Open Access Anthropology » Integrity http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org Promoting Open Access in Anthropology Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:14:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Editorial on Commerical and Not-for-Profit Scholarly Publishing http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/10/16/editorial-on-commerical-and-not-for-profit-scholarly-publishing/ http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/10/16/editorial-on-commerical-and-not-for-profit-scholarly-publishing/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:56:54 +0000 jbj http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/?p=183 Readers of the Open Access Anthropology blog might have an interest in an opinion essay that I (Jason Baird Jackson) wrote recently. In it, I lay out some modest steps  that scholars interested in changing the direction of scholarly communications might take. The focus is a plea to withdraw from working with commercial publishers. The essay can be found on my website here: http://wp.me/p6MUY-5r . Thanks!

]]> http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/10/16/editorial-on-commerical-and-not-for-profit-scholarly-publishing/feed/ 0 Corporate Publisher Sage Captures and Encloses Sociology, Spoils the “Good News” by Making Political Science Angry http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/07/08/corporate-publisher-sage-captures-and-encloses-sociology-spoils-the-good-news-by-making-political-science-angry/ http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/07/08/corporate-publisher-sage-captures-and-encloses-sociology-spoils-the-good-news-by-making-political-science-angry/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:01:31 +0000 jbj http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/?p=151 Inside Higher Education reports today on two developments in social science publishing centered on the large commercial publisher Sage.  In the story available here, we learn that the American Sociological Association, has followed the lead of the AAA and foresaken self-publishing its journals portfolio in lieu of a co-publishing agreement with Sage. This would have been a straight forward story of celebration or mourning (depending on where you stand), were it not co-occuring with the other storyline presented in the IHE story.  A fully Saged owned political science journal–Political Theory–is at the center of a controversy related to a flubbed firing/hiring/replacing of the journal’s editor.  The episode revealed for many political scientists the conflicts built into corporate owned or controlled journals and showed again the misallignment of commercial and scholarly values.  Read all about it and think twice when Sage calls and asks you to take up an editorship.  Thanks IHE.

(Forget open access.  Why again are we are dismantling the university press system and selling/giving away the pieces to these folks?)

]]> http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/2009/07/08/corporate-publisher-sage-captures-and-encloses-sociology-spoils-the-good-news-by-making-political-science-angry/feed/ 0 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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