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Jun 9

Congratulations Smithsonian Anthropology

Today I received the email newsletter of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Their lead story is a big deal. Congratulations to the department on the successful conclusion of a curatorial hiring effort that has brought four new colleagues to the department. Department Chair Dan Rogers writes:

With the arrival of Gwyneira Isaac (curator, North American indigenous cultures) in early June and the arrival of Gabriela Perez Baez (curator, linguistics) in December 2009, the department has successfully concluded its search for four new curators over the past three years. (Curators Joshua Bell (globalization) and Torben Rick (human-environmental interaction) were hired in 2008.) This represents the largest influx of curatorial staff in several decades and we are delighted to bring in another generation of scholars. These hires bring the number of anthropology curators to 23.

This is great news for Smithsonian anthropology specifically and for museum anthropology generally. Congratulations and good luck to the new members of the curatorial staff.

Jun 9

OA Tracking Project, Connotea, Nature Publishing Group, Threatened UC Boycott

I wish that the otherwise awesome Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) was not reliant upon Connotea, a product of the Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Peter Suber describes the project and why it uses Connotea here. The problems with NPG are discussed in the recent letter threatening a UC-system boycott of NPG. (See previous post.) Discussion in Insider Higher Education is here.

Jun 9

Cutting Ties with Nature Publishing Group

UCLA leadership explains why faculty need to cut ties with Nature Publishing Group. See the document available via this post on the UCLA Biomedical Library weblog. A 400% increase in subscription costs! Madness.

Jun 9

Smith on the Launch of (the) Journal of Anthropology

Archaeologist and advocate for open access strategies in archaeology (and anthropology) Michael Smith offers a skeptical review of the announcement that Hindawi plans to publish a general journal of anthropology to be called Journal of Anthropology. I was going to let this news just slip by with no comment, but I am pleased that Michael has weighed in and I recommend taking a look at his post.

Author-side fees is just one aspect of Michael’s commentary. I’ll elaborate on one aspect of this. I have nothing in particular against Hindawi and for those who work and publish in other science fields, its $425 article processing charge may seem reasonable. For folks in those fields who wonder about anthropology’s take on this, keep in mind that old fashioned page charges are extremely rare in our own ancestral publishing system. I have paid page charges twice in my career. Both times it was when publishing in Economic Botany–a journal on the edge of anthropology with biology norms and customs. Page charges and other author-side fees are outside the experience of most anthropologist and many would be faced with actual difficulties if asked to pay them. (Not all anthropology research is funded research and in many workplaces, there is no money available for such purposes.) Because author-side fees are so often brought up as a reason to reject (gold) open access in anthropology, it is important to note that there are numerous (gold) open access anthropology journals now in existence that do require submission charges, author fees, or page charges.

I recommend Michael’s post for a wider discussion of this particular development. I share some of his reservations.

Jun 8

Berlinger’s Chapter in the Collection-Jews at Home

Congratulations to Gabrielle A. Berlinger on the publication of her article “770 Eastern Parkway: The Rebbe’s Home as Icon” in Jews at Home: The Domestication of Identity, volume two in the Jewish Cultural Studies series edited by Simon J. Bronner and published by Littman. The book is beautifully made and carefully edited. Gabi’s article is a fine study of Jewish architecture in a complex context. Find the book on the publisher’s website here.

Jun 8

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Market Forces, Technical Changes Pushing STM Publishers Toward a Cliff?

On the recommendation of Dorothea Salo, I read today Richard Poynder’s interview with Claudio Aspesi, a financial analyst who’s job is to track the state of, and predict the future of, the commercial scholarly publishing industry In his interview of Poynder, the focus was on the financial health and prospect of Reed Elsevier but the discussion was briefly generalized to include Wiley-Blackwell and Springer. This is obviously not the kind of thing that I typically read, but it was very interesting to hear a deeply capitalist and, to me sophisticated, analysis of factors that point to the possible collapse of the scholarly communications system that we have known. Librarians  will find the serials crisis arguments interesting. Read it here.

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 25

Dr. Arle Lommel

Congratulations to Arle Lommel on the successful defense today of his Ph.D. dissertation in folklore. His dissertation is titled Semiotic Organology: A Peircean Examination of the Bagpipe and Hurdy-Gurdy in Hungary. His innovative project unfolds at the intersections of Hungarian ethnography and general ethnomusicology, organology, folklore studies (especially of “folk revivals”), material culture studies, and semiotic theory. It was a pleasure to be member of Arle’s dissertation committee.

May 21

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Slides from AcademiX 2010

This is my first attempt at using SlideShare.

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