Thoughts in response to Michael Chibnik's editorial on OA and American Anthropologist | Dr. Martin Paul Eve | Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing

"In February of this year Michael Chibnik published an editorial piece in American Anthropologist arguing that while he supported the idea of open access to the publication he also now thinks 'that gold open access publication is unlikely to be feasible in the near future for AA'. This is a regrettable situation since, from the editorial, it does not appear that many options have been considered to achieve open access, despite the citation in this piece of the previous editor calling for the Society to 'work creatively' to achieve OA. I here offer a few thoughts of my own on what was said and left unsaid in Chibnik’s editorial. Brief edit (6:00pm, 25th May): I wrote this piece fairly quickly because, well, life is very busy and I wanted to get a tone that wasn’t overly critical of Michael Chibnik. I think it’s great that AA are having this debate, even if I don’t agree with the outcome so far. Having re-read the post a few hours after posting, I think it a bit more accusatory in tone than I wanted. I write this edit to clarify that the spirit in which I mean to offer these thoughts are those of engagement, not hostility ..."