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Posts from the ‘Editorial and Opinion’ Category

Jan 12

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From So-called #aaafail Back to Publishing

In the Chronicle of Higher Education Hugh Gusterson has published what I think is a clear and useful account of the recent “science” in anthropology dust-up from his perspective as a member of the American Anthropological Association Executive Board.  Many excellent scholars have devoted themselves to trying to make sense of this recent event (generally known by the rather harsh twitter hashtag #aaafail). I appreciated those (especially anthropologists writing online) who addressed the issue thoughtfully.

In addition to being another contribution to the AAA science discussion, Gusterson’s piece is useful as a brief (ethnographic) description of the work of the board in a practical sense. Discussing a range of issues that were on the board’s plate at the time that the revised plan document was approved (issues that seemed more pressing and important that the fateful language changes), Gusterson says the following:

…most of our time in the executive-board meeting, was given over to issues that many of us saw as more urgent than the long-range-planning statement: a detailed review of the association’s budget in a time of national recession; a discussion of our publishing model in a context in which most of the association’s journals operate at a loss and their content is increasingly available free via the Web; an analysis of our publishing partnership with Wiley-Blackwell; a briefing on the introduction of a multimillion-dollar computer program to facilitate the association’s business; a conversation about recurrent issues in organizing the annual meeting and issues that had already arisen with regard to next year’s meeting, in Montreal; a discussion of the search for a new editor of our flagship journal, American Anthropologist; a performance evaluation of the association’s executive director and the staff he oversees; and a tricky discussion about whether, or how, to make available as an archival document a 10-year-old official report of the association’s that had since been repudiated by the membership through a ballot.

This is a complex statement in a complex narrative and I urge readers to consult the original for context. I am interested here only in the passage given in bold (emphasis added). It is unique as a rare glimpse into Executive Board discussions of the AAA publishing program.

It would be possible to discuss the “journals operate at a loss” part. Much discussion among concerned observers of the AAA publishing program has gone into the financial side of this statement and pondering what it would mean to say that the journals operate at a loss.  It is a complex matter and I am not going engage with it here. (Put simply, there are ways of talking about the program that frame it as profitable and there are ways of talking about the program that frame it as loosing money.)

The much less discussed matter is the “their content is increasingly available free via the Web” part. This issue is hardly the focus of Gusterson’s essay and thus I do not want to go overboard, but his account does suggest that this too was a focus of extensive board discussion. If so, that is interesting.  What might it mean to say that much AAA journal content is available free on the web?

The AAA and its publishing partner Wiley charge for access to AAA journal content. The AAA itself is not making it freely available on the web. Officially, the AAA has (as a result of the work of member-advocates during the AnthroSource planning period) a “green” author agreement that does allow authors to post manuscript pre-prints and post-prints online (in institutional repositories, most importantly). It does not (unless something has changed) allow the posting of final publisher’s versions (ex: the final typeset PDF). (See SHERPA/RoMEO for details on the status of the agreement and the meaning of “green,” “pre-print,” and “post-print.”)

More and more AAA journal content probably can be found on the web, but almost none of it has been placed there in accord with the terms of the (rather generous) AAA author agreement. A growing number of AAA authors (some knowingly, some unknowingly) have chosen to make available publishers versions of their articles (etc.) via personal websites or, in some cases, to slip such materials into formal repositories (contrary to repository policies on respecting copyright, in most cases). I have no way of knowing, but my perception is that only a tiny proportion of AAA authors are using tools such as the Science Commons Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine to produce and utilize addendum to the AAA author agreement to allow the kinds of uses of the publisher version that are easily found on the open web.

Possibility one is that the AAA Executive Board, as reflected in Gusterson’s comments, recognizes and is discussing the matter that I have just evoked. That would be interesting. If so, the matter is probably still under consideration (given that there have been no visible actions on this front). From a process point of view, the Executive Board could: (1) change the author agreement to bring it into line with the (not actually legal) practices of more and more AAA authors, (2) begin a process of (a) educating the membership about what they are allowed to circulate on the open web (pre- and post-prints) and not allowed to circulate (published versions) and (b) going after those who are in violation of their signed author agreements (cease and desist letters, take down notices, prosecution, etc.), or (3) recognize the growing gap between law and practice but stay silent about the matter and accept the costs (lawlessness, confusion, erosion of the adopted business model) in exchange for avoiding a new domain of conflict within the association.

A different thing might be happening too. The discussion that I am imagining might be underway might not actually be under way yet.  It might be that the board–like most of the membership–does not yet understand such distinctions as those between pre-prints, post-prints, and publishers versions and their association with terms of art such as green or yellow OA. In this scenario, the board may not realize the massive levels of non-compliance with the author agreement that are becoming characteristic. That there are AAA insiders who themselves appear to be out of compliance with their own author agreements suggests that this may be the case. If this is so, it is unfortunate (but fixable) because knowing the actual terms of art and the actual frameworks in which our publishing work happens is a prelude to effective discussion and policy making.

If Gusterson is right and AAA-owned articles are freely available on the web, then it has to do with the implementation or non-implementation of Executive Board policy. The conversation would be different if 100% of AAA authors were carefully and lawfully exercising their rights to post pre- or post-prints and the field was discovering that it could get along without the value added work associated with final journal production. This might lead to a situation like that found in parts of physics, where a real open access culture built around the circulation of pre-prints had arisen (see Arxiv). What we have now is a situation in which Gusterson is kind of right, but that this situation is a consequence of a mix of misunderstanding or disobedience in an environment in which too few rank and file anthropologists understand the framework in which they are operating.

Elsewhere in the scholarly communications system, copyright holders are increasingly using strong digital rights management technologies to stop the proliferation of in-copyright journal articles on the open web. As an advocate for open access scholarly communication, that is the last thing that I would wish to advocate for the AAA, but I also am a believer in having, knowing, and following sensible rules that we can all live with. If AAA authors are going continue doing what they are now doing (and it has numerous upsides and numerous downsides), I would like them to know that they are breaking their author agreements or, if the AAA Executive Board does not see what they are doing as breaking their author agreements, then the Board should clarify (in SHERPA/RoMEO and in public declarations) that the AAA policy explicitly allows the free circulation by authors of their publisher versions in not-for-profit ways on the open web.

If the Executive Board wishes to slow or even stop the circulation of AAA owned intellectual property outside the subscription and pay-per-view frameworks that it has put into place, it has the power to do so. If it instead wishes to foster such free circulation, there are strategies that can be adopted towards such ends as well, but they are out of alignment with our business model. Now we have, in some ways, the worst of all possible worlds with some people reading and (over) complying with their author agreements (and thus, in practice, not sharing online at all [even though they could via pre- and post-prints]), some people misunderstanding their author agreements and doing things that they shouldn’t, and others adopting an “I’ll do what I want until someone tells me to stop.” approach. Legal anthropologists have plenty of experience with such gray zone situations, but they also are aware of the costs and harm that they can produce.

If AAA copyrighted material are going to purposefully circulate on the open web outside the subscription and pay-per-view framework, the best way for this to happen is in an environment in which rights are clear and in a framework in which authors are encouraged to place their materials (pre-prints, post-prints, or published versions as allowed for) in robust, durable, and interoperable repositories (whether subject or institutional ones) rather than posting them to transitory departmental and personal websites. I understand the case against (and for) the proliferation of such green OA circulation. The state of actual practices, association business choices, and the (often misunderstood) existing author agreement point to an association-wide discussion that is still not happening in any widespread way. As Gusterson’s comment suggests, perhaps it has begun in the Executive Board.

Jan 6

Lorenz Khazaleh on Public Anthropology

A valuable commentary on strategies for fostering a more public anthropology by Lorenz Khazaleh.

Dec 11

Wenner-Gren Foundation Takes Major Step for Open Access

Anthropologists have reason to cheer with news from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research that the biannual symposium proceedings published by the Foundation as an extension of the journal Current Anthropology will now be made available in open access form. Wenner-Gren Foundation President Leslie Aiello describes the move and the rationale behind it in a [toll wall protected] contribution to the latest issue of Current Anthropology [volume 51, page 727, December 2010] See: DOI: 10.1086/657920.

The two supplements published in 2010 are freely available via the journal’s page at the University of Chicago Press.  Formatted like the journal, these are book-sized edited collections organized thematically. Discussing the history of the Foundation’s Symposium efforts, Aiello writes:

The first Wenner-Gren Symposium was in 1952, and since then, more than 170 symposia and workshops have been sponsored by the foundation. Many of these have resulted in landmark edited volumes that have made significant contributions to the development of our field (see http://www.wennergren.org/history). In today’s electronic age, the foundation wants to ensure that its symposia continue to have a significant impact and reach the broadest possible international audience. We believe that open-access publication in Current Anthropology is the best way to achieve this goal.

This is wonderful news and a real advancement. One more reason to say thank you to Wenner-Gren for its dedication to the discipline of anthropology. Wenner-Gren joins other scholarly foundations working to advance the cause of a more just, rational, and effective system of scholarly communication.

Note:  While there is not a press-release on the Foundation website regarding this shift, there is a discussion of the move to publishing the symposium in connection with the journal (rather than as edited books). This announcement also discusses several recent symposium volumes.

Oct 24

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From Reciprocity and Hierarchy (1944)

I spent Friday and Saturday discussing the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss at a fine conference organized by Raymond DeMallie and Joëlle Bahloul. This brought me back to an essay that I have long valued. Here is a taste.

A perhaps one-sided analysis of the dual organization has too often put the emphasis on the principle of reciprocity as its main cause and result. It is well to remember that the moiety system can express, not only mechanisms of reciprocity but also relations of subordination. But, even in these relations of subordination, the principle of reciprocity is at work; for the subordination itself is reciprocal: the priority which is gained by one moiety on one level is lost to the opposite moiety on the other. Political primacy has to be paid at the price of a subordinate place in the system of generations.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1944) “Reciprocity and Hierarchy”

Wink.

Or perhaps blink.

Sep 14

The Pioneer Age of Internet Video (2005-2009)

The transformation described by Adam Fish in this Savage Minds post can almost certainly be generalized even further to other mediated realms of communication. The Pioneer Age of Internet Video (2005-2009)

Sep 12

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Ignored: past participle, past tense of ig·nore (Verb) Refuse to take notice of or acknowledge

In a recent comment on a Savage Minds post by Chris Kelty,  I asserted that there is a disconnect within the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in that the organization often (and I think sincerely) calls upon the membership at-large to collectively fact-find, discuss, weigh, evaluate, and solve big questions that are before the Association but then does little to actually attend to the efforts or inputs that follow from such promptings. I think that I am obligated to make clear why I think this.

Weblogs (blogs) provide a distinctive domain for collective discussion, one that some people appreciate, others do not appreciate, and others still do not know much about.  While I think that a noteworthy amount of useful conversation about AAA governance, policy formulation, and problem solving has unfolded on various weblogs without prompting any signs of engagement by AAA leaders, it is probably not fair to assume that this audience knows about and is comfortable operating within this venue. While it is strange, I am not going to hold up the ignoring of weblog discussions as evidence for my point.  (Such evidence is particularly easy to amass if anyone wanted to catalog it.)

Here are a three large scale interventions that have provoked remarkable silence. I offer them as illustration for my contention. None are blog based.

Kelty et al.’s “Anthropology of/in Circulation: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies” appeared in the pages of one of the society’s most prestigious journals–Cultural Anthropology–and was intended to be a direct and useful contribution to a discussion of vital importance within the association. While it prompted significant discussion outside of the AAA, this article-length work precipitated, to my knowledge as a co-author, no rebuttal, no acknowledgment, no nothing in a AAA context. Being disagreed with completely and fully would have been a meaningful experience. Going unnoticed or being ignored is dumbfounding, especially when we describe our association’s journals as the key means by which we communicate with one another as professionals about those matters that are of shared professional interest.

As the person who was then editor of Museum Anthropology (another AAA journal), I played (with a sense of deep sadness) a key role in one of the most dramatic and durably transformative moments in the history of scientific/scholarly communication in anthropology.  It was time consuming and really terrible and terrifying but I tried to do it in a way that would be therapeutic, as well as fair to all involved. In publishing our field’s first Expression of Concern (and not a temporary one but a eternal one), I pleaded in the pages of the journal that the CSC (now ACC) would take this moment seriously and reflect on where we were and where we were headed. If the matter has been given even a moment of consideration, this would be a relief and would come as news to me.

In an email, I recently asked Kim Fortun (outgoing co-editor of Cultural Anthropology) if anyone had addressed her thoughtful memo (available here, see discussion here) to CFPEP. She reported that she had received no reply at all, but that the Section Assembly-based committee (or task force) of which she is now a part had been asked by CFPEP to create a new memo that integrated her memo with the six or so other memos compiled by other committee members on behalf of their constituencies. I wonder how this would even be done? If we imagine a brief memo from one member who is reporting that her/his section and colleague-friends are all really happy with the new revenues that our association publishing program is generating for sections, does that just negate Kim’s hard work bringing attention to voices that express concern rather than happiness? Why wouldn’t someone involved in vital decision making not want to read and at least acknowledge and think about the memo that Kim wrote? It sure looks and feels like Kim is being ignored. As co-editor of Cultural Anthropology, she (and her co-editor Mike Fortun) worked as hard as one can work to advance the cause of this AAA journal and the association as a whole. Along the way, she gained important insights that make her a better, and more useful, member of the association.  Is there any sense in alienating her and driving her out of involvement in the association by not acknowledging, let alone reading, a report that she clearly invested hours and hours in compiling for the sake of the association? Because she took her job seriously and polled a wide circle of colleagues, the matter is even more grave. This (risk of alienation) does not make sense, even if substantive analysis were to show that every concern raised by Kim and the many people that she consulted with were unequivocally unfounded.

This dynamic has already harmed the AAA. As a final piece of evidence, I propose the following test based on the specific case that I have followed most closely–the scholarly communications/publishing program. Find the early programmatic (and inspirational) documents about AnthroSource in Anthropology News and elsewhere.  Make a list of people involved in the early days, then search for them now.  How many are still involved in AAA scholarly communications policy?  Are they still talking publicly about AAA scholarly communications policy or have they moved on to other pastures?

I deeply appreciate all the good work that the AAA does to support me today and all that it has done for me in the past (meetings, news of the field, advocacy, employment listings, etc.). It is an important organization to which I have tried to contribute meaningfully. It is this durable sense of investment, appreciation, and concern that prompts my observation. When other commentators take an increasingly sarcastic, impatient, and confrontational tone in their one-sided dialogues on AAA policy, I understand this (and they may understand it differently) as a common human response to the perception of being ignored. The frustration of being un-acknowledged is amplified with each new call for feedback, input, and involvement.

Coda: While I purposefully did not discuss this dynamic as it relates to weblog discussion, I think that it is fair to say that when the AAA staff posts an item on its own blog for the overt purpose of promoting discussion, that item and the discussion that it generates should be entered into the official record of the society’s business and should attended to in the same way that a official letter, memo, or other communication ideally should. The headnote for William Davis’ August 31, 2010 post to the AAA weblog says: “If you have any comments, you are welcome to post them below.” What is the status of these comments?  Who might be expected to read them? Will they serve any purpose? It is a very rare blog that actually attracts comments from readers. This does not mean that it is unread or unappreciated. (I appreciate the AAA blog and am grateful for its introduction.) Blogs that do attract (sensible) comments are ones managed by people trying to cultivate discussion. This is very, very hard work and I do not expect anyone to invest that kind of labor in the AAA weblog, but when a call for comments actually generates them, there should be some signal as to what the nature of the transaction is. One minimal way in which this can be achieved is by someone (the chair of a relevant committee, for instance) joining the conversation at least to say “thanks all for your comments, I will make sure that they get shared with the other members of the [relevant] committee.” Scan the AAA blog looking for posts with more than one comment.  They are few and far between, thus the response to William Davis’ August 31, 2010 post is noteworthy. Did that exchange increase or decrease alienation among those who participated as commentators or readers? If, in such episodes, facilitating more discussion is going to generate more alienation, it is not a good path to take. It would be better to turn the comments function off (both literally and figuratively) and to ask for input less rather than more often.

Sep 7

Oklahoma’s Drinking Water Problems, Then and Now

This is not a good news post. Last year I experimented with Connexions publishing a collection of essays by Frank G. Speck on life in Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory (=Oklahoma before statehood). Among these essays was a piece titled “Observations in Oklahoma and Indian Territory.” Like me, I think Speck loved Oklahoma but also understood that the state’s problems, both their causes and their potential solutions, would need to be spoken of honestly. Describing the region at a time in which almost no Americans knew anything about it, he spoke about the problem of clean drinking water. He wrote:

In most parts of the territories a fairly healthy atmosphere prevails, except in the timbered and swampy tracts. Noxious insects are everywhere more abundant than welcome, and venomous snakes are not unknown. The chief hygienic drawbacks are, however, the poor water and the lack of town drainage. It is a fact, although hotly disputed by those who have interests at stake, that the water of at least three-fourths of the entire region is totally unfit for human consumption. Most of it is offensive to both nose and mouth, the physical attestation of which fact is the appearance of those who use it. As to town drainage, I will only state that in the western section of Indian Territory the shallowness of the surface soil makes it impossible to have refuse pits of sufficient depth for decency, and even where this does not hold true the consistency of the turf impedes the drainage of fluids to such an extent that in places a pit will hold water about as well as a vessel. The difficulty is increased by the levelness of the land. See: http://cnx.org/content/m22434/latest/

I was reminded of Speck’s observation when reading the following news report from today (September 7, 2010). This report describes the health consequences of drinking the water in exactly the same part of the state (the Cross-Timbers region) about which Speck was writing in particular. Here are two excerpts from the whole story. Such stories have long been common news items in Oklahoma.

Nearly 140 public water supplies are operating in consistent violation of state and federal drinking water codes, pumping water containing chemicals linked to cancer, infant illness, and damage to the liver and nervous system.
…
Arthur Platt with Logan County Rural Water District No. 2 said he knew something had to change when his customers started coming to the water district office for bottled water. “The things in the water weren’t good for you,” said Platt, who’s worked for the water district since 1986. The district pumps water to areas in and around Cashion and Crescent. Platt said the water started testing high for nitrates in 2001. The compound is naturally occurring and leaches into the water supply from manures and fertilizers. “They can hurt pre-born babies, older people, and result in blue babies,” Platt said. “So we had to start giving people bottled water if they wanted it.” Blue baby syndrome is the result of a baby’s blood not being able to carry enough oxygen. Excessive nitrates in drinking water can even kill infants. Read the full story here: http://www.newsok.com/many-oklahoma-water-providers-told-to-clean-up-their-supply/article/3492219#ixzz0yqYSTrgO
…
Oklahoma is a beautiful place. While its history is more tragic than it should have been, it is a place rich in cultural heritage and cultural diversity. People there deserve for life to be better than it is. There are many great people working to make the state a better place, but deep problems persist, in part, because some of the state’s leaders would rather deny the existence of long-term structural problems rather than acknowledge and address them. The state’s congressional delegation and senators exemplify the problem, but it is characteristic of all levels of government, as well as in civil society.

Sep 3

Utah State University Press = Win

Take a break from grouchy discussions of scholarly communication, scholarly societies, and the destruction of the university press system and feast your eyes on a big pile of good news.  Utah State University Press is not only not going away (as it might have, as reported in IHE here) but it is moving on to great things as part of the USU Library. Its even better than I had hoped.  There will be more great news in the future, I think, but for now check this out.  Like old fashioned books?  They will sell them to you. Like e-books?  They will sell them to you? Like free PDFs of books? They will just give you some! How great is that?

For my folklore colleagues especially, check it out.  Among the OA offerings are:

Books from across USUP’s lists are available OA in the DigitalCommons@USU system. History and literature of the North American West, Mormon history, and works on teaching writing are other areas of strength in addition to folklore studies.

Three cheers for Utah State University Press. When other small university presses are dead or headed in the wrong direction, here is one that is finding a path to new accomplishment.  Thank you Utah State University administrators!

Sep 3

42 Cents? Really?

When Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Education published an article about Museum Anthropology Review (MAR) on February 28, 2008 he cited roughly the same costs comparison that Alex (Rex) Golub has  noted in his September 2, 2010 Savage Minds post. At least a few commentators on the IHE story in 2008 questioned the validity of the ridiculous figure that was being attributed to (and by) me as the (then) cost of publishing MAR.  I should have explained it then but Golub has given me a second chance. (thanks!)  Here goes as quickly as I am able.

As I noted in discussing Bill Davis’ recent post, most journals edited by employed scholars benefit from some kind of subsidies. Usually a rich and diverse array of subsidies. As with my earlier editing of Museum Anthropology, Museum Anthropology Review has benefited in a variety of ways from my being employed at Indiana University Bloomington. As things stand in 2010, the most important subsidy for the journal is the remarkable-super-awesome support provided to the journal by the Indiana University Blooming Libraries (and Librarians!) through the IUScholarWorks program.  The IUB Libraries are now MAR‘s publisher. They make this possible with the use of an amazing open source software program called Open Journal Systems (it does editorial work flow and publishing) and, very importantly, significant (but not insane) amounts of technical (and librarian-skills) support.  Set this wonderful background aside because it is not relevant to the source of the 42 cent thing.

It was the launch of the OJS-based, IUB Libraries-published instance of MAR that the IHE story was profiling/discussing. In other words, that story was about the version of MAR that exists today. In the IHE story I was quoted (accurately) as saying I spent “about $20” last year to publish a journal reaching many more people [than were being reached by Museum Anthropology].  What this meant literally, was that I spent about $20 out of my own pocket in 2007 to publish the content issued during 2007. This was the first year of a thing in the world called Museum Anthropology Review. What were the these costs?  I would have to take more time than I have now to figure out what went into the $20 figure, but I think that it was only a single expense (getting an ISSN is free, btw).  It was to purchase the domain name http://museumanthropology.net and to map it onto the free WordPress.com site that was used to get MAR up and running on the cheap.

That was it.  All other costs came were Indiana University Bloomington supports (thanks IU!).  For doubts and grouchiness as well as a fruitful discussion from IHE commentators on the economics of open access see most of the 19 comments that appeared in the wake of the IHE story. All I want to say about these comments now is that I never tried to suggest that the total cost of publishing a gold OA journal was $20 per year. I think that I have been completely obsessive about endlessly flagging for notice the important subsidies that host institutions provide to the publishing processes as hosts to academic editors. I discussed this issue in AAA editors meetings and I have spoken and written of them often. It is why I try to say thank you to the IUB Library staff at least once a week. (thank you!)  Put most simply in the MAR case, for the period from 2007 to 2010, those (library, department, college) subsidies (combined with a free blogging platform in 2007 and an open source software program in 2008-2010) were (together with the generous help of an authorial and peer-review community and a great editorial board) all that was required to publish MAR. It is likely that MAR‘s subsidy model will change and new partners will be hopefully be recruited in consortial fashion to help extend and expand the work we are doing, but what we have now is very stable and (I think) very successful. The IUScholarWorks team and I have plans to do a careful cost analysis of how much it costs to make MAR happen but it is undeniable that the costs are many orders of magnitude less than any current AAA publication. And they are being willingly taken up by the best research library in the United States. Why? Because the system we have known is broken and the librarians at IU want to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Oh yeah. And the journal is freely available to rich and poor.

To finish this up.  Golub is citing, for his MAR cost information, not the IHE story but the paper that I gave at a conference on circulation (ie. The Form of Value in Globalized Traditions) at the Ohio State University that was organized by Dorothy Noyes and Charles Briggs (thanks go to my hosts). This paper [Our Circulatory System (or Folklore Studies Publishing in the Era of Open Access, Corporate Enclosure and the Transformation of Scholarly Societies] was circulated via my website. The per page cost figure ($202) that I cited there for Museum Anthropology were my own estimates of the per page costs during the time of the publishing contract with the University of California Press. (Insert expression of deep appreciation to the nice people at UC Press Journals here.) Those figures were available to me as editor and were not covered by a confidentiality agreement (as my time as a Wiley editor is). At the time from which they come, everyone in the AAA was doing everything possible to make sense of the costs associated with AAA journal publishing because these costs were being paid directly by individual publishing sections.  The Council for Museum Anthropology had charged me with figuring out how to make Museum Anthropology work or to prepare for what to do when it died a financial death.

The paragraph in which I cite the $202 per page cost and the loss figure of $79 per page for Museum Anthropology was followed by the paragraph where I mention the 42 cents per article cost for Museum Anthropology Review. Unlike now, MAR did not (in its 2007 WordPress guise) have pages. It just had digital “entries” or (blog posts). This cost was (roughly, if memory serves) calculated by dividing the $20 out of pocket cost by the number of items (versus pages)  published that year at the time I made these calculations.  The more one published, the lower the per item cost would be.  I acknowledge that this has a rhetorical dimension, but that does not change the facts of the matter.  MAR reached and reaches a vast number of people and costs very little.  While MAR matured from its WordPress format (see the legacy site here) to the use of grown up, full-functioned Open Journal Systems, the WordPress version of MAR inspired Trickster Press (for instance) to shift publication of Folklore Forum to a similar WordPress arrangement.  This costs nothing and allows for the publication of color images, video, audio, conference posters, etc.–lots of good stuff.  Like MAR version 1.0 Folklore Forum content is preserved reliably in library approved ways in IUScholarWorks Repository (which uses DSpace and is fully compatible with Google Scholar).

This post is not intended as a complete unpacking of the history of Museum Anthropology Review.  That can come later.  I hope that it does explain the cost structure of the journal and contextualize the $20 or 42 cent business.

For those following the AAA story line, I will say one more thing.  Museum Anthropology Review is many things.  One of these is a purposeful experiment designed to generate reliable research findings on the viability of gold open access publishing in anthropology and neighboring fields.  It is not rocket science to see that it is structured to provide a very easy to grasp comparison with Museum Anthropology. (I did all that I could to succeed with Museum Anthropology and I am doing all that I can to succeed with MAR. The natural experiment aspect was highlighted in the IHE story.) MAR was founded with the blessing of the Council for Museum Anthropology as a possible successor to Museum Anthropology had that journal died during the section/cost crisis that preceded the Wiley partnership.

The deal with Wiley meant that Museum Anthropology would not end and, for the time being, it would continue as it had been. As a person who gave a vast amount to save that journal, I am glad that it still exists. My happiness in this is greatly reduced though knowing what I sacrificed to my Dean and others in order to gather additional subsidies aimed at balancing its books AND by my bitterness (yes, it is bitterness) at having these subsidies (and self-sacrifices of a significant professional sort) enclosed by Wiley and the AAA Executive Board without my having any voice in the matter.

So.  Museum Anthropology Review is, as Golub has sought to argue, a (modest and fallible) demonstration that another world is possible.  I cannot speak for them, but every sign suggests that the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries would have been happy to publish Museum Anthropology just as it now publishes Museum Anthropology Review.  Had such an alternative future been realized, Museum Anthropology might have generated no revenues, but it also might have generated no costs.  And, its content would have been freely available to everyone with the capacity to get online.

Neither MAR nor Museum Anthropology are flagship journals with impact factor rankings (yet).  It is easy to imagine that the American Ethnologist (for instance) somehow just has to be different, more complicated, more expensive.  But if it were published using Open Journal Systems in a AAA+Library partnership in an open access format available to all of the world, it would not loose its status as a premier journal with an impressive impact factor ranking.  It would not have to stop publishing four issues a year. The best authors and peer-reviewers and editors would still, presumably, want to be involved with it.  There would be additional costs, but they would be totally addressable with dues money and other subsidies. (For example, AE does and MAR does not yet use DOI numbers. This is a cost and benefit that MAR needs to start taking on soon.)

Anyone who has read this far belongs to the choir and I will stop preaching now. My thanks go to everyone who is working to solve the massive problems that the scholarly communication system and the scholarly society system and the research library system are facing.

Aug 28

Noyes on the Oversimplications of Cultural Property and Heritage Policy

An important working paper by my friend Dorry Noyes presenting alternatives to the conceptual oversimplifications common in cultural property and cultural heritage policy has just been circulated by the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Cultural Property at the University of Göttingen. Help make the argument even stronger with your comments and feedback here: http://www.cultural-property.org/2010/cp-101-how-traditional-culture-works

Lots to think with and work on.

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