The outoing editor of American Anthropologist, Tom Boellstorff, has published an eloquent plea for the American Anthropological Association to move toward Gold Open Access for its journals. As you will recall, gold OA is the situation where journals are posted on the internet, freely available for reading and downloading by anyone (see some of my previous posts about this).
Here are his reasons (quoted from page 389):
"There are three primary reasons why this transition to gold open access is imperative, reasons that are simultaneoulsy ethical, political, and intellectual. First, there is a fundamental contradiction between the often-repeated goal of making anthropology more public and relevant on the one hand and the lack of open access on the other hand. Second, there is an incompatibility between the broad interest in transnationalzing anthropology and the lack of open access. Third, it is wrong for any academic journal to be based on a model where the unremunerated labor of scholars supports corporate profits. I see no way that the current subscription-based model can be modified so as to adequately address these concerns."
Check out the full paper:
Boellstorff, Tom 2012 From the Editor: Why the AAA Needs Gold Open Access. American Anthropologist 114(3): 389-393.
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