Seeking a More Ethical Future for Ethnobiology Publishing: A 40-Year Perspective from Journal of ethnobiology

Abstract

BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.

Ethnobiology Phase VI: Decolonizing Institutions, Projects, and Scholarship

“…The pattern of colonial research is perpetuated when, for example, community members are unable to access the products of the ethnobiological research in which they participated because of paywalls or the language of publication of journal articles. While Open Access journals mitigate this issue to some extent (Lepofsky et al 2021), they often require expensive article processing charges (in part mitigated by waivers). While ethnobiologists cannot single-handedly change a problematic publishing system, they can challenge its monopolistic nature through choosing to publish in the journals of scholarly societies (e.g., Economic Botany or Journal of Ethnobiology ), where profits are invested in the research community, and through ‘Platinum’ Open Access journals that have no author or reader fees (e.g., Ethnobotany Research and Applications or Ethnoscientia: Revista Brasileira de Etnobiologia e Etnoecologia ).…”

When is it Appropriate to Reference Identities, Relationships of Belonging, or Knowledge Lineages in Ethnobiological Scholarship?

“…We have been educated to this by Indigenous scholars and thinkers, community research partners, science and technology studies, and other students of human life. From the other wing of this bird (Anderson 2007), ethnobiology publications are often more data-rich and take less of a deep dive into decoding multiple layers of sociocultural and political contexts than do many Indigenous and area studies, anthropological, and humanities publications.…”

“…As the Society of Ethnobiology and its publications seek to decolonize and decenter our North American focus (Lepofsky et al 2021;McAlvay et al 2021), it is key that in our different venues we continually circle back to our ethical guidelines (Code of Ethics [Society of Ethnobiology 2021a] and Code of Conduct [Bannister et al 2021]). We are exploring possibilities for breaking the mold of servicing mainly an anglophone, academic audience.…”

Northwest Native Plants: A Digital Space for Paleoethnobotanical Knowledges and Biocultural Heritage

“…The Open Access (OA) movement, however, seeks to make all research accessible to anyone, thereby keeping the scientific process transparent and reproducible, as well as increasing participation in the scientific process by people who have been historically and systemically excluded [17]. Improved accessibility to scientific research and data is critical to strengthening multivocality and epistemic diversity and should be considered a professional and public responsibility of researchers whose work is supported by public funding [18][19][20].…”