ANTHROPOLOGY OF/IN CIRCULATION: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies

Abstract

In a conversation format, seven anthropologists with extensive expertise in new digital technologies, intellectual property, and journal publishing discuss issues related to open access, the anthropology of information circulation, and the future of scholarly societies. Among the topics discussed are current anthropological research on open source and open access; the effects of open access on traditional anthropological topics; the creation of community archives and new networking tools; potentially transformative uses of field notes and materials in new digital ecologies; the American Anthropological Association's recent history with these issues, from the development of AnthroSource to its new publishing arrangement with Wiley‐Blackwell; and the political economies of knowledge circulation more generally.

Anthropology with algorithms?

“…The ubiquity of the internet and digital media continues to transform human social life, and with it scientific research (see Kelty et al 2008). Anthropology is no exception, with digital media generating new research topics (Bonilla and Rosa 2015;Escobar et al 1994;Fader and Gottlieb 2015;Nuttall and Mbembe 2015;Wilf 2013) as well as methods for data collection and analysis (Burrell 2009;Fischer et al 2013;Garcia et al 2009;Murthy 2008;Wesch 2007).…”

The open question

“…There's nothing particularly new about this argument -it's been made much more eloquently by people who have been thinking about it much longer and more subtly that I have (Kansa 2014;Boellstorff et al 2008;Kelty 2014;Jackson and Anderson 2014) -but I think that it bears repeating. The idea is we can't really speak productively about OA -and what either 'openness' or 'access' might mean -without also thinking about a host of other issues such as the process of (and different models of) peer-review, the relationship between journals and other modes and sites of communication, the role of university libraries, the assessment of academic labor, as well as the big questions of what we want our research and writing to do in the world and to whom we want it to speak (Kelty 2014).…”

“…The idea is we can't really speak productively about OA -and what either 'openness' or 'access' might mean -without also thinking about a host of other issues such as the process of (and different models of) peer-review, the relationship between journals and other modes and sites of communication, the role of university libraries, the assessment of academic labor, as well as the big questions of what we want our research and writing to do in the world and to whom we want it to speak (Kelty 2014). Again, as others have pointed out repeatedly, this kind of ethnographic attention to the specificities of changing communication practices and infrastructures helps us to resist the kind of technological determinism that sometimes underlies debates about OA, and that is implicit in technolibertarian claims about information 'wanting to be free' (Christen 2012;Boellstorff et al 2008).…”

Positioning Open Access Journals in a LIS Journal Ranking

“…Scholars in other fields such as the humanities and social sciences where free information sharing is not a common practice have become more aware of the value of open access, more willing to participate in self-archiving, and already more involved in various OA activities. 33 In LIS, librarians have been among the driving forces behind open access. They now need to expand their services to other fields and help them in the design of more systematic and consistent OA strategies.…”