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Posts from the ‘Scholarly Societies’ Category

Jun 30

AcademiX Presentations on Open Access Now Online

I am happy to report that the videos from the AcademiX 2010 conference on “Learning in an Open-Access World” are now online.  One can get to them via this page on the MacLearning.org site or one can just go into iTunes University in iTunes and search on AcademiX or a particular presenter’s name. While they are embedded in iTunes, they are free to all those who wish to consult them.  As discussed here earlier, my presentation is titled: “Innovation and Open Access in Scholarly Journal Publishing.” The other presenters and their titles are:

  • John Wilbanks (Creative Commons) Commons-Based Licensing and Scholarship – The Next Layer of the Network
  • Ben Hawkridge (Open University) New Channels for Learning – Podcasting Opportunities for a Distance University
  • Kurt Squire (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Education for a Mobile Generation
  • Nick Shockey (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) The Digital Natives are Getting Restless – The Student Voice of the Open Access Movement
  • Richard E. Miller (Rutgers University) and Paul Hammond (Rutgers University) This is How We Think – Learning in Public After the Paradigm Shift

I hope that our presentations are useful to the community in their this new form. Thank you to Apple for hosting the gathering and making these materials freely available online.

May 29

“…publishers whose commitment to investors competes with the goals of scholars…”

AnthroSource planners explain (ca. 2004) why corporate publishing partners would  compromise AAA values and ethical commitments:

The decision to engage a university press [California] in these processes is consequential in the overall picture of rising costs of scholarly journals [= serials crisis] and indicative of AAA’s commitment to the principles of a scholars’ portal as articulated by librarians in 1999. Importantly, in the agreement with UC Press, AAA retains ownership and control over all substantive elements of the AAA scholarly communications program, including content and pricing. Therefore, AAA will continue to make decisions based on the values of the Association. Other professional societies and associations, including some in related fields of anthropology, have chosen publishers whose commitment to investors competes with the goals of scholars and thereby compromises the ability to create a true scholars’ portal.

The whole hopeful and sensible article is:  Suzanne Calpestri and Bonnie A. Nardi (2004) “Creating a Shared Vision for AnthroSource.” Anthropology News. 45(3):9. The recent history of scholarly communications work in anthropology is full of sad irony. Calpestri was then the chair of the AnthroSource Steering Committee and Nardi was a member of that group. Their article suggests that they were reflecting principles shared by the committee as a whole. The values that they are suggesting are (were?) fundamental to AAA members are (were?): (1) concern about the sustainability of libraries, (2) progressive intellectual property principles (promoting/protecting author’s rights), (3) opposition to corporate enclosure of anthropological scholarship, (4) treating scholarship and government information as a “public good”, (5) resistance to marketing bias, (6) resistance to commercial values, and (7) avoidance of “unfair” user costs.

May 28

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Our Circulatory System (or Folklore Studies Publishing in the Era of Open Access, Corporate Enclosure and the Transformation of Scholarly Societies)

The following essay is adapted from a talk given on March 6, 2009 as part of the symposium “The Form of Value in Globalized Traditions” organized by the Center for Folklore Studies at the Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio. At the time, I discussed my participation in this event here. This essay builds upon three reviews of open access issues in folkloristics that I authored for the weblog Open Access Anthropology in winter 2008 (Jackson 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Inspired this week by the Hacking the Academy project and by Ted Striphas’ recent examination of scholarly communications issues within the field of cultural studies (Striphas 2010a, 2010b), I decided not to leave the essay sitting on the back-burner. In lieu of doing something more formal with it later, I am publishing it here in the hope that it will prove useful to a colleagues in folklore studies and neighboring fields.

Our Circulatory System (or Folklore Studies Publishing in the Era of Open Access, Corporate Enclosure and the Transformation of Scholarly Societies)

Jason Baird Jackson
Indiana University, Bloomington

The system of scholarly communication in which folkloristics is a small but important part is quickly changing in some dramatic ways. The phenomena falling under this rubric become more diverse and interconnected everyday and the good and bad news seems to come at an every quicker rate. To begin with a tangible example, a key publisher in our field and the home to three of its four main English-language introductory textbooks is Utah State University Press. When I prepared this essay in the spring of 2009, our field feared that the press would cease operations in the context of its university’s response to the current global economic crisis (Howard 2009; Jaschik 2009; Spooner 2009). On the brink of disappearance, Utah State University Press was instead made a unit of its university library (Utah State University 2009). It is not unique in undergoing such a dramatic transition. The present economic climate will almost certainly accelerate further various processes of change that were well already underway. Many of these shifts are positive, but whether for the good or for the bad, they are prompting some fundamental reconsiderations of: (1) of the genres of scholarly production, (2) of the paths down which we circulate our work, (3) of the publics whom we seek to address, (4) of the hierarchies of value that we used to judge and reward good work, (5) of the partners with whom we collaborate, (6) of the technologies that we harness, and (7) of the means by which we pay the bills.
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May 17

AcademiX 2010: Learning in an Open-Access World

The second conference of the week was AcademiX 2010, an event sponsored by Apple and MacLearning.org (an Apple affiliate organization comprised of people interested in educational uses of Apple technology). The event’s complex structure made it a real learning experience for me. I had not previously participated in an event of this type. I was at Northwestern University, one of two primary sites for the conference. The other main site was at MIT. These two sites were connected with each other, with the Apple HQ in California, and with secondary sites at Duke University, San Diego State University, the University of Kansas, the University of Minnesota, and the University of New Mexico. Beyond these physical conference sites, there were a great many conference participants experiencing the conference online from their desktops. Video and audio linked all of these places and people together.

The focus of the event was “Learning in an Open-access World.” My mandate was to speak about academic open access in the scholarly communications sense relating to peer-reviewed scholarly literature, but the program was broader than this area. John Wilbanks (Creative Commons) spoke of “Commons-Based Licensing and Scholarship: The Next Layer of the Network.” Ben Hawkridge (Open University) presented “New Channels for Learning: Podcasting Opportunities for a Distance University.” Kurt Squire (University of Wisconsin-Madison) discussed the findings of his research on “Education for a Mobile Generation.” Nick Shockey (SPARC) presented “The Digital Natives Are Getting Restless: the Student Voice of the Open Access Movement.” In the final slot, Paul Hammond (Rutgers University and Richard Miller (Rutgers University) co-presented “This is How We Think: Learning in Public After the Paradigm Shift.”

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May 15

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Scholarly Publishing and Scholarly Values Revisited

This is a note (1 of 2) to report on my two speaking events this week. I had wanted to write more of them, but business and a weak internet connection at my hotel have kept me from it until now. Here are some notes on the first of these two events.

Earlier in the week I was a guest of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I had been invited to be the keynote speaker for a ” A Forum for Authors and Creators of Academic Works.” The event was titled: Scholarly Publishing and Scholarly Values: Choosing our Future and it was organized by a great group of UMN folks committed to work on scholarly communications issues. It was an honor to be asked to participate in this event and I learned a great deal from my time talking with everyone there. On Monday night I was treated to a wonderful meal and a small group discussion of the UMN campus context and big picture of scholarly communications at the university. On Tuesday at lunch, I met with the UMN Scholarly Communications Collaborative and we had a pleasant meal filled with a great and (for me) very informative conversation about changes and developments in scholarly communication. After lunch was the event itself. I spoke of my experiences working as a scholarly editor trying to make sense of the changing publishing landscape, with special attention to open access efforts and the factors that are shaping them. I offered a number of provocations/predictions and tried to address the questions that were posed for the event as a whole (listed here). The event was recorded and streamed to folks who could not fit into the room at the library. It is now available online at: https://umconnect.umn.edu/p48935637/ An important part of the forum was hearing from three faculty discussants and participating in a wide-ranging discussion with the in-person and online audiences.

One of the discussants was Gabriel P. Weisberg, a senior art historian at UNM who has been very involved in the founding and continuing good work of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture.  This is an impressive gold open access journal now publishing its 9th volume. Professor Weisberg described the history of the journal, its successes and niche, and reflected upon questions of long-term sustainability in OA journals published outside the framework of commercial or society publishing.

Another discussant was Neil E. Olszewski, a UMN professor of plant biology. He provided a scholarly society perspective, reflecting on his work as a member of the publications committee of the American Society of Plant Biologists, a society that is confronting the same issues that are posing challenges for those North American scholarly societies who have come to depend on publishing revenue to support non-publishing activities. Professor Olszewski is also the incoming chair of the UMN library committee, a parallel role to that which I have served in at IUB over the past year.

The final discussant was geneticist Stephen C. Ekker. In addition to publishing extensively in the gold OA journal PLoS One, he is the Editor-in-Chief for Zebrafish, a journal published by one of the remaining small science publishers Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

With this rich and diverse background, the panelists made a range of important observations on the changing landscape of scholarly communications and were able to very effectively engage with the excellent questions posed by the audience. I learned a great deal from their observations and appreciate their generous response to my own reflections.

My thanks go to Dean of the Libraries Wendy Pradt Lougee, to her exceptionally talented staff and colleagues, to the UMN Provost and other event sponsors, and to the engaged audience that came out for this event. The organizers did a wonderful job and it was an honor to visit such a dynamic scholarly community.

May 2

Cultural Subjects and Objects: The Legacy of Franz Boas and Its Futures in Anthropology, Academe, and Human Rights

In April 2008, I had the honor of participating in a symposium organized for the spring meeting of the American Philosophical Society held at the APS’s campus in Philadelphia. The APS Library holds many archival collections of great relevance to my research and its Phillips Fund has been a crucial source of support for my work and for that of students with whom I work. The symposium was titled: “Cultural Subjects and Objects: The Legacy of Franz Boas and Its Futures in Anthropology, Academe, and Human Rights” and it was organized on behalf of the membership by Carol Greenhouse and timed to commemorate the sesquicentennial of Franz Boas’ birth. Boas’ papers are curated by the APS and they are absolutely crucial sources for the history of anthropology and American intellectual and political life more broadly. The APS thus has a long history of engagement with Boas’ work.

Professor Greenhouse generously recruited me to the symposium relatively late in the planning process, after a previously committed (and much more senior and distinguished) scholar needed to withdraw from participation for personal reasons. This was a wonderful opportunity for me. I was eager to reflect upon the contemporary salience of Boas’ work for my own and attendance at an APS meeting is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I was able to share my reflections with an audience that included not only distinguished anthropologists such as Ward Goodenough and Regna Darnell but also the leaders of intellectual life in the United States more broadly. It was simply amazing to be listened to respectfully by a hall full of APS members and to be asked questions by scholars of such breadth and sophistication. Howard Gardner was among those who posed questions after my talk and, because I was speaking of a legal questions, Judith Resnik and Judge David S. Tatel were among the jurists who kindly invited me to join them for lunch to struggle with making sense of cultural property issues and to discuss cases in American Indian law. As a speaker at the conference, I was a guest of the society and was able to enjoy other presentations on the program. I heard amazing presentations on a staggering range of topics. The most memorable was by Bonnie L. Bassler, a molecular biologist whose presentation on cell to cell communication in bacteria was a revelation and a demonstration of how good an effective teacher can be. (She went on to make a similar presentation as a TED Talk in February 2009.)

The Boas Symposium included a moving introduction by Professor Greenhouse and four presentations. Lee Baker spoke on “Franz Boas and His “Conspiracy” to Destroy the White Race.” James A. Boon presented “On Alternating Boasians: Generational Connections.” Nicholas B. Dirks offered “Reflections on Fieldwork in University Administration: The Liberal Arts in Global Perspective.” My own presentation was titled “Boasian Ethnography and Contemporary Intellectual Property Debates.”

I am recalling all of this history now because I am happy to report that the symposium has now been published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. It appears in the April 2010 issue, which is volume 154, number 1. While the Proceedings eventually appear in JSTOR, they are available freely and immediately online from the APS website. The APS publication staff does a wonderful job editing the Proceedings and they are beautifully produced. Articles are provided to the world (open access!) in PDF format. (The titles of Professors Baker and Dirks presentations are somewhat changed in publication.)

My thanks go to the members and officers of the APS, as well as to Professor Greenhouse, for including me in these efforts. If anyone is interested in my own paper, it can be found here (pdf). It is my first real attempt at discussing intellectual property issues in light of my Oklahoma ethnography and Boasian work on “incorporeal property.”

Mar 5

CMA Seeks Proposals for Invited Sessions at AAA 2010

Council for Museum Anthropology members are invited to submit session proposals for consideration for CMA sponsorship. Sessions sponsored by CMA are assured a place in the annual meeting program. Any topic relating to museum anthropology will be considered, but sessions that speak to broad issues in the field or engage the AAA membership more directly in issues of museum practice or representation are particularly solicited. Please send a session abstract and list of proposed speakers (need not be confirmed yet) to Candace Greene, CMA VP, at greenec@si.edu. Information exchange about sessions that are still in development is also welcome. Our goal is to continue to develop a robust discourse around museum anthropology as  part of the AAA annual meeting program.

Jan 11

Call For Book Proposals: Mellon Funded Project for First Books

[from an AFS announcement]

Call for Book Proposals

The University of Illinois Press, the University Press of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin Press, in cooperation with the American Folklore Society and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, are collaborating to host an author’s workshop at the 2010 conference of the American Folklore Society for authors working on their first book. Up to six authors will be selected to participate in a full day of intensive activities devoted to critiquing and developing their individual projects. Workshop activities will include one-on-one mentoring sessions with editors and senior scholars and group discussions of revision and editing strategies, publishing processes, and project critiques. A modest stipend will be provided to participants to help defray the costs of attending the workshop.

This opportunity is open only to authors preparing their first books. Projects must be single-authored, nonfiction books based on folklore research. Edited volumes, photography collections with minimal text, and memoirs will not be considered.

Projects selected for the workshop will be candidates for publication in the Presses’ new collaborative series, Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World, which aims to publish exceptional first books that emphasize the interdisciplinary and/or international nature of the field of folklore. Within the series, each Press will focus on specific aspects of folklore studies related to its areas of expertise: Illinois on gender and queer studies, world folk cultures, and multiculturalism as manifested in forms of vernacular expression such as music, dance, and foodways; Mississippi in folk art, American folk music, African American studies, popular culture, and Southern folklife; and Wisconsin in folklore studies that intersect with Upper Midwest cultures, Irish/Irish-American studies, Jewish studies, Southeast Asian studies, gay/lesbian studies, foodways, and travel. Applicants may indicate in their proposal whether they have a preference of publisher.

Proposals should be submitted via e-mail between January 1, 2010 and April 1, 2010, to fsmw@uillinois.edu. For submission guidelines, please see http://folklorestudies.press.illinois.edu/guidelines.html.

Dec 7

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Fund for Folk Culture Publications Available Online Through Indiana-AFS Partnership

From an AFS news release on behalf of the Fund for Folk Culture:

The Indiana University Bloomington Libraries and the American Folklore Society, in partnership with The Fund for Folk Culture and the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, are pleased to announce the availability of a series of policy publications created by The Fund for Folk Culture.

The Fund, which was created in 1992 and suspended its programs in early 2009, supports the creation, conservation, innovation, and value of traditional culture and folk arts in community life through grantmaking, convenings, the creation of networks, and research and publications, all focused on issues critical to artists, tradition bearers, and the organizations supporting their work. Its goal is to “create a world in which diverse cultural heritages are honored and all people have the right and resources to exercise preservation of their cultural traditions and to create new traditions for the times.”

The body of Fund for Folk Culture publications now available includes a three-part Issues in Folk Arts and Traditional Culture Working Paper series; reports on three meetings devoted to the examination of issues facing refugee and immigrant communities, and individual folk artists, in the US; a report on the “Folklore’s Futures: Scholarship and Practice” symposium sponsored by the Fund and the American Folklore Society in 2006; and two monographs, Culture and Commerce: Traditional Arts in Economic Development and Envisioning Convergence: Cultural Conservation, Environmental Stewardship and Sustainable Livelihoods. Other Fund publications will be made available in the near future.

These published works are being made available in digital form as part of the IUScholarWorks Repository.  In this form, each published work has a durable URL (web address) that will remain stable, insuring that future citations to this work will lead back to the full source itself.  This published work is fully open access and documents are provided in PDF format.  The IUB Libraries are committing to the migration of these materials to future file formats so as to preserve the availability of these works.  The IUScholarWorks Repository uses standard metadata protocols, insuring that the works included in it are easily findable through such services as Google Scholar and OAIster, the Open Archives Initiative database, a union catalog containing records for millions of digital scholarly resources.

Now available and searchable in IUScholarWorks Repository, the publications of The Fund for Folk Culture join a growing corpus of fully accessible publications in folklore studies, including the full back files of The Folklore and Folk Music Archivist and Folklore Forum.  The IUB Libraries and the American Folklore Society are exploring the possibility of other partnerships to create greater accessibility for important classes of publication in our field that are presently without a long-term digital home.

Find the publications of The Fund for Folk Culture online here:  https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3850

Nov 18

News from the Corporate Enclosure of Scholarly Publishing: American Geography Society+Wiley-Blackwell

As Inside Higher Education has reported today, the American Geographical Society has entered into a partnership with Wiley-Blackwell to publish its journals Geographical Review and FOCUS on Geography. (W-B press release here.) This move follows similar agreements made by the American Anthropological Association and a multitude of other publishing societies.

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