Archaeological Institute of America against Open Access | Neuroanthropology

“The Archaeological Institute of America has come out as completely opposedto open access in an editorial by Elizabeth Bartman, president of AIA, in the current issue of AIA’s popular magazine Archaeology. ‘We at the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), along with our colleagues at the American Anthropological Association and other learned societies, have taken a stand against open access. Here at the AIA, we particularly object to having such a scheme imposed on us from the outside…’ This letter is a more extreme version of what the AIA submitted to the White House last December, where the AIA aligned itself with the initial American Anthropological Association’s position against open-access ‘...We agree with the AAA that while the government might have a right to the unfinished work product (i.e., the research data or ‘findings’) of researchers to whom they provide financial support, it does not have the right to journal articles that are the cumulative result of the significant time and financial investment of reviewers, editors, copywriters, designers, technology providers, archivists, publishers and distributors of such journal content—none of which is supported by federal research dollars.’ Chris Kelty has a step-by-step dismantling of the Bartman AIA letter in his post Not that kind of “living in the past” AIA obfuscates the issues involved, from what the federal legislation would do to what counts as open-access. In particular, the AIA uses a slight-of-hand to imply that professional companies are the ones who take charge of the arduous peer-review process, and thus significantly improve the final publication: ‘When an archaeologist publishes his or her work, the final product has typically been significantly improved by the contributions of other professionals such as peer reviewers, editors, copywriters, photo editors, and designers. This is the context in which the work should appear.’ In other words, for-profit companies provide the necessary context for research. Well, in archaeology, context is everything! ... But of course the context is not so simple. The companies make a profit off of the research; little of that money flows back to the researchers and communities involved. The majority of the editing and peer-review is provided for free as well by professional archaeologists in university settings. Finally, the companies make their money largely through university libraries paying exorbitant fees for access to research produced in university contexts – we give it away, and then have to pay to get it back. At every step, companies take the work done by researchers, reviewers, and librarians and uses that work for their own benefit. Put bluntly, the AIA as a professional organization is reaffirming the rules of a rigged game to the detriment of its own members. The other pernicious effect is that companies, by taking charge of the production process, have legal rights over the final products – the papers reporting the research. These companies do not always act in the best interests of the researchers who did the research, or of the communities where the research was done. They limit access to the public, including 220,000 professional, student, and lay members, because it is through restricting access that they can charge higher price – that’s basic supply and demand. Restricting access for others’ profits needs to be justified against the importance of sharing knowledge and giving communities’ access to knowledge about their own past. Should companies own that knowledge? Or should researchers and communities?...”