My latest Anthropology News article, “Open Source Anthropology” is now available online as a fully editable wiki article. Please feel free to contribute!
Here is the first paragraph, from a section entitled “Can the Subaltern Google?”
Concerns over the ethnical dilemmas involved in producing knowledge about the “other” have, in the past few decades, radically changed how anthropologists conduct research and write ethnographies. Unfortunately, they have not changed how we publish. While it is true that many anthropology journals never recoup their publication costs, the system of barriers which serve to protect their meager revenue comes at the expense of accessibility. These barriers make it all but impossible for those outside of well-endowed academic institutions to access that knowledge, undermining the lofty goals of producing a “shared anthropology.” Anthropology lags behind other disciplines, especially the medical sciences, in adopting new models of financing and distributing peer-reviewed journals, known as “Open Access,” which allow everyone to access journal articles freely online.
