ON ETHICS, SUSTAINABILITY, AND OPEN ACCESS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

"Despite all of these dysfunctions, professional societies representing archaeology typically undermine or avoid OpenAccess and cling to paywalls. They do so out of fear, not malice. They worry that a loss of subscription revenue will make it impossible to support editing and peer-review activities essential to quality publication. They also worry that they will lose dues-paying members should publications be openly available. Although these are valid concerns, Open Access financing models and years of experimentation teach us that the status quo of paywalls need not be an ugly necessity....The transition to Open Access will not be easy, but it is necessary. Fortunately, the SAA [Society for American Archaeology] can take some immediate, if incremental, steps to address the challenge of improving publication and making it more equitable. Below we list some recommendations to guide the SAA to better align the communication of archaeological research to the SAA’s own ethical principles, many of which read like a call for Open Access...."