When George Marcus, one of the most influential anthropologists, was in Oslo recently, I asked him what he thinks about Open access. His answer surprised me. He said: “Journals? Who cares?” There is little original thinking in journals, no longer exciting debates, he told me. “Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. I don’t care.” He explained that “journals are meant to establish people”. They are more important for one’s career.
Comment. Did this transcript miss something or did George Marcus miss something? Even if we concede for the sake of argument that there are no new ideas in the field of anthropology, and that journals are more about advancing careers than advancing research, Marcus' answer was not responsive. Apparently he thinks OA is all about journals, which it isn't. It's all about access, which may be through journals or repositories or many other vehicles (like wikis, ebooks, multimedia webcasts, P2P networks, RSS feeds...). It's as if someone had asked, "What do you think about freedom of speech?" and he answered, "Public speaking? Who cares? It's all grandstanding and vanity."
Update (10/27/08). Lorenz has blogged a response to my comment.
Good point! I have to admit that Marcus was very busy and did not have much time for this interview and I had lots of questions. We talked just a few minutes on Open Access while we we took the subway from the city to the university. He admires Chris Kelty’s work on open source and open access but he does not seem to be up to date in regard to blogging, web2.0 etc (few anthropologists are actually, and most anthropologists have never heard of the Open Access movement).
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.
