In the latest round of conflict over anthropologists’ cooperation with the U.S. military, members of the American Anthropological Association voted on Friday to ban certain kinds of secrecy in ethnographic work. In a motion passed by a voice vote during the organization’s annual business meeting here, members decreed that “no reports should be provided to sponsors [of research] that are not also available to the general public and, where practicable, to the population studied.”
The strongly worded motion is not binding, however....
The motion would restore four anti-secrecy clauses that were added to the association’s ethics code in 1971, but removed in 1998. A report issued this week by a special committee of the association urged that the secrecy rules be tightened....
The new anti-secrecy motion would affect not only military anthropologists. It would also cast a shadow over the burgeoning field of private-sector anthropologists who conduct ethnographic research about consumer behavior for corporate clients. Such researchers are often contractually required to keep their findings confidential. During the business meeting, the motion’s primary author, Terence Turner, a professor emeritus at Cornell University, explicitly said that the motion applies to proprietary corporate research....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/03/2007 01:53:00 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.
