Posts tagged Open Access
Publication Plans
Sep 22nd
Now the thesis is out of the way I need to fix my publication plans. There’s an added twist in the UK. We don’t have tenure here, we have the RAE/REF.
The RAE was the Research Assessment Exercise which was a way of grading the research produced by departments. It was bloated, bureaucratic and expensive and no one knew how the material was going to be assessed until after the submission deadline. Clearly it’s broken, so it’s being replaced by the REF, the Research Excellence Framework.This was going to be more bibliometrically based, but there’s been complaints about that so it’s now more likely to run along the same lines as the RAE, possibly with a few added layers. If I knew exactly how it was going to work I could get a job in any department in the country. It’s quite possible no-one will know how it will work till after the submission deadline.
I’m told that there won’t be bibliometric assessment in History, Archaeology or Classics, but that will mean the Humanities are being assessed in a different way to the Sciences. I’m working on the assumption that some form of citation count will be included. If there no such More >
Scholarly Journals between the Past and the Future by Martin Rundkvist.
Feb 16th
Rundkvist, M. 2007. Scholarly Journals between the Past and the Future: The Fornvännen Centenary Round-Table Seminar, Stockholmm 21 April 2006. Konferenser 65. Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien.
It’s a measure of the quality of this book that I have delayed putting up a review until I have thought it could get the audience it deserves. The volume brings together papers by nine editors of journals across Europe, each with their own perspective on what the future holds for publishing. Their opinions are diverse and provocative, but even where some assertions are demonstrably wrong they highlight misconceptions about publishing which need to be tackled.
The first paper is ‘Scholarly Open Access Journals and Libraries’ by Jan Hagerlid. This can be an overlooked aspect of the Open Access debate, with academics concentrating on the content rather than the medium. Hagerlid raises some interesting points highlighting that the aims even of of traditional and conservative scholars do not necessarily align with those of publishers. For example he notes that the transition to electronic subscription would have mean the end of the inter-library loan, had the publishers been granted what they demanded. He also argues that it would be wrong to treat publishers as a More >
Egypt, Antiquities and Copyright
Dec 30th
Mickey Mouse Copyright Laws. Based on a photo (cc) Liber.
One of the advantages of being slow in writing is that you can look at what everyone else is saying about something. Often people will have thought about the same problem and already anticipated problems in your own line of thought, so you can avoid making a fool of yourself. Other times it’s a surprise, and this is one of those times. News from the BBC is that Egypt is ‘to copyright antiquities‘.
Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids and this law will apply around the world.
To a greater or lesser extent other bloggers think they can’t do this and they can’t enforce it. In contrast I think they can and they can. This isn’t just my very basic understanding of law. It’s also the fact that museums in the West have been doing this, more or less, for years. Below is where I make a fool of myself. (more…)
An early Christmas present from the Society for Medieval Archaeology
Dec 6th
Pictish Stone. Photo (cc) Pamela Adam. Click on the photo to read her comments.
Good news from the Society for Medieval Archaeology and the wizards at the Archaeology Data Service. The first fifty (50) issues of Medieval Archaeology are available for free online. Its not quite open access, because the issues can’t be archived elsewhere, but that’s no real problem as long as the ADS stays funded.
The Society exists to “further the study of the period from the 5th to the 16th century A.D. by publishing a journal of international standing dealing primarily with the archaeological evidence, and by other means such as by holding regular meetings and arranging conferences.” It’s clear making the journal freely accessible is going to do a lot for their work, but even so when you also have to balance the financial needs of the Society it’s still a courageous step in a field where most publications are subscription-only.
But the real reason to celebrate is that the journal is very good. There is plenty of stuff in it that deserves a wide audience. For instance Pictish symbol stones are a bit of a mystery. However I can read about them in the article Investing in Sculpture: More >
The Open Access Dinosaur
Nov 15th
Work is going well, you may see some of it before Christmas. I have plans for the New Year and I may have one or two archaeology projects that you can take part in wherever you are – if I can work out exactly what it is I’m doing. In the meantime there’s news of new dinosaur publication from Coturnix, which is rather exciting for a couple of reasons.
Nigersaurus from PLoS One.One is that it seems to be an intrinsically interesting dinosaur. Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur is a publication of a dinosaur which is like a mini Diplodocus, mini being a relative description. What makes it very strange are the bones, there’s not a lot to them. The skull is described as a featherweight PLoS paper. This seems to be the same throughout the skeleton. Co-author Jeffrey Wilson said: “The vertebrae are so paper-thin that it is difficult to imagine them coping with the stresses of everyday use — but we know they did it, and they did it well.” The mounting of the skull on the spine means that it’s also more evidence as to whether Nigersaurus and Diplodocus ate like giraffes from high food sources, or More >
How can you lead the Open Access revolution in the USA?
Oct 21st
Capitol Hill. Photo (cc) Wyntuition.
If you live in the USA then Bora Zivkovic needs your help. The Senate is considering the FY08 Labor-HHS Bill. It’s of interest because it includes provisions to make NIH funded research available through open access 12 months after commercial publication. Currently the voluntary arrangement means that only 5% of research funded by American taxpayers is available without charge to those taxpayers. This is why the bill is needed.
Not everyone agrees. Senator Inhofe (R-OK) believes that being taxed once is not enough and has filed to amendments to prevent open access to publicly funded research.
Bora would like you to contact your senator if you live in the USA and tell them that you’d like to have access to what you have paid for. It’ll need an email to be sent before close of business Oct 22, 2007. See A Blog Around the Clock for a sample email and more details.
Reviews in Archaeology
Jul 25th
Reading Archaeology. Photo (cc) Queen Roly.
There’s an interesting post gone up at Publishing Archaeology: Why Aren’t There More Good Book Reviews in Archaeology? – the discipline, not the magazine. Mike Smith raises one of those points which is obvious when someone else mentions it. Why is there no archaeological equivalent of BMCR?
One key point is the difference between good reviews and positive reviews. When I review something here it tends to be positive. One reason for this is that I write in my spare time and I don’t often feel like putting in effort for what may promote a bad book. A good review in contrast is one which informs you about the book and gives an accurate account of whether or not it’s worth bothering with. Whether or not there are good reviews here is for you to decide and I’m not fishing for compliments.
My first reaction when reading this post were that there were plenty of good reviews, most of them in BMCR, but as Mike points out (and I keep forgetting) there is a Divide between archaeology and classics. Nonetheless BMCR is fantastic. If you haven’t read it then it’s a free online journal which is only More >
Internet Archaeology moves towards Open Access
Jun 20th
The Popping Cork. Photo (cc) Davepilsbrow.
Here’s a story which has been noted elsewhere quite a while ago. I saw it mentioned at About Archaeology a couple of weeks ago, but I’ll mention it anyway as it’s also very exciting. Internet Archaeology is moving towards an Open Access model.
If you’ve not seen it Internet Archaeology is a solely online journal. I’ve blogged about it before and my major concern has been the access model. Because it’s online it can’t be accessed through interlibrary loan and so it is completely limited to sites with subscriptions. Judith Winters has pointed out in a comment that the papers in IA are often simply not suited to replication, so the access issue has remained a problem. What is so exciting is that JISC have purchased access to all Internet Archaeology’s back issues and subscriptions for the next two years. The practical result is every Further and Higher Education establishment in the UK should have access to Internet Archaeology. At a stroke it’s now a massively more attractive journal to publish in.
I could grumble that I can’t get access from home, which limits me to accessing papers one day every two weeks, but that would be missing the point. Because Internet More >
Things Seen: Digging Digitally
Apr 20th
I’m going through a busy patch at the moment, which means I don’t have time to comment on some posts which I’ve seen. What there’ll be for the next couple of weeks will be posts from del.icio.us and the occasional bulk post like this one because I’m still reading, and many other blogs are going through strong patches at the moment.
Digging Digitally is well worth following if you’re an archaeological academic. Archaeological Data: Public Domain or Copyrighted? raises a serious concern about access to facts. Unlike experimental sciences Archaeology is destructive. If I excavate a site then you can’t. But my research protected by copyright, usually signed away to a publisher. So who owns facts? This is complicated in the UK by database rights. Any database, even if it’s made of facts in the public domain, is protected by database rights for fifteen years from the last time it was modified.
Things can get murkier still. If I find Excalibur then who can print pictures of it? I can, because I can photograph it. But can you? Obviously the artefact needs to be locked away and conserved, so its not the sort of thing you can access easily. In fact if you More >
ClassAss 2007
Mar 31st
I’ll be talking at the Classical Association conference at Birmingham in a few weeks. I was told there’d be a session on publishing, so I get to be Bora for a day.
The plan is to talk about Peer-to-peer publishing and the creative process. The other speakers seem to be talking about publishing finished work. There’s an space which you could drive open access into, but I’m only intending to talk for about ten to fifteen minutes. Given I’ll be scheduled alongside someone from a publisher and established academics, I don’t think that raising this here would be a viable and could do more harm than good. Instead I’m going to be a bit more subversive – is publishing about publishing finished work?
This is a session for postgrads, and I accept that help is needed to get something published in a timely manner. But I also think that another thing that can help grad students is feedback. This is why many students will be giving papers at the conference this year. (more…)
