very much about the future of scholarly communications and am very interested in all the excellent thought that colleagues beyond anthropology and folklore studies are giving to cutting edge discussions of it. The context and venue for my remarks, as well as the five minute time limit on panelist statements, shaped how I used my time. I was trying to serve an educational role. Each panelist had a different piece of the story to reflect upon (association finances, tenure and promotion, international issues, etc.), thus there was not space or audience readiness for more complex matters, such as curatorial models of journal editing, metadata protocols, the weakness of STEM-centered philanthropic efforts in Africa, open source platforms, patron driven acquisition, non-disclosure agreements vis-a-vis big bundle deals, etc. Things are what they are.

Green Open Access Practices

Jason Baird Jackson

I want to thank the organizers of today’s event for their invitation to participate in this discussion. I have had a lot to say elsewhere [ex: my interview with Ryan Anderson on OA and anthropology] about publishing practices in our field and my remarks will be focused on a single node in the larger network of issues. I agreed to take on the slice dealing with green open access practices because this is a realm in which the matters before us are largely no longer policy setting debates but are instead questions of education and implementation. It is in this more modest context that I hope to contribute some observations that may be useful.

Despite organizationally opposing so-called green open access mandates (ex: AAA 2006; Calpestri 2006; Davis 2010), the American Anthropological Association is already a green open access [-friendly] publisher (AAA 2006). I am very proud of the association’s leadership in this regard. We were ahead of the curve when, in 2005, the association adopted an author agreement that allowed association authors to circulate post-prints in conformity with standard green OA practices and in compliance with the mandates that govern the work of some of our colleagues (AAA 2006). In adopting a green author agreement, the AAA joined the approximately 63% of scholarly journals that similarly allow authors to circulate their work down the green open access path (RoMEO 2011). But what does this mean? How does one do it? Read more

Nov 18

On “The Future of AAA Publishing: A Forum for Discussion” #aaa2011

Dear Anthropologists,

How we publish our scholarship impacts how we teach and do research. It affects how we are evaluated. It has direct consequences on life in contemporary communities, including those that ethnographers, linguists, and biological anthropologists study (with) and those who live next to, or possess a connection to, the archaeological sites that we investigate. It also directly affects those whose cash makes the publishing enterprise happen, including very significantly the students whom many of us teach and the would-be students who cannot afford to be taught.

Please consider attending today’s discussion on The Future of AAA Publishing and share your views. The session is 4-0960 and is happening in Convention Center 516D at 1:45 p.m.

I will be trying to explain “green open access” in laypersons terms in five minutes.

See you there.

Jason

Nov 15

Open Access Discussions at #AAA2011 and @savageminds

One last thanks to Ryan Anderson for his interview with me on open access issues. The final third was published today on Savage Minds. I hope that it proves useful to someone. The timing of the interview is great because I will be party to a couple discussions of scholarly communications issues at the American Anthropological Association meetings, which have already begun in Montreal.

In the session Digital Anthropology: Projects and Projections, I will be discussing library-scholarly society partnerships on the basis of my work with colleagues on the Open Folklore project. This panel is packed with wonderful colleagues and great projects. Thanks go to Mike Fortun for organizing it. It happens Sunday morning.

On Friday I will be part of a forum on The Future of AAA Publishing. I thank the AAA leadership for the invitation to participate in this gathering.

For everyone going to #AAA2011, have a great meeting.

Nov 11

Open Access Interview Part Two @savageminds

Thanks again to Ryan Anderson for working with me on an interview exploring the basic issues relating to open access in anthropology and folklore. The second part of three has now been published on Savage Minds. As always I appreciate Savage Minds for hosting such considerations of these issues.

Nov 9

Leading North American Institutions Endorse the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge

From a SPARC press release circulated today:

Washington, DC – Thirty-three research institutions, associations, and foundations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have made a commitment to Open Access to research by signing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. These top private, public, and non-profit organizations join nearly 300 more from around the world in another clear sign of the growing demand for change in the way scientific and scholarly research results are communicated and maximized. The announcement is made in conjunction with the ninth Berlin conference, at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which opened today.

The Berlin Declaration promotes the Internet as a medium for disseminating global knowledge. Its goal is to make scientific and scholarly research more accessible to the broader public by taking full advantage of the possibilities offered by digital electronic communication. Signatories support actions that ensure the future Web is sustainable, interactive, and transparent – and that content is openly accessible – in order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of knowledge. The leaders of research institutions, libraries, archives, museums, funding agencies, and governments from around the world have signed the Declaration – including CERN, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, and the German Max Planck Society (co-initiator and custodian).

North American signatories now include leading private research institutions (such as Harvard University and Duke University), public research institutions (University of Kansas, University of California-Los Angeles), Canadian research campuses (Concordia University, University of Quebec in Montreal), smaller academic institutions (Oberlin College, Grand Valley State University), non-profit organizations (Alliance for Information Science and Technology Innovation, Science Commons), major library coalitions (SPARC, the Association of Research Libraries, Canadian Library Association), and the Open Society Foundations (architect of the Budapest Open Access Initiative).

The full list is available at http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/signatoren/.

New signatory and Kansas University Provost Jeffrey S. Vitter emphasizes the university has been a leader in the Open Access movement as the first public institution in the United States to adopt a faculty-wide open-access policy. “Signing the Berlin Declaration is another step forward in this effort, and we are pleased to join the many fine institutions that are also committed to Open Access to scholarly research,” said Vitter, who is also speaking as part of this week’s conference.

Duke University’s Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian & Vice Provost for Library Affairs, affirmed that institution’s involvement. “At Duke our interest in Open Access initiatives stems from our long-standing willingness to experiment to find the best models for scholarly communication and from our institutional commitment to putting knowledge in the service of society,” she said. “Signing the Berlin Declaration was a logical extension of commitments and values that we have held for a long time.”

Sean Decatur, Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences at Oberlin College, adds:

“The faculty of Oberlin College have made a commitment to disseminating the results of their research as widely as possible.  That principled commitment is an expression of the view that Open Access to scholarship is an important step for the advancement of knowledge, helping to overcome barriers that restrict, rather than encourage, the sharing of ideas and engagement in discourse.  I am pleased that our faculty is so strongly supportive of Open Access and I am honored to sign the Berlin Declaration on their behalf.”

The cohort of North American signatories to the Berlin Declaration will be saluted at the conference-wide dinner this evening. Registration is full, but interested representatives of the media are invited to contact Jennifer McLennan, Conference Director, with inquiries.

The Berlin 9 Conference is organized by representatives from the science, humanities, research, funding and policy communities, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Marine Biological Laboratory, the Max Planck Society, Association of Research Libraries, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition). It takes place today and tomorrow, November 10.

For more information about the Declaration and how to sign, visit http://www.berlin9.org/about/sign.

For details about the Berlin 9 Conference, visit http://www.berlin9.org.

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Nov 8

Curiously Weak DRM (in University Press-Hosted Companion Websites)

I was just scouting out a new academic book of interest to me using Google Books. I was able to browse chapters, study the table of contents etc. The book is published by one of the largest of the university presses. It can also be browsed in Amazon.com. On a subject where audio and video is relevant, the book has a companion website hosted by the press. Information on this companion website is available in the front mater for the book. Looking at this page in the Google Books representation, I saw the URL followed by:

To accompany “TITLE OF PRINT BOOK BY MAJOR UNIVERSITY PRESS HERE”, we have created a password-protected website where readers can access the recordings linked to the chapters.”

Access with username XXXXX# and password XXXX####.

The user name and password are presented as fixed text in the book and they are visible to everyone via the Google Books version.

What factors could account for the imposition of DRM (Digital Rights Management) in such a weak, permanently affixed, and circumventable form? Did they not put the media on a straight open platform because they promised the rights holders that it would only be available to purchasers of the book? (Including library users.) Are there actual advantages to doing things this way? How reliable a preservation framework is implied by the strategy used by this (very large) university press? Does anyone expect this website to exist and work (via this username and password) ten years from now?  Is this standard operating procedure and I have just not noticed it yet?

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