Open Access: A Collective Ecology for AAA Publishing in the Digital Age — Cultural Anthropology

"Working to develop an alternative ecology of OA scholarly publishing is by no means easy. But this does not mean we should therefore simply opt for an exit strategy and return to the default comfort of commercial exploitation. In some respects, the hegemony that commercial presses hold over our work in the US/UK academy is an exception in the world of scholarly publishing. Latin America boasts for instance what is perhaps the most successful transnational platform for OA digital publishing: SciELO, the Scientific Electronic Library Online. Launched in 1998, SciELO provides today a digital publishing platform for academic projects across sixteen countries. The project is participated by governments, universities, libraries, editors, and, yes, commercial publishers. It has come a long way to prove that a sustainable model for OA digital publishing requires, first and foremost, reimagining who and what academic 'collectivity' is.

The lesson for us is clear: we must stop arguing for or against OA in terms of the difference it makes as a publishing rationale for this or that journal. There is more at stake than the long-term sustainability of any one individual publication. If there is one thing clear at this stage, it is that OA demands a collective and inventive redefinition of the ecology of scholarly publishing. The AAA's ownership of its journals' portfolio has no equal among scholarly societies in the humanities and social sciences. It offers a unique and privileged opportunity to redefine collectively the future of scholarly publishing."