Alun Salt, I'm a hypocrite (of sorts), April 25, 2005. A blog posting on OA publishing in archaeology. Excerpt: 'Having praised the Physicists for the use of arXiv. I'm now going to out myself as a hypocrite. I recently heard confirmation that my first paper, 'Knowing when to consult the oracle of Delphi' (co-authored with Efrosyni Boutsikas) will be published. It's not in an open access journal, nor will the offprint appear in an open archive. It's certainly a problem, or at least half a problem. In my defence, apart from AJA there are no suitable open access journals to publish in....There are two good reasons for open access in the humanities (Roy Rosenzweig has several via Open Access News). One is that if the public are paying for the research then they should have a right to be able to access it. I'd be persuaded by this if I'd received any public funding....The second, and far more practical, reason is that I am effectively a second-year PhD student who will need a job soon. The more potential employers that have access to the paper, the better my prospects....Fortunately for this article I've fallen on my feet. It will appear in the September issue of Antiquity, which is the UK's most widely read archaeological journal. Even classical departments should have relatively easy access to it. As far as the public goes, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine anyone paying £50 to subscribe to Antiquity, nor paying £15+VAT for nine pages. It's a shame....'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/26/2005 09:46:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
