Open Access Anthropology

In my previous post, I discussed the example of Oral Tradition, citing it as an example of a vital, established house journal that made the transition to OA. Another established folklore studies journals that has made this switch is Asian Ethnology, a venerable (founded 1942) journal that was known until recently as Asian Folklore Studies.

A second path in folklore involves the use of institutional repositories as an effective means of getting the back run of a journal available online. The two instances that I know best are projects at my home institution, Indiana University. Again, such efforts are easiest for journals that remain, in some fashion, under the control of a small, localized collective.

As I mentioned previously in another forum, The Folklore and Folk Music Archivist has been made available online in OA as part of IU’s institutional repository (known as IUScholarWorks). The Folklore and Folk Music Archivist is no longer being published, but it was, and is, a valuable publication that was closely associated with the Archives of Traditional Music (ATM), a fantastically rich and important ethnographic sound archives here. This was a publication that was small enough that it could not easily be found everywhere it was wanted and the archives staff were regularly responding to requests from scholars seeking copies of individual articles. Making it available in OA is an obvious increase in the collective good as well as a minor problem solver for the archives staff. The ATM’s investment will pay dividends for years to come and, because the journal is no longer being published, it is a project with a recognizable starting and ending point. There are surely many more closed journal runs that could be readily added to appropriate repositories in similar fashion with relatively small investments of time and money.

Adding to the critical mass of folklore content in IUScholarWorks is an effort by the current staff of Folklore Forum. Folklore Forum, another long serving journal in the field, is an example of another kind of journal especially suitable for OA conversion–the student run, student published journal. (See law reviews as a related case, here.) “Forum” was founded in in 1968 and has been continuously published by the graduate students in what is now the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology since this time. Recently the student editors worked with the IUScholarWorks project to make the entire back run available. While the repository collection for the Folklore and Folk Music Archivist contains 76 works, the Folklore Forum collection contains (as of tonight) 1369 items, making it the largest discrete collection in the repository. Because Folklore Forum is still a going concern (the students are preparing to release a new issue (to be born both digital and OA)), the repository collection will be continuing to grow. (Anyone consulting Folklore Forum for the first time will be amazed at all the people who have published in it, including scholars who are today major figures in folklore and anthropology.)

Discussion of Folklore Forum as a student run journal brings the discussion to OA start ups. I will take this up next time, but I can point to one example–Cultural Analysis–that I have mentioned here previously. It was founded by folklore students at the University of California–Berkeley. While some of its prime movers have gone on to become alumni of that program, the journal retains its association with the Berkeley folklore program.

[Thanks go to Gavin Baker for reposting my earlier entry to Open Access News.]

Tags: Case studies · OA JournalsNo Comments