Green or Gold OA for the AAA?

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Mike Smith

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Jun 18, 2009, 9:36:41 AM6/18/09
to Open Access Anthropology
As a follower of Steven Harnad, I think it is more feasible to steer
anthropology and the AAA first toward Green OA (self-archiving), with
less emphasis on Gold OA (OA journals). Both are important, but Harnad
argues that Green OA has much greater potential for making a
difference in access in a reasonable time frame.

That said, what is the best approach for repositories? Most of our
universities are not going to set up institutional repositories any
time soon. The last time I looked at the Mana'o (or is it Mano'a)
repository for anthropology, it was still in the construction stages,
quite rudimentary (I tried checking again just now, but the page
wouldn't load). So what about the AAA? Disciplinary repositories have
been successful in physics and perhaps other fields. I can't imagine
the AAA arguing in principle against a disciplinary archive, so
perhaps that is a good direction to pushs (but, being cynical here
based on recent AAA polls and C. Kelty's post, it's hard to imagine
current AAA staff having the incentive and ability to set up something
like this).

Christopher Kelty

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Jun 18, 2009, 1:01:43 PM6/18/09
to open-access-anthropology


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christopher Kelty <cke...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [OAA] Green or Gold OA for the AAA?
To: mesm...@asu.edu


Mike,

Agreed, the AAA is not going to set up a respository any time soon.  I'm not sure what's up with Manao, except that it runs solely on Alex's free labor and he's in PNG right now. 

If your institution does not have a repository set up, you have a couple of options.

1. simply post it to your own website
2. check here for another repository: http://roar.eprints.org/?action=browse
3. use SSRN, which is probably the biggest and closest to what anthros do.  I don't like the fact that they allow advertising and that they try to make you sign up before accessing, but those are aesthetic objections.

Repositories take a lot of work.  Dorothea Salo (http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/) has written extensively about the hidden labor involved in setting one up and getting it to work well, and most institutions do not recognize the amount of labor involved.   With the spread of mandates, like Harvard's OA mandate, there is increasingly room to demand that such repos be adequately funded, but it is slow.

And Green vs. Gold is not an either or.  As I suggested, one can organize to start a new journal at the same time that one self-archives work published in other places... so yes, do both!

ck
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