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Sep 10

The Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

It has been several years now since I last taught my seminar on intellectual and cultural property issues in folklore and ethnology and I have not succeeded in keeping up with recent developments. In this context, I am especially glad that so many of my favorite colleagues have taken up work in this area. Thanks go to one of them, Alex Dent (Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University and Associate Editor of Anthropological Quarterly [a awesome not-for-profit journal in its 84th year]) for calling to my attention the The Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. I have signed the statement as an expression of my basic values in this realm and I support the project. Even if you feel differently, reading the declaration is a valuable learning experience. I urge folks with concerns about where we are and where we are going to take a look. Here is an excerpt.

The next decade is likely to be determinative. A quarter century of adverse changes in the international intellectual property system are on the cusp of becoming effectively irreversible, at least in the lives of present generations. Intellectual property can promote innovation, creativity and cultural development. But an old proverb teaches that “it is possible to have too much of a good thing,” and that adage certainly applies here. The burden falls on public interest advocates to make a coordinated, evidence-based case for a critical reexamination of intellectual property maximalism at every level of government, and in every appropriate institutional setting, as well as to pursue alternatives that may blunt the force of intellectual property expansionism.

Find the whole document in its organization, institutional, and policy context online at http://infojustice.org/washington-declaration. Thanks Alex!

Sep 9

‘Abelard to Apple’ – Inside Higher Ed

‘Abelard to Apple’ – Inside Higher Ed.

Sep 9

3 Comments

Page Proofs ≠ Post-Prints; Websites ≠ Repositories

As Alex Golub’s Star Wars themed translation of two of my recent posts demonstrates, I am not the best communicator on scholarly communications issues, but I will keep trying. A note on the form that articles can take when circulated in green OA fashion, as well as the places where such materials can be “put” follows below. Read more

Sep 8

On Hacking the Academy #hackacad

I am very pleased to note that the edited book version of Hacking the Academy appeared online today. The online version lives on a site built by the volume’s publisher Digital Culture Books, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press. The volume has been edited by Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, both of the Center for History and New Media. It is based on contributions submitted during one week–May 21-28, 2010.

I am very pleased to have been included in this volume and I want to thank the editors, the publisher, and all those who supported the project, including the many readers and cheerleaders who offered encouragement to the effort.

My chapter in the volume is based on an essay that originally appeared on this site (where the longer, older version can still be found). In the book, it is the first chapter of the “Hacking Scholarship” section. As with the earlier version, it is titled “Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps” and it offers an argument for withdrawing, where possible, from entanglements with commercial academic publishing in favor of lending energy, support, and resources to the strengthening of the existing public-sector scholarly communications system and to the building of a more democratic, ethical, sustainable, and open one for the future. It thus relates directly to my more recent post on the enclosure of scholarly journals in anthropology (and to other things that I do, including working on the Open Folklore project and editing Museum Anthropology Review.

I am so thankful to everyone who has engaged not only with the essay but with me in the larger work of understanding and reshaping the ways scholars share their work with the world. The biggest shout out of all, in this regards, goes to my colleagues at the Indiana University Libraries and the IUScholarWorks program. They have been my teachers and tremendous partners in the work. They are awesome!

The old-fashioned version of Hacking the Academy will be published next year. Find the online version here: http://www.digitalculture.org/hacking-the-academy/

Dan Cohen’s reflections on the project can be found online here: http://www.dancohen.org/2011/09/08/some-thoughts-on-the-hacking-the-academy-process-and-model/

Sep 8

“Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in World”

For those who have not seen it yet, here is a link to the announcement from JSTOR about their opening up their versions of pre-1923 (U.S.)/pre-1870 (elsewhere) journal content. Publishers have been in the loop about this for some time, but it is nice that the community as a whole is able to learn about it now that it is here. Putting aside personal any quibbles on other fronts, this is meaningful and valuable step that will be useful to many people.  See:  http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-journal-content

PS: Soon (after the celebrating) it will be important to study the financial arrangements here closely, as I have the impression that this will come to be understood as a gift to the world that college and university libraries will wind up picking up the tab for. That is not 100% good even if OA is.

Sep 7

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The AAA/Wiley is already a Green OA Publisher

What green open access means and how it is supposed to work will be the focus of my remarks at the AAA event that Tom Boellstorff mentioned here and in his comment at Savage Minds. As the conversation continues there and elsewhere, I just want to stress one point tonight. Unlike my previous post, this one is very much about open access. It is completely understandable that many people (including some who speak officially about these things on behalf of AAA) have the perception that the AAA is not an open access publisher, but it is. Unless something has changed that I am unaware of, the AAA author agreement is fully compatible with green OA. Separate from my concerns about corporate enclosure and media consolidation in the anthropological journal ecology (see my previous post), if a person is publishing in a AAA journal (or in most, if not all, other Wiley journals), then there is nothing standing in the way of making this work available according to the norms of green OA. (That some AAA/Wiley authors are circulating their AAA/Wiley published work in ways that deviate from the norms of green OA and from their signed author agreements is a story for another day.)

In the early AnthroSource era, AAA members involved at the time worked hard to make the AAA a green OA publisher and they succeeded remarkably. (Putting this work to use has been a tremendous un-success for which the membership is largely responsible.) If you care about publishing in AAA journals and you care about OA, then it is worth taking the time to learn what all of this actually entails. One can start by looking at the American Anthropological Association database entry at SHERPA/RoMEO, where the relevant terms of art are also defined in accessible language (ex: “green,” “pre-print” etc.). The new and improved SHERPA/RoMEO database even provides access to the AAA/Wiley author agreement, which potential authors can study!

Separate from my feelings about corporate scholarly publishing, particularly about society-corporate co-publishing, it is fair to note what Stevan Harnad recently observed.

it’s also important to name and laud those publishers that have endorsed immediate, un-embargoed green open-access self-archiving. On the side of the angels in this respect are most of the major commercial publishers: Elsevier, Springer and, yes, Wiley.

At AAA I will report on my findings regarding the deep confusion about green OA among anthropologists. For everyone wondering and asking what can be done, I’ll just note that there are amazing resources available by which one can begin to gain control of the facts of the matter. An excellent gateway is Peter Suber’s Open Access Overview, which provides links to many of the most crucial additional resources in English.

Sep 5

9 Comments

How Enclosed by Large For-Profit Publishers is the Anthropology Journal Literature?

It is early fall and that means that it is the season for anthropologists to think out loud about the publishing ecology characterizing their field. As American anthropologists await final confirmation that their national association has renewed its publishing agreement with Wiley-Blackwell, the annual conversation has been renewed at Savage Minds [here] and [here] and elsewhere. Anthropologists have been reading and circulating George Monblot’s essay in The Guardian “Academic Publishers Make Murdock Look Like a Socialist” and the essay has, it seems, awoken some new interest in the anthropology publishing debates that have have been ongoing for many years now. Read more

Aug 31

Back to School with the Porsche Cayenne

Field observation.  I began teaching my courses yesterday. My office is on the margins of our campus but yesterday my teaching brought me to the center of the action. During my before-and-after class moments, I observed three different undergraduates driving new Porsche Cayennes (temporary tags still showing). I similarly saw two students driving new Audi Q7. With prices ranging from $50,000 to over $100,000, these get-around-campus cars cost more than many fine full professors earn in salary for a year. The asking price could also feed all of the struggling graduate students I work with for a year. Just saying.

Aug 31

On “Academic Publishers Make Murdoch Look like a Socialist”

A single article explaining much of what motivates me to work on reform in scholarly communications and academic publishing, including why I resist the corporate enclosure of society publishing programs in my fields, can be found in this very lively and accessible article in The Guardian by George Monbiot.

Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist: Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us. Down with the knowledge monopoly racketeers

Aug 31

Florida Folklorist Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011)

I wish to note the passing of fellow Floridian and folklorist Stetson Kennedy. I did not know him, but I admire his work and his remarkable career. As the detailed obituary published Tuesday in the New York Times will suggest, he is very much a person worth knowing about. To have hung out with Woody Guthrie and Zora Neale Hurston, married seven times, and crippled the Ku Klux Klan via a Superman radio show and lived to 94–that’s a life. Rest in Peace.

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