Filed under: Uncategorized
Notes from:
Waltham, Mary. 2009. “The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing Among Social Science and Humanities Associations”,
Report on a study funded by a Planning Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/hssreport.pdf
This is an interesting report that reveals how large scholarly associations popular in the U.S. are adapting to new publishing environments. Unfortunately the article is perhaps too focused on the journals from these associations and it makes some rather bold conclusions based on these findings, that I think would look different if the study included more open access journals inside and outside the U.S. This is mostly related to costs to publish a page, and how peer review fits in. But the report is about scholarly publishing within these big scholarly associations, and it shows the logic behind their publishing strategies even if I find the numbers a bit murky.
Publications from the American Anthropological Association generated revenue largely from print subscriptions. The report points out that print costs are high, but that if print publications were dropped, net income would drop. From this it infers that online publications are undervalued, being that they are subsidized by their print subscriptions.
It also points out that while an author pays OA model has been incorporated into most of the journals, very few authors used it.
While Science, Technical and Medical (STM) journals keep track of authors geographical distribution, Humanities and Social Science (HSS) journals do not pay much attention to it according to this comment in the report:
“v) STM publishers regularly record and report on the country of the corresponding author of articles
published. Such data is further reviewed and discussed by agencies such as the National Science
Foundation in the “Science and Engineering Indicators” series of reports published alternate years
(See: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/).
- This group of association publishers had collected relatively little data on the topic. Several commented that they believed that most of the authors of articles were from the US and this was borne out by a random review of the country of corresponding author for 25 articles published in 2007 by each journal and shown in Table 1.1.”
This ties into the previous post of notes discussing the distribution of Open Access journals (from Max Forte’s post) in relation to Wallerstein’s comments on the historical foundations of social science.
Peer review is also shown to be pretty restrictive:
“The ratio of article submission to publication is also distinctly different and since these journals publish fewer peer-reviewed articles they are often highly selective. Selectivity through peer-review takes in-house staff time (included in the study) and external reviewers’ time (not included in the study), and drives costs up.
- Taking three consecutive years of submission and publication data together, five of the eight journals published less than 10% of the articles submitted to them.”
Although in one interview I had, a paper was rejected not based on peer review but rather editorial control. Is it selectivity through peer review, or by editor? How often is it the peer reviewers who decide a work shouldn’t be published? And too bad they didn’t include external reviewer costs too, because from the few interviews I’ve done no one had been paid to peer review.
Specific to Open Access, the report states that while many of the associations adopted an author pays open access model, very few academics went for it:
“Open Access: There has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of publishers offering optional open access to authors, from only 9% in 2005 to 30% in 2008. This applies to a total of 1,871 titles. 53% of these publishers have enabled an open access option for all of their titles. However, the takeup of the open access option is low; of those publishers which have offered this option for two or more years under an author-pays model, 52.9% had a take-up rate of 1% or less, 73.5% had a take-up rate of 5% or less, and 91.2% had a take-up rate of 10% or less. The author fees set by these publishers range from under $500 to over $3000, but the majority (69%) charge between $1,000 and
$3,000. Bjork et al. calculated that of the estimated 1,350,000 journals articles published in 2006, 19.4% are freely accessible (4.6% OA immediately on publication, 3.5% freely accessible after an embargo, usually at least one year; and 11.3% through self-archiving).”
Of course, the AAA supports self archiving too, not that a quick look at the website would let you know. I wonder how many of these authors were aware of the option. I’m not necessarily in favor of an author pays model either, and other solutions are necessary, which seems to be the conclusion of the scholarly associations and the report.
Also, publishing contracts are changing:
“Copyright: In 2003, 83% of publishers required copyright transfer, in 2005, the figure stood at 61%. In 2008 this has dropped to 53%, and those which only require a license to publish have increased from 17% to 20.8%.”
The report also found that the number of academic journals has been steadily increasing, along with the amount of peer reviewed research. While the climate is changing, it is still growing.
Why are researchers publishing in these big reputable journals not taking the OA option? For one, the report shows that average prices to publish are extremely high:
“If print costs are removed the publishing costs per page for these journals now average $360 or at an average article length of 19pp, author fees of $7,000. For the journal with the lowest publishing cost per page ($90) and an average article length of 25 pages, author fees could be set at $2,500 to provide full cost recovery on the peer-reviewed articles published. Since just 59% of this particular journal’s pages are peer-reviewed Open Access payments would still not sustain the journal.”
This is also perhaps why many OA advocates are promoting mandates at the institutional level. Getting the people funding research to mandate OA is a great strategy to making research accessible online.
Helping to define the “anthropology” and “change” parts of the thesis question, “how is the internet fueling change in anthropology?”:
“The intellectual history of the nineteenth century is marked above all by this disciplinarization and professionalization of knowledge, that is to say, by the creation of permanent institutional structures designed both to produce new knowledge and to reproduce the producers of knowledge. The creation of multiple disciplines was premised on the belief that systematic research required skilled concentration on the multiple separate arenas of reality, which was partitioned rationally into distinct groupings of knowledge. Such a rational division promised to be effective, that is, intellectually productive.”
(Wallerstein et al. 1996:6)
This much isn’t new: Being a student of anthropology has always been a pain in the !@# .
“In the course of the nineteenth century, the various disciplines spread out like a fan, covering a range of epistemological positions. At one end lay, first, mathematics (a nonempirical activity) and next to it the experimental natural sciences (themselves in a sort of descending order of determinism – physics, chermistry, biology). at the other end lay the humanities (or arts and letters), starting with philosophy (the pendant of mathematics, as a nonempirical activity) and next to it the study of formal artistic practices (literatures, painting and sculpture, musicology), often coming close in their practice to being history, a history of the arts. And in between the humanities and the natural sciences, thus defined, lay the study of social realities, with history (idiographic) closer to, often part of, faculties of arts and letters, and “social science” (nomothetic) closer to the natural sciences. Amidst an ever-hardening separation of knowledge into two different spheres, each with a different epistemological emphasis, the students of social realities found themselves caught in the middle, and deeply divided on these epistemological issues. (p9)”
Challenging collaboration:
“The creation of multiple disciplines of social science was part of the general nineteenth-century attempt to secure and advance “objective” knowledge about “reality” on the basis of empirical findings (as opposed to “speculation”). The intent was to “learn” the truth, not invent or intuit it. The process of institutionalization of this kind of knowledge activity was not at all simple or straightforward. For one thing, it was not at first clear whether this activity was to be a singular one or should rather be divided into the several disciplines, as later occured. Nor was it at the outset clear what was the best route to such knowledge, that is, what kind of epistemology would be most fruitful or even legitimate. Least of all was it clear whether the social sciences could in some sense be thought to constitute a “third culture” that was “between science and literature,” in the later forumation of Wolf Lepenies. In fact, none of these questions has ever been definitively resolved. All we can do is to note the actual decisions that were made, or the majority positions that tended to prevail.”
(Wallerstein et al. 1996:14)
Working through a maze of disagreement = being an anthro student, online or off.
On a changing publishing environment where visibility and accessibility are not tied to prestige:
“The first thing to note is where this institutionalization took place. There were five main locales for social science activity during the nineteenth century: Great Britain, France, the Germanies, the Italies, and the United States. Most of the scholars most of the universities (of course, not all) were located in these five places. The universities in other countries lacked the numerical weight or international prestige of those in these five. To this day, most of the nineteenth-century works that we still read were written in one of these five locales.”
(Wallerstein et al. 1996:14
Interesting then, to look at Max’s post about the distribution of Open Access Journals listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals. He writes:
Either way, open access publishing in anthropology is primarily not a North American phenomenon, and in the case of Anthropology listings that exclude Ethnology, it is primarily not a North American/European phenomenon. Indeed, the very Directory of Open Access Journals itself is not a North American innovation, but rather a Scandinavian one, and the host for it is Lund University Libraries. The innovations in the distribution, dissemination, and circulation of anthropology are coming in large part from the so-called periphery and semi-periphery of the world system, and outside of the disciplinary centre of gravity in terms of the accumulated mass of anthropologists and anthropology programs in the U.S. and western Europe. One can only speculate about what that will mean should the predominant mode of anthropological publishing in North America (commercial print, by subscription) collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and unsustainability. Suddenly the centre of anthropological publishing would shift to currently non-hegemonic entities.
Tie this with a recent study which showed that Humanities and Social Science journals did not pay much attention to where authors came from and that most of authors came from a particular geographic region (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia) reveal one of anthropology’s “walls” so to speak. The adoption of Open Access by academics helps to deterritorialize research accessibility. Language boundaries remain.
It is also interesting to examine how a students blog can dominate certain key words on search engines, when anthropologists write so much about those words in academic journals. Does academic research need to be accessible online? If it isn’t, what takes its place?
Filed under: Self-archiving: How and Why?
After a long summer delay wondering what was up with the Mana’o repository, today I finally got word that yes, it is officially shutting its doors [it has unofficially been down all summer due to the operation being run on a personal home server]. Alex Golub, who spearheaded the project has asked others to pick it up – and I’m quite sure that with all the information cataloged in it that someone will do so.
I offered to help host the archive, as prior to studying anthropology I worked as a web developer and system administrator. And being the lazy bastard I am, I would never in a million years try to host something on my home server – far too much work.
What I would love to do, is to take the Mana’o archive, change its name to “The Open Anthropology Self Archiving Repository”, and to introduce a new form of “openness”. To do this, we need to step backwards a decade, back to the days when hundreds of small operations where trying to figure out how to make use of the internet. Back then, when servers often sucked, and when costs for bandwidth where more attrocious, people would use a Web 1.0 technology called “mirroring”.
So here is my proposal:
Open the Mana’o repository so that anyone who wants to can setup a mirror of it. Use basic internet technologies to manage the mirroring. Then we could invite multiple universities to participate. By inviting multiple universities to get involved, and anyone else interested, the project would become an “open project” of sorts. Libraries could contribute, and benefit from the openness, by contributing a little time to help catalog entries and ensure copyright issues are dealt with properly.
This is important because almost every university is currently developing its own institutional self-archiving repository, and due to this a lot of work is being redone over and over. Institutional repositories are also important, but they also tend to suck for the very same reasons Mana’o did – they can never get enough manpower.
Either way, I agree completely with Alex Golub that the repository is valuable enough that I’m not too worried about it not being picked up. One option is to host it on the Open Anthropology Cooperative, and that is a great start. But I really think bringing in multiple libraries and universities, and allowing them all to post their little logos for branding, will help in the long run.
Previous related posts:
“Why the delay”
http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/why-the-delay/
“Self-Archiving Repositories”
http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/self-archiving-repositories/
“Self-Archiving and Anthropology v2″
http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/self-archiving-and-anthropology-v2/
“Self Archiving and Anthropology – Not There Yet”
http://nodivide.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/self-archiving-and-anthropology-not-there-yet/
Filed under: "Writes of Passage" | Tags: anthropology, fiction, fieldwork, thesis writing
[to explain, since this post is not very self-explanatory, this is a story about how two sections of my thesis have changed drastically over the summer - one section, on self-archiving, part of a larger discussion on open access, discussed the Mana'o Self Archiving Repository for Anthropology, which coincidentally, a day after writing this story, officially announced it is shutting its doors. It is also about my exposure to all sorts of different kinds of anthropology on the OAC. And yes, its been turned into a ridiculous story with absolutely no regard to objectivity or science. Enjoy.]
The thesis could, err… should?… have been finished in June. The topic was clear and arguments were starting to take shape. Yes, it should have been finished.
But as I was writing I was hit in the face with a tweet, which while not quite a lightning strike, ended up burning just the same. It was a news flash – one announcing the new Open Anthropology Cooperative.
 Lemmings by Surreal Art surrealart.com |
Within a matter of weeks a thousand members had signed up to the cooperative, and with the encouragement of my thesis supervisor who had sent me an overzealous welcome to the OAC, I began to explore. A thousand anthropologists in a room? Yes, very exciting. And a fantastic example an idea I had been developing in the thesis: “anthropology in public”. Funny thing is my supervisor bailed out on it after a week, being the wiseman he is. |
Through the OAC I have been exposed to all sorts of anthropology. Kinds of anthropology no parent would ever allow their children to witness, and certainly not study. Yes, the OAC hit me head on, and it knocked me right out. Or perhaps I dove in head first and forgot to check how deep the water was. Either way I ended up unconscious floating out into an ocean. When I woke up I found I had drifted far away from home.
| I woke up in the south of France. The weather was perfect, the wine was fantastic, and the girls were of course stunning. Anthropology you say? Okay then, let’s get back to the story – no, not the one about the girls. And not the one about the OAC, although I’ll share some of it here (that post will come very soon, once I get home). No, this story is about being delayed, and about why such delays have been exceptionally lucky. |
 |
As I said, the OAC hit me pretty hard. All sorts of emotions and reactions stirred as I wandered its classrooms. At first I was ecstatic to see so many anthropologists jump into the water. The thought of thousands of anthropologists sharing ideas openly was incredibly motivating – but I was pushed through that excitement pretty quick. Maybe it was the waves.
“Silent Scream” by Diane Dobson Barton. 15×16″ (38×40.6cm). Acrylic on canvas. |
Soon I realized that there were hundreds of shadow-anthropologists around me. Avatars of sorts, but with their mouths sewed shut. I wondered if with the hit to the head I’d lost my hearing. Thankfully a few voices came into focus. Some of these voices I’d encountered before in the blogsphere, others perhaps in my dreams. I listened for a while then decided to sing a few songs of my own. Others chimed in, and pretty soon there was almost a chorus playing along. Whale songs? As I said, I’d been hit pretty hard. |
That feeling faded too. Soon the voices wouldn’t stop. I kept hearing the same voices over and over. I shut my eyes and listened carefully hoping to pick up on the chorus again but a louder, harsher voice dominated my ears. I screamed loudly hoping it would go away. It didn’t. My head started to pound, and I passed out again. This time with an empty bottle of rose (from Bandol).
| I woke up confused and again on a beach. I felt strange, as I probably should have after dreaming so vividly about an anthropology cooperative. Or was it the rose? I could see a small island a short distance from shore. A red neon sign glowed above it, reading “Repository”. I remember stuffing messages into bottles and casting them off into the waves, hoping they would reach the little island. I remember it being a magnificent paradise, an oasis of hope. But I couldn’t remember if I’d corked the bottles, and I worried they never quite kept float. |
 |
And then the strangest thing happened. The big red light went out, and with it I could have sworn I saw the island start to sink.
Yes, this brings us back to my fortunate delay. Well, in time anyways.
I looked out again over the ocean but everything had disappeared. I couldn’t see the island. My head still pounded. Where did those lights go?
Strolling along the beach as one does in the south of France, I found three bottles washed up ashore, all corked. I opened them, tearing out the messages inside. Each paper was titled “Mana’o”. A clue perhaps. But where was that island again? I felt uneasy but comfortable. The air was warm and the sand soft. I lay down, resting my head in the sand.
 |
Then I remembered. I was on an important quest. Travelers had warned me not to stray from the road, and no matter what, that I would tempted away from the path. They had warned me to take notes, to write as many details as possible in a magical book which they called “the field”. With those notes they said I’d find my way home. I surprised myself, looking at it, that I’d even organized the field into numerous chapters. |
Like the notes in the bottles I’d found on the beach, one chapter read “Mana’o”. I opened the book to that chapter, and before me was a beautiful rendition of an island and with it a picture of the glowing sign “repository” that had disappeared. But none of the field notes made sense. Where was this place? How would I ever find it now that I could not see it? Was it even real?
And so I set off once again, wandering in search of a road, and I started writing again – this time painting the larger ocean.
“all those who wander, are not lost.” were the words of another traveler I’d met somewhere along the way.
“Bullshit” I thought.
I was bloody hell lost, and worst of all, I was lost in France. And my head hurt like hell…
[all that = OAC has proven to be an exceptional, and exceptionally depressing, field site - which while sometimes feeling like a kick in the face, has proven to be quite rewarding - funny how being kicked in the face can be appealing. I'll be developing this much more soon, as after a few months of existence, some of the more terrible things have turned into quite positive ones... and if you haven't already go check out the OAC - i'd love to hear your thoughts!]
[my chapter on self-archiving proved to be way too naive, given that the Mana'o anthropology repository has gone under - servers broken, and manpower lacking, and well, overall willingness to keep it afloat - nonexistant... or at least.. i don't know the story and hence can't write about it hence its a wonderful thing to have delayed the thesis over the summer. ]
[sun and wine are nice. taking a break from anthropology lets you see just how unexciting it is, which is good when you are trying not to exaggerate in your thesis].
[all images copyright by their original owners - which each image links to...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Conservative party ethics, government accountability, human rights
“The Conservatives will appeal a federal court ruling that orders the government to repatriate Canadian-born terrorism suspect Omar Khadr from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, the CBC is reporting.
According to the report, the government has filed a stay pending appeal of a Federal Court of Appeal ruling earlier this month forcing the government to seek Khadr’s return, meaning the Supreme Court of Canada will now decide whether to review the case.”
Let’s not forget Stephen Harper already appealed, and lost the appeal. I wonder what the Supreme Court can do at this point? It’s too damn late. Regardless of what the Supreme Court does, it shows how the court system can be manipulated by the governing party in such a way laws really don’t mean shit [unless you are "just" a Canadian citizen].
Meanwhile, over in the U.S. we are finding out that torture techniques included threatening peoples family and children, and faking executions.
When will the madness end?
[arguing with a classmate about this brought up another position: that if Khadr was brought here he'd have to be tried, whereas in the U.S. that might happen sooner or be thrown out... I figure it would get thrown out here too. He thought my position was partison bullshit. I'm looking forward to hearing the supreme court decision.]
Filed under: emo rants | Tags: illegal prime minister, omar khadr, Stephen Harper, torture
After supporting the U.S. administrations (past and present) illegal detention and torture of Omar Khadr, Stephen Harper has finally been forced to help repatriate him:
“The Federal Appeal Court upheld a ruling Friday that ordered the Canadian government to press for the return of Omar Khadr from a U.S. military detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba…
… the Appeal Court agreed with O’Reilly that Canada had an obligation to take steps to “protect Khadr from further abuse” and that by refusing to request his repatriation, his charter rights were also violated.”
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/08/13/omar-khadr-appeal081309.html
Where does this leave Omar Khadr? In jail… But at least now Canada can’t contribute to his abuse, and they have to “try” to repatriate him.
The courts have given me some hope, but then I think about a kid spending seven years in a foreign jail, being threatened with rape and urine, interrogated, kept in solitary confinement, deprived of sleep, etc… well shit… this is why people ignore it all isnt it? It’s just too damn disgusting to imagine. So when Harper is forced to see whats going on, given that hes paid as Prime Minister and it’s his job, how did he turn a blind eye so easily? What kind of person does that?
[and as if he just turned a blind eye, he actually appealed the first decision and did everything he could NOT to help... this wasn't lazyness, he is one of many *directly* responsible for keeping Khadr locked up this long!]
[and Canada.com canada's most biased news source has killed all coverage of this for some reason --> If you are looking for a good anthro project, we need studies on how canadian media companies manipulate the news!]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: knowledge broker, knowledge mobilization, sharing knowledge, the business of university, yaffle search engine, yetman conference
Last month I had the pleasure of attending a talk by David Yetman, discussing a program developed at Memorial University that works to “mobilize knowledge” between the university and outside interests. The program acts as a liaison of sorts, between interested community members and interested researchers. It’s an open door for communities to invite researchers to participate in questions relevant to them.
The program is interdisciplinary and completely voluntary. Yetman admitted that collaboration between faculty members and administration is a tricky thing, and that for this reason the program members actively sought out responsive members in the faculty, and worked with them, rather than trying to change the minds of those uninterested in collaborative research projects.
The project staff, “knowledge mobilization officers” work as a kind of knowledge broker – in many ways facilitating the business side of research, helping find funding, but also facilitate ways to disseminate research in ways appropriate to the project (perhaps pointing to the need for multiple styles of research publication, in that the standard journal publication may not be what is needed).
They have also been developing a search engine/database for research projects community members are interested in. The database provides researchers and community members a way to connect. The database would allow researchers to look for relevant research questions, and link them to members of the community that would help with it. He mentioned the need for “finding audiences” for academic research, and that “80% of what we do is building relationships”.
Pushing the business angle did cause my anthropological ears to ring a little. The “benefit to society” thing has been done to death in my readings for this project, and while increased collaboration was argued to benefit society, Yetman also said that knowledge mobilization officers “do not pass judgment on the type of project”, but that an ethics guideline was in the works.
I asked if knowledge mobilization officers, being interested in “finding audiences”, advocated Open Access publication of research – and I was disappointed to learn the program had not yet explored Open Access Publishing (and even though the program is small, and just starting, I still choke swallowing this one…). I promised myself I’d check back with them down the road to see if information on Open Access Publishing couldn’t be provided by the knowledge mobilization officers as standard practice. [just editing this, and again, how do you talk about mobilizing knowledge, and ignore Open Access? uggh!] [thinking more on it, I think Yetman comes from a medical research background, and I have no idea how well received open access publishing is in that area]
Looking at the relationship between academia and surrounding communities, and having this opportunity to see it more generally through multiple disciplines, I appreciate ethnography more. Not so much the value of ethnography as a “scientific method”, but the lessons one can learn looking at anthropology’s often brutal relationship with people/communities/states [things that make you go "hmm..."]. I asked Yetman how disputes would be settled between researchers and community members inviting research – what happens when the research doesn’t go as planned? Yetman admitted this was a challenge, but he felt that the knowledge mobilization officer, while not responsible for such a situation, would still be able to lend a hand. He said in no way would the knowledge mobilization officer, nor the community member inviting the research, have any control over the research output.
I also asked about Minerva style funding, and how interests could be balanced out – if at all. He said that many researchers would be interested in military funding, and admitted that large-scale funding could be an issue if it were let to dominate research agendas. Here exists the problem of promoting collaboration without judging “good or bad”. Ie: in the article linked at the bottom of this post, it discusses knowledge mobilization as coming from technology transfer, which involves patents, and making profit. So maybe this program will end up promoting the “closed” side of the intellectual property debate.)
Even if it ignores ethical issues, steps around research responsibility, and hasn’t yet figured out how important open access publishing is, it does do one thing that I like – it opens a door for people to approach the university with their questions and concerns.
While a liaison can help on the community side, I still think anthropologists have the right idea building collaboration into the research methods, and to facilitating the collaboration themselves. Ie: do we need a special database to find relevant research questions, when we have the internet, or live in a local community? Are these issues not constantly being discussed in the news, on blogs, and on youtube? Yes, at least with online ethnography. A knowledge mobilization office could help researchers get their feet into the community however, and help local organizations advertise their issues and interests.
I would have kept the questions pouring, but few others were participating so I shut up and talked to him when the talk finished. I explained my interest in “sharing knowledge” and Open Access, and when I told him I was in the anthropology program he told me he always got a great response from anthropologists, who he said expressed more interested in community collaboration. During the talk he also mentioned how the program was new, but tried to incorporate what it could from participatory research methods that have been developing in anthropology and other disciplines. [he mentioned proactive and reactive strategies, community workshops hosted in different areas in the region]
One audience member inquired about measuring and quantifying the success of such collaborations – Yetman replied that was a challenge, but that qualitative assessments seemed to work pretty well.
Here is an article discussing some of the projects successes and strategies:
“Putting Knowledge Into Practice”
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/putting-knowledge-into-practice.aspx
[on the first round writing this, I used the word "interested" about 20 times. ]
Filed under: Uncategorized
A few weeks ago a peculiar piece of email spam came to my attention. The email was a rather sophisticated scam, that involved posing as a soldier in the U.S. army, offering “sensitive” documents, which required that you visit a website, signup for “secure” access, etc…
I did a search on Google for parts of the message, and found that the email had been flagged on numerous spam databases.
Today I came across another such attack being discussed, the “Lambert Academic Publishing” scam. In this one, researchers are told that the publisher is interested in their work, dissertation, etc… They are sent to a website which is a replica of an actual publishers website. It appears very real. At some point they ask for ones bank information so that they can pay you the proper royalties.
Funny that they are targetting academics so directly. Are we more gullible? I figure they aren’t the richest bank accounts!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: open anthropology, Open Anthropology Cooperative
I’m a bit late (ignoring this blog to write a thesis of course), but if you haven’t heard yet, anthropologists have come together to form the “open anthropology cooperative”. The project has received a lot of enthusiastic support, and couldn’t have started off better! I’m looking forward to taking part, especially once I kick this flu… (did you hear its bloody 10 degrees in June? If only global warming was given a more descriptive name – like “montreal ice age, here we come”.
Sign up and participate at openanthcoop.ning.com.
Steven Harnad suggests that institutions could mandate self-archiving to get researchers to comply, as opposed to voluntary policies that have proven ineffective. The ineffectiveness of voluntary policies is backed up by my own research where very few professors were aware of the legalities behind it, many arguing it would not be legal due to copyright, even though the American Anthropological Association and the SSHRC both claim support of it.
That they are not aware, and not making their students aware, show how these voluntary mechanisms for achieving self-archiving are not working.
This pushes me to support self-archiving mandates.
But let’s integrate the discussions I’ve been having with Max, an anthropologist who has spent a lot of time with politically marginalized groups. He asserts he is a “reformed open access advocate”, who while having founded an open access journal KACIKE, has since developed concern over the way the accessibility of the internet leverages existing power relationships even more. Access on the internet is not equal, not only due to government support of particular media monopolies – but also in the way programs can be developed to harvest information.
Open Access works to balance out unequal distribution – by giving those without access, access. But once everyone has access, there are other ways for inequality to present itself. In order to compile all the information, it requires massive man power – as is found among thousands of Chinese citizens working as internet censors. Open Access makes it easy for these censors to filter information, to find names, places, targets, etc. By posting an article about Falong Gong on a blog, or in an Open Access journal, programs developed in part by companies like Google can scan through the information and “harvest” it. Posts on such topics are automatically tagged and saved away for a human to scan through later.
So what kinds of information are people harvesting? The U.S. military has offices setup where soldiers can earn “distance drilling credit” by gathering data online from “open source” sources. Since the information was all open source, I wish I could tell you what they harvest, but they take “open source” info, and turn it into an inaccessible, but “unclassified” database. (also see here.)
The Chinese government has intelligence/censoring staff working full time, and they have in effect created a very different internet than the one we can access here. They, like the U.S. government, make sure they can “sniff” through the most traffic possible online, so they force telecom companies to make sure there are “choke” points on the internet where all information flows through. This lets them setup powerful monitoring tools..
The point here is, that state and corporate powers are colluding to control and observe peoples internet use. Companies need to track transactions, just as much as some states need to track citizens. These technologies are extremely powerful, but only available to dominant groups.
Enter Open Access. We share everything online, but who benefits the most? The academics, and interest groups, we might expect to read anthropology articles? Or, in being so open, are companies like Google and state powers benefiting more?
Google scans through every single email I send, and receive, using a computer program that looks for advertising key words. They don’t actually read it, but they created the technology to do so, and now governments are getting into the game too.
So back to Falong Gong. Do I really want the information making its way into corporate/state databases? Because with Open Access, it will. With “closed-access” it probably will too, but not as quickly or easily – and those accessing it will have to know about it, select it, and go through it – as opposed to information being flagged or blocked automagically.
For anthropologists, the concern over “what should be shared” in a publication is nothing new and there are massive debates as to how one can ethically go about doing and publishing research. And since I’m dealing with OA, I’m not even talking about researchers who collude even more directly with military powers.
To mandate self-archiving would remove a “gray” area that currently exists for material no one can identify as “safe” or “dangerous” to share. Since the concerns over what kinds of research are proper haven’t yet been worked out, then I agree, mandates might be too extreme. At the same time, I’d rather research methods and topics be developed – that address the kinds of content that are damaging.
I stand by the idea scholarship is meant to be shared. So I’m excited to see what Max’s upcoming presentation, “Useless Anthropology”: Strategies for Dealing with the Militarization of the Academy” turns out.
[another angle against mandated self-archiving, is the need for culturally appropriate rules for dissemination - as argued by Kimberly Christen and demonstrated on the Mukurtu Archive project website. There are collaborations between communities and academia that develop into interesting research, but that demand other forms of publication. Mandated self-archiving universalizes the properness of "being open", which has been shown to cause conflicts, and perhaps unnecessarily limits the kinds of publication that can be developed out of research.]
[and this doesn't mean we can't have self-archiving mandates, that allow for exceptions!]
