Open Access Anthropology » Elsevier http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org Promoting Open Access in Anthropology Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:19:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Another Reason Not to Trust Corporate Publishers (and to Doubt the Societies Who Work with Them) http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/07/04/another-reason-not-to-trust-corporate-publishers-and-to-doubt-the-societies-who-work-with-them/ http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/07/04/another-reason-not-to-trust-corporate-publishers-and-to-doubt-the-societies-who-work-with-them/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:17:35 +0000 jbj http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/?p=149 Inside Higher Education recently reported on a scheme through which Elsevier sought to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who gave one of its textbooks a five star rating on the Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites.  The sorry details are available in the IHE story here. Please join me in having nothing to do with Elsevier.

]]> http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/07/04/another-reason-not-to-trust-corporate-publishers-and-to-doubt-the-societies-who-work-with-them/feed/ 0 Does your publisher also issue fake journals? http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/06/07/does-your-publisher-also-issue-fake-journals/ http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/06/07/does-your-publisher-also-issue-fake-journals/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:33:16 +0000 jbj http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/?p=147 Scholarly communication reformers and critics recently learned of another way in which the for-profit, toll access journal system has become significantly corrupted when media reports revealed that the giant publishing firm Elsevier has been publishing fake medical journals at the behest of large pharmaceutical firms including Merck. While those concerned with the corporate enclosure of journal publishing in anthropology and neighboring fields usually focus attention on Wiley-Blackwell, Routledge and other firms with large and growing footprints in these fields, it is worth noting in connection with the fake journal episode that a number of anthropology titles are on Elsevier’s +/-2000 journal list. There may be more titles from anthropology and neighboring areas, but I identify the following:

l’Anthropologie
Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia
Evolution and Human Behavior
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Journal of Archaeological Science
Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts

I am sure that these journals are edited by excellent colleagues and are contributed to by first-rate scholars, but I would not want to be associated with a journal published by Elsevier. The reasons are multiple but they now include a documented (and acknowledged) history of misleading publishing activity in the service of big drug companies and not in the service of scholarly integrity.

For the background on the fake journal story, see here and search on “Elsevier” at Open Access News.

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