In advance of the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, a group has put together a call stop charging for access to anthropological research. From the group's wiki:
Scholarly societies are in crisis, and the AAA is among them. Dwindling revenues from sales of AAA Journals are among the causes, and if we don't staunch the bleeding now, we are warned, there will be nothing left to give.
How has the AAA gotten to a point where its solvency seems to be based solely on the sales of our scholarly work? Work that has already been paid for by public and private granting agencies which we pay registration fees to present at conferences organized by the scholarly society we pay membership fees to join? Why must we also charge our readers?
Recently, the AAA publicly voiced its opposition to Federal Legislation that would require federally funded research to be freely available to the people who paid for it: citizens. This public opposition is clearly not in the interest of AAA members — and the AnthroSource Steering Committee has publicly said as much, proposing a range of initiatives to make our collective work more accessible. For this criticism, the ASSC was dissolved.
Clearly, something needs to change.
1) we need a solid open access policy to make anthropological research widely available;
2) we need a more transparent financial arrangement between the association and its members;
3) we need a form of financial sustainability that does not compromise our ability to disseminate our research.
There's more here and updates here.
Access to scientific work is a scarcity that now is artificial. It's bad for American science and disastrous for global science...and since there all science is global, it's just plain disastrous for science.
[Tags: open_science anthropology ]
Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 17, 2006 10:08 AM
Comments
Why was it limited in the first place? To limit competition for information allows the originator of the intellectual property to sit in the catbird seat, financially. If it were widely disseminated, another scholar might use it to overtake the originator. And the poor [original] scholar might lose a grant. Or his job.
While opening access will certainly advance scientific research, it will inhibit the cash flow coveted by the founders of the AAA. "Peer review" and all that high-falutin' drivel is just a cover.
If they give stuff away, who'll pay all those publishering executives of the Journal of Applied Anthropolgy?
Follow the money.
Posted by: Charlie Green | November 17, 2006 09:18 PM
Charlie Green probably knows this but I'll add it just for the record: scholarly journals don't pay authors for their articles. In that sense the "originator of the intellectual property" --the author-- doesn't have a financial motive for writing journal articles. (Books are another story.) Scholars write journal articles for impact, not for money, which is why open access is, or should be, much easier for research literature than it is for music or movies.
Moreover, being first out with a new idea, and having it widely disseminated, is the path to reward in the academic world. It's the way to get grants and jobs (and promotions), not the way to lose them. Scholars have an interest in publishing in a prestigious journal, but they have no interest at all in limiting the circulation to those who can afford to pay high subscription prices. On the contrary, their interest is to disseminate their work to everyone who can apply, cite, build upon, or make use of it.
BTW, for daily updates on the worldwide open access movement see my blog, Open Access News.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Suber | November 18, 2006 12:30 PM
In fact, in many journals, authors pay production costs.
Follow the prestige/reputation/power.
Posted by: David Weinberger | November 20, 2006 12:28 AM
Science is an open system when not under the control of a sponsor who claims a proprietary interest in the research. Propertary interest is created by an employer/employee relationship. That is the work is being done for hire by the author for a sponsor in order to satisfy the sponsor's purpose.
Most scholarly publications are marketing tools for the author. It is a tool for marketing one's idea, a concept, a discovery, etc. By marketing I mean that the publication is done for the purpose of communicating one's research results to a public (market)interested in the idea. And it is used to impress departmental faculty and university tenure authorities for professional advancementwhere "Publish or perish" is a condition for employment. It helps to promote one's ideas and name. It is also used promote one's reputation in the hope that it will bring the grants. When her or his work be widely distributed,publication works to the advantage of the author. The monetary benefits follow from the reputation.
As for the financial problem facing the AAA as the result of declining revenues from publications, what's new. Look at the newspaper industry. The whole publishing industry is faced with the conflict between getting out the product -- information -- and getting paid for the service.
The AAA needs to reexamine its business model and value proposition. One would think that with all the brain power in anthropology and the talent to undertake ethnographic research and comparative analysis, the profession coulf not comeup with a solution to the problem that will benefit all.
Posted by: Barry Bainton | January 12, 2007 03:00 PM