American Anthropologist editor promotes Open Access

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.

American Anthropological Association joins the dark side of the force

Check out Daniel Lende's post on Neuroanthopology, "American Anthropological Association takes public stand against open access." This concerns an open letter submitted by AAA Executive Director William Davis to the White House call for public comment on public access to scholarly publications. Wow, it looks like the AAA has lined up with the commercial publishers, not with scholars and researchers.

Do you recall the cartoon I published on open access a few weeks ago? Well, the AAA has now joined with commercial publishers as the tail wagging the research dog.

This development makes me glad that I resigned from the American Anthropological Association last year. It is one thing to complain about a professional association that is inefficient or clueless or off-base about some things. But the situation is really bad when the leadership goes over to the dark side of the force, making scholars ashamed of being anthropologists.

Why did I resign from the American Anthropological Association?

I recently resigned my membership in the American Anthropological Association, after nearly forty years. The AAA asked for my reasons for this, and gave me 900 characters to respond. This is what I told them:

4. Is there anything you care to say about your membership experience?

(1) During the nearly 40 years of my membership, I have found the AAA very poor in its responsiveness to members concerns.

(2) I have long been dismayed at the postmodern trend in anthropology, and the recent "science" episode tipped the scales. For me this involves 2 concerns:

(A) This confirmed my fears of an anti-science sentiment within anthropology.

(B) The response by the AAA president and board was completely inadequate in terms of internet communication and the role of independent bloggers. It showed a serious lack of understanding of both current sentiment and the nature of blogs and internet communication.

(3) The AAA is too heavily politicized. As a professional organization, the AAA should not be taking stands (through resolutions, etc.) on current political issues. This not only marginalizes some members, but also detracts from the ability of anthropology to contribute to the solution of social problems (see works by Doug Massey in sociology on this).


These are the works by Massey I was referring to (but did not have space in include in my reply to the AAA):

Massey, Douglas S.
2006    Doing Social Science in Anti-Scientific Times. American Sociologist 37:87-95.

2007    The Strength of Weak Politics. In Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Dan Clawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Mistra, Naomi Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas L. Anderton, and Michael Burawoy, pp. 145-157. Universitiy of California Press, Berkeley.

Why is it that I find more inspiration these days -- both intellectual and professional -- from the field of sociology than from anthropology? That is one higher-level reason for leaving the AAA (although not a big enough reason to join the ASA!). For the price of my AAA membership, I can subscribe to several new journals, including Social Science History and Urban Morphology. I can get American Anthropology online through my university, but the thing I miss most about the AAA membership is easy access to the Anthropology News. This is online, with a five-year embargo!!! As if people really want to read a newsletter from five years ago.

I am enjoying these new journals, and I can get what I want out of American Anthropologist without having to worry about all the negative aspects of the AAA.

Will transdisciplinary work destroy anthropology?

When the Department of Anthropology at Arizona State University was planning its transition into the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in 2005, a member of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association said in an interview, "This kind of program isn't going to strengthen anthropology, its going to destroy it." A bunch of non-anthropologist faculty positions were added to the program, mostly new hires, and bunch of new anthropologists were hired (including yours truly in 2005). Now that the new school is five years old, has anthropology been destroyed?

Not according to an article in the current issue of Anthropology News ("Transdisciplinary Anthropology at Arizona State" by Alexandra Brewis, Christopher Roberts, Rhian Stotts, and Amber Wutich, Anthropology News, May 2011, page 21). This group of faculty and students conducted a network analysis of faculty collaboration within the school, gathering data on research collaboration and communication among faculty within the school.

Figure 1 reports research collaboration on formal projects, and Figure 2 shows communication (email, phone calls, etc.). It is interesting that the non-anthropologists, group 5, are in the middle of the anthropological subdisciplines. Archaeologists (group 1) collaborate most often with bioarchaeologists and non-anthropologists. I collaborate on research projects with a few archaeologists and a few of the non-anthropologists (e.g., see our transdisciplinary urban project, a funded research project within the school. This is one of a group of transdiscplinary research project in the school, called "Late Lessons from Early History"). As for communication patterns, it looks like physical anthropologists and bioarchaeologists are always yakking (while the rest of us are too busy doing research...... ha ha, only kidding!).

The results of the network study confirm my own subjective impression of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Anthropology is alive and well here, but many or most of us anthropologists are also engaged in transdisciplinary work and collaboration that both extends and strengthens anthropology. The fact that all of our faculty are empirical scholars with a scientific epistemology certainly helps processes of interaction and collaboration.

I can't link to the Anthropology News article because its not posted online yet. I find it very frustrating that they don't get around to posting their issues until after the paper copy has been distributed (I got my copy today). I'll try to add a link after the AAA gets around to posting the issue. On the other hand, since AN is not open access, many readers will not be able to access it. So maybe I'll download the article and post it on my website. The things one has to do to get around AAA publication policies!

Anthropological bloggers write to the AAA board

A group of anthropological bloggers (including your truly) has just submitted a letter to the President and Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. The gist of the letter is that the discussion of the AAA-science episode in blogs and other social media has been beneficial to the discipline. This interaction (here, on Neuroanthropology, Savage Minds, and elsewhere) has been more dynamic, relevant, and productive than: (1) the rather limited and wooden pronouncements from the AAA Executive Board; and (2) the articles by Nicholas Wade in the New York Times. Therefore the AAA should think about how to promote the use of social media professionally and how to take advantage of this growing network of on-line anthropologists to promote the interests of the discipline and the association.

You can read the letter here.

So just what are the intellectual and professional implications of all this blogging? Come check our our symposium at the SAA meetings on blogging in archaeology, organized by Colleen Morgan of Middle Savagery.

American Anthropologist implies that archaeology is not part of anthropology

Just got the Dec. 2010 issue of American Anthropologist. There is a special section titled "In Focus: (Not) The End of Anthropology,  Again? Some Thoughts on Disciplinary Futures" edited by John Comaraff and Karl-Heniz Kohl (wow, what a nice postmodern-sounding title). There are three articles, each by a sociocultural anthropologist, about the future of the discipline of anthropology. Oops, I mean the future of "cultural anthropology," although only one of the articles (by Andre Gingrich) has the sense to use "cultural anthropology" in its title. The article by Ulf Hannerz ignores archaeology, and the one by John Comaroff uses "archaeology" only to mean the "past" or "history" (deliberately echoing Foucault's usage, I'm sure). Gingrich does mention archaeology when he says, "Other neighboring disciplines among the “four fields”—for instance, archaeology or physical anthropology..."

These three authors, like many sociocultural anthropologists, apparently view their own subdiscipline as the "real" anthropology, with fields like archaeology or biological anthropology as dimly-related hangers-on. These fields aren't really part of anthropology, unless one is forced into 4-field discourse for some reason. These authors certainly seem to think they can write about the "discipline of anthropology," but only talk about cultural anthropology. And by implication one can infer that the (sociocultural anthropologist) Editor of American Anthropologist feels the same way (otherwise one might expect a note from the Editor, or perhaps more precise titles of the articles).

So where does this leave archaeology? The flagship journal of the main anthropological association, in a featured series of papers, implicitly dismisses archaeology as an important part of anthropology. When this is added to the insults from the AAA science fiasco, it helps push people like me further from anthropology. In the past few years I have come to view archaeology as a comparative historical social science discipline of its own, rather than as a lesser subdiscipline of anthropology. I discuss this briefly in "Archaeology is Archaeology" (Anthropology News, Jan 2010, page 35 - I'll try to post this on my website soon).

If I were a sociocultural anthropologist who wanted to drive archaeologists out of the AAA, I'd probably do things like fiddle with the wording of planning documents to alienate archaeologists, plant hegemonic articles in AA, and cut archaeology sessions from the AAA annual meeting (this initially occurred in 2002, and was the impetus for the founding of the Society for Anthropological Sciences). Hmmm, all these things have happened.

Science and the AAA: Five problems with the proposed changes

I have looked over the various materials at the AAA website and on various blogs, and I have heard a brief presentation by an AAA board member who is in my program. The most useful thing to look at is the actual changes in wording. You can see them here.

I find five problems with the proposed changes in wording:

1. The term science should not be removed from AAA planning documents. If the AAA wants to be pluralistic and add interpretivist approaches in addition to science, that's fine. But many of us do social science, and many of us do biological science. For us, the concept of science is at the heart of our intellectual pursuits and it is part of our professional and personal identities.
2. The AAA focus on research, and scholarship should not be changed to an exclusive focus on the advancement of  "public understanding." Public outreach is important and should continue to be stressed, but not at the expense of research and scholarship.
3. The concern of the AAA should not be changed from a focus on the four subdisciplines of anthropology (ethnology, archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology) to understanding "humankind in all its aspects." The AAA should not be hegemonic and try to co-opt all social sciences and all human-related biological sciences (and perhaps all the humanities as well). The AAA should focus on anthropology as normally construed in the United States (the list of the subdisciplines does a good job of this).**
4. The extended list of topics included in the purview of the AAA should not be changed from the list of the four traditional subdisciplines** to an expanded list consisting of three subdisciplines plus seven branches of the fourth subdiscipline (ethnology).
5. The use of anthropology "to solve human problems" should not be removed from the statement.

** NOTE: I am amenable to adding applied anthropology as a fifth subdiscipline.

"Anthropology is not a science" - American Anthropological Association

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) had adopted a new long-range plan that omits the word "science" from the association's long-term plan. Not surprisingly, scientific anthropologists are upset, and the controversy is all over the internet. I think this is a VERY BAD THING, and it may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back for me -- perhaps it's time to resign from the AAA. My intellectual and alienation from cultural anthropology, and my professional and intellectual alienation from the AAA. go way back (I have various prior posts on this, check the index).

*** NOTE: PLEASE SEE MY CONCISE SPECIFIC OBJECTIONS TO THE WORDING CHANGES (Posted Dec. 3) ***

Check out the controversy. My favorite post is Alice Dreger's column, "No science, please. We're anthropoloigsts." in Psychology Today. By the way, Dreger will shortly nail the AAA for its behavior toward Napoleon Chagnon in the Tierney Darkness in El Dorado affair in a detailed scholarly article.

For basic reporting, see articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education.

Savage Minds has a post on it called: "Why anthropology is 'true' even if it's not 'science.' Pretty lame, but there is a lively discussion on the post.

But the best discussion is on Neuroanthropology, "Anthropology, Science and Public Understanding." Daniel Lende  points to something I missed in my initial reading. The new list of topics covered by anthropology replaces the subdisciplines with a list that includes the subdisciplines PLUS a bunch of things that fall largely within cultural anthropology. As Lende says on Neuoanthropology:

The AAAs emphasis on cultural anthropology continues, and is actually reinforced in this new document. Before there were just four sub-fields – “archeological, biological, ethnological, and linguistic research.” Now we have a list of ten – “archeological, biological, social, cultural, economic, political, historical, medical, visual, and linguistic anthropological research.” The new additions fall largely within the domain of cultural anthropology – social, cultural, economic, political, historical, medical, and visual. Equal weighting for biology would likely demand some mention of primatology and evolutionary anthropology. I am sure an archaeologist would also have relevant additions.

So I guess we now know what the AAA board thinks anthropology really consists of: it is mostly cultural anthropology, with, oh yes, a bit of biological and archaeological material thrown in to satisfy the four-fields myth. Not very encouraging for archaeology.
 

Open Access in the news

Greetings from lovely Fort Scott, Kansas.
There have been a bunch of recent posts on open access in anthropology. Here I want to point to John Hawks's entry, "Why don't universities cut out the middleman?" The middleman in question is the group of commercial journal publishers. Right now, I work for Elsevier, Sage, Blackwell, and other commercial presses for free. I put in unpaid time doing scholarly work so that these large corporations can make profits from my efforts. Sometimes I feel like a fool; why should I divert my time and efforts from my own research in order to enrich these companies? The answer, of course, is that this unpaid labor consists of reviewing manuscripts (peer review), and I consider such reviewing a fundamental professional duty. So I do this work willingly, but every once in a while I get steamed up about it.

John Hawks asks what would happen if the whole system of funding scholarly journals were transformed such that journals were all online and open access (gold OA), sponsored by universities. University libraries would pay for editing and page production of these journals instead of paying for costly subscriptions to commercial print (and electronic) journals. Ignoring for now the complexities and difficulties in such a transformation. If this change were to come about, then my unpaid labor writing reviews (and writing articles, for that matter) would benefit my university, not a commercial press. I would feel much better about that. Hawks has a variety of interesting comments; take a look.

Savage Minds also has had some interesting recent posts on open access and the AAA; with some good discussion in the comments:

• AAA director condemns really stupid business models (Sept 1)
• Gourmet vs. All Things Considered: The Anthropological Edition (Sept. 2)

Now I half expect Steven Harnad to come swooping down and point out that the kind of massive transition Hawks discusses is really pie in the sky - its not going to happen soon, if it happens at all. But in the meantime, we can all promote open access and all of its benefits if we self-archive our publications. Harnad is completely correct here, and well worth listening to.

Electronic Publishing at the American Anthropological Association

Savage Minds just posted a short piece on "Understanding the Current Future of the AAA" by Chris Kelty. It is about the AAA's Committee on the Future of Print and Electronic Publishing. The committee solicited a bunch of memos about the AAA's publications program. Kelty says,

• "I’ve read a handful of these memos, most of which seem to say something like “our section is still alive, so we have no complaints.” This is kind of worrying, since a bunch of memos recommending no action will lead to no action by the Section Assembly, no decisions by the Executive Boards and no executions by the Staff"

He then mentions an extraordinary memo by Kim Fortun, outgoing co-editor of Cultural Anthropology, that is posted on the Savage Minds site. Kelty says,

• "Kim’s memo could be a handbook for understanding the current crisis and politics of scholarly publishing in general, and the promises, fulfilled and unfulfilled, of the AAA’s union with Wiley Blackwell, in particular. It is incredibly detailed, well-sourced, well organized and throughtful–far beyond the call of duty of a memo."

Anyone interested in the publications situation at the AAA (and by comparison, at many scholarly societies) should check out Fortun's memo. I have long been disappointed in the AAA's approach to publishing (click here, for an example), and I was impressed by the detail and insight contained in Fortun's memo.

“Americanist Archaeology” is slighted in American Anthropologist

I just read an odd article in American Anthropologist by B. Sunday Eiselt called “Americanist Archaeologies: 2008 in Review” (Eiselt 2009). I use the term “odd” because two aspects of the article conflict with the apparent goal of the paper (to review major developments in Americanist archaeology or “archaeologies”). First, the topical coverage, which focuses on the themes of conflict, catastrophe and collaboration, captures only a very small portion of published research in Americanist archaeology. Second, much of the literature reviewed is written by Europeans about areas outside of the Americas. As an Americanist archaeologist I feel that research in this domain has been slighted by the biased coverage in this review article.

The paper is part of a new series in American Anthropologist called “The Year in Review.” These are short articles intended to review “what happened in a particular subfield of anthropology” in 2008 (Editor’s introduction, page 132). This is a worthy addition to the journal, and such papers could be very useful for keeping up with different parts of the discipline of anthropology.

But just what is “Americanist archaeology”? The author does not define this term anywhere in the paper, but she does cite Robert Dunnell’s series of articles that reviewed “Americanist archaeology” for an Old World archaeological audience in the American Journal of Anthropology in the 1980s. In the first of that series, Dunnell defined the scope of Americanist archaeology as “the kind of archaeology that has developed in association with anthropology in North America” (Dunnell 1979:437). In subsequent works by Dunnell and others, the phrase Americanist archaeology was used to refer to theoretical work done by North American anthropological archaeologists (e.g., Dunnell 1986; Lyman and O'Brien 2001, 2004).

In fact, there is a much older and far more widespread usage of the term Americanist archaeology that includes all archaeology done on the American continents. This is part of the field of “Americanist” scholarship. The International Congress of Americanists (“ICA”) was established in 1875 in Nancy, France. Every three years scholars from around the world gather to discuss a variety of research themes focused on the American continents (Comas 1974). The 53^rd ICA was held two weeks ago in Mexico City, with an attendance in the thousands. For most of us who work in Latin America, this is the usage that comes to mind when we hear the phrase Americanist archaeology. (See also the Journal de la Société des Américanistes, published in Paris since 1896). In comparison, Dunnell’s usage is parochial (only theory in North American anthropology departments), and Eiselt’s usage is bizarre.

Eiselt presents tables tallying peer-reviewed articles in 2008 by topic and by approach. Such data can be useful for getting the pulse of research in a field. But since no information is given on the source of the data (which journals were surveyed? what criteria were used to identify “Americanist” papers?), the tables are neither scholarly nor helpful. Then the review launches into the three themes (conflict, catastrophe, and collaboration). Although the material covered under each heading is interesting, these sections reflect poorly the content of the literature in Americanist archaeology. The most biased section is “conflict,” the bulk of which is devoted to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In what sense is this war the focus of research and publishing in Americanist archaeology? There is a big current literature on warfare, imperialism, personal violence, and other themes of conflict in Americanist archaeology of the precontact period, but that literature is not even hinted at in Eiselt’s paper.

Note 1 to this article (p.143) states that “The use of this term [the word referenced with the note is “abroad”] in no way implies that the current research cited in this document is specifically Americanist or may be claimed by U.S. approaches or traditions.” Huh????? Doesn’t the phrase “Americanist archaeologies” in the title mean that the paper reviews Americanist research? I guess note 1 excuses the focus on the Iraq war, but it leaves me puzzled about just what is meant by the term Americanist. I doubt the scholars from all over the world who attended the 53^rd ICA two weeks ago would be happy with the content of this article as a reflection of their collective research activity. And I would guess that Dunnell, Lyman, and O’Brien would not think that their concept of Americanist archaeology is well served either.

One part of me is inclined to ignore these difficulties of coverage and definition. People can write what they want, and if the title and goal of the paper were different I would have few objections. But American Anthropologist has only a limited amount of space for these new review articles, and as an Americanist archaeologist I feel cheated. This paper covers only a tiny portion of current publishing in this field, and much of the content has nothing at all to do with Americanist archaeology as normally construed. Yet the Editor of the journal opines that Eiselt and the other review article authors have “succeeded wonderfully” in chronicling “what happened in a particular subfield of anthropology” in 2008 (Editor’s introduction, page 132). I disagree quite strongly with this judgment, and most of my “Americanist” colleagues would probably concur. Eiselt’s article is NOT about Americanist archaeology.

References:

Comas, Juan

1974 Cien años de Congresos Internacionales de Americanistas: Ensayo histórico-crítico y bibliográfico. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.

Dunnell, Robert C.

1979 Trends in Current Americanist Archaeology. American Journal of Archaeology 83:437-449.

1986 Methodological Issues in Americanist Artifact Classification. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 9:149-207.

Eiselt, B. Sunday

2009 Americanist Archaeologies: 2008 in Review. American Anthropologist 111:137-145.

Lyman, R. Lee and Michael J. O'Brien

2001 The Direct Historical Approach, Analogical Reasoning, and Theory in Americanist Archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 8:303-342.

2004 A History of Normative Theory in Americanist Archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 11:369-396.

A “publication” gone bad (or, don’t trust the media)

I recently organized an advanced seminar at the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, AZ, on approaches to comparative analysis for ancient complex societies. The session was productive, and an edited volume is now in preparation. As part of our discussion, the participants wrote a joint statement that explained in a succinct format why comparative analysis is essential for archaeology. We spent quite a bit of time on this to make sure that it said what we wanted and that everyone could agree on the content. Our goal was to use this statement to publicize not only our session, but the comparative approach in general. It was done in part to counter the particularist and anti-comparative approaches associated with postmodernism. The statement included the names of all of the participants.

I sent the statement around to several anthropological and scientific news venues. The newsletter, Anthropology News, agreed to publish the statement, but they wanted to turn it into a “Letter to the editor.” I thought this was a bit odd, but agreed (since that was a condition of their acceptance of the document). The newsletter editors edited the statement down (something they said was necessary). When they removed the names of the participants from the start of the document, I assumed that they would add the names at the end as signatures for the letter. Well, that did not happen, and so a carefully-crafted group-authored statement became a shorter single-author letter to the editor.

Needless to say, I am quite upset at this turn of events. I am partly to blame for not double-checking that the other names would indeed be added to the letter as I had wanted. I have a long list of complaints about the AAA, including intellectual, professional, and bureaucratic issues, so I guess my list has just gotten a little longer.

If you are curious about our statement, I’ve posted it on my web site.

The signers are:

Robert D. Drennan (University of Pittsburgh)
Timothy Earle (Northwestern University)
Gary M. Feinman (Field Museum of Natural History)
Roland Fletcher (University of Sydney)
Michael J. Kolb (Northern Illinois University)
Peter Peregrine (Lawrence University)
Christian E. Peterson (University of Pittsburgh)
Carla Sinopoli (University of Michigan)
Michael E. Smith (Arizona State University)
Monica L. Smith (UCLA)
Barbara L. Stark (Arizona State University)
Miriam T. Stark (University of Hawai’i)

Our book, currently under review at a publisher, is tentatively titled, The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies (Michael E. Smith, editor)

Letters to the Editor

I periodically fire off letters to the editor of magazines, typically when they have published a story that contains stupid or misleading information on a subject I know something about. These rarely get published, probably because magazines don’t like to be told they have published bad articles. My most recent rejected letter was submitted last week to Science; here is that letter and a rogues gallery of some of my other rejected letters to the editor:

To the Editor, Science:

In his Perspective “The Size, Scale, and Shape of Cities” (M. Batty, Science, 8 February 2008, p.769) Batty claims that complex systems models produce urban planning results superior to the “idealized geometric plans” of prior approaches. Yet the only such plans he cites date to the Renaissance and the 19^th century! It hardly seems appropriate to complain that these old models “are simply too naïve” to describe contemporary cities. Ancient urban planning models (1) produced cities far more successful and sustainable than most modern cities. Given the large number of unanswered questions Batty raises about contemporary urbanization, it seems that the planners of antiquity understood their own cities better than Batty and others understand the cities of today.

References: 1. M. E. Smith, Jr. Plan. Hist. 6, 3-47 (2007).

To the Editor, Newsweek:

David Ansen’s perceptive review of “Apocalypto” (Newsweek, Dec. 11, 2006) points out that the only part of Maya culture that seems to interest Mel Gibson is the practice of violent, grizzly human sacrifice. Gibson’s movie is only the latest in a five-century line of racist interpretations of the Mayas and other Native American groups. The earliest Spanish conquistadors treated the Mayas and Aztecs as sub-human animals who could be enslaved and exploited. Nineteenth-century European and U.S. writers denied that the impressive ruins from the Andes to the American Midwest could have been built by the ancestors of the native inhabitants of these areas (and thus the sites could be attributed to seafaring Egyptians or the Lost Tribes of Israel).

As an archaeologist who specializes in the ancient peoples of Mexico, I have no quarrel with Apocalypto’s numerous errors and bloopers (as pointed out by my colleagues in “Belief Watch,” Dec. 11). It is, after all, Hollywood entertainment, not a PBS documentary. But I do object strongly to the racist cast of Gibson’s portrayal of the ancient Maya people. By creating two extremes—bloodthirsty, violent city-dwellers versus ignorant noble savages of the forest—Mel Gibson not only distorts the truth, he misses an opportunity to educate people about this remarkable civilization.

To the Editor, Newsweek:

The fact that looted artifacts from Iraq are now being sold to the highest bidder on eBay points out a glaring omission in your cover story on the internet auction house last summer ("The eBay Way of Life," Newsweek, June 17, 2003). eBay and other internet auction sites regularly sell looted artifacts — from Sumerian vases stolen from the Baghdad Museum to Mayan sculptures looted from ruins in Mexico to Civil War gravestones robbed from U.S. cemeteries. These sales increase the commercial value of such stolen art, and thus stimulate further looting. This contributes to the ongoing destruction of archaeological sites, graveyards, and other historical properties around the world. eBay claims it is doing nothing illegal because it is difficult to "prove" that these objects were stolen. Nevertheless, the sale of such items promotes vandalism, theft, and destruction of the historical past.

To the Editor, “Publishing Archaeology Blog:”

Perhaps if your letters to the editor were written in a nicer tone, or if they used prose more clever or witty, or perhaps if they focused on a topic more newsworthy than archaeology, you might have greater success.

ADDENDUM, April 21, 2008:

Even though I'm completely unqualified to call myself an expert on letters to the editor, a recent letter sent to Newsweek by the American Anthropological Association seems pretty lame and unlikely to be accepted. Apart from the fact that the letter consists mainly of waffling on the issue at hand, its prose is more appropriate for American Anthropologist than Newsweek.

The AAA Discusses Open Access

The Feb 2008 issue of Anthropology News (newsletter of the American Anthropological Association) has a special Focus section on Open Access. Several anthropologists (NOT including archaeologists) provide essays on the nature of OA and its possibilities for the AAA. Although a few good issues are brought up, I am disappointed for the exclusive emphasis on Gold OA (open access journals) and lack of consideration of Green OA (self-archiving). See my earlier posts on these alternatives. The fact that this focus section was not made openly available (e.g., through a Creative Commons license) is a signal of just where the AAA stands on OA.

The good points I noted include:

• Lack of OA means lowered access to anthropological knowledge. The lack of OA for AAA journals means that people outside of anthropology, when looking for anthropological knowledge on the internet, are likely to bypass AAA journals and sources and find their information elsewhere. Anthropology as a discipline has done a horrible job over the years of getting its basic data and findings in front of the public and non-anthropological disciplines. Failure to embrace OA will just continue this poor track record into the future.
  
• The AAA needs to rethink not just OA, but its whole mission and organization in light of changes in the internet and publishing.
  
• Who are scholars working for? The AAA publications program has been subcontracted to Wiley-Blackwell, one of the largest commercial publishers. Lets look at the work involved in publishing, assuming that I publish an article in American Anthropologist:
  

1. I do the research and writing for free. I give up time that I could devote to other activities (some of which actually earn money) in order to write scholarly articles for free.
   
2. My colleagues review the manuscript for free.
3. Editors at AA take the time to edit and work on the ms. for free (or maybe they are paid, I'm not sure)
4. AAA turns over the paper to Wiley-Blackwell to publish. W-B earns profits on the article, based on our free scholarly labor.
5. If I want to post the article on the internet, I have to pay W-B for the privilege of doing this.

• I don't recall signing an employment contract with Wiley-Blackwell, and I don't really want to work for them. Maybe I will just not publish in AAA journals any more.

Why doesn't the AAA set up an institutional repository for the publications of anthropologists? This will accomplish the goals of OA without waiting for major upheavals in professional societies and commercial publishers. With innovations like the E-prints reprint button the goals of OA can be reached quickly and easily.