Castilla y León Anthropological reaserches institute
http://www.usal.es/iiacyl
Spain

On June 12th this year all hell broke loose when the American Anthropological Association (AAA) decided to oppose the FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act). It generated lots of fervor amongs the blogosphere, specifically amongst me, afarensis, an…

In the not so distant past, there was a little blurb on the American Anthropological Association (AAA) website of a new bill proposal, in the United States, that would significantly cut government funding to the sciences, with specific foci to the soci…

This is Dan Segal, posting as a guest here on John Norvell’s blog. This is a response to the discussion of section finances and AAA publishing on Savage Minds: I will try to briefly convey my understanding of the finances of AAA journals and AAA secti…

Electronic products aren’t free-as Rex’s post points out. Some of the “hidden” costs can be in areas few think of–such as the electronic ‘backbone’ keeping the electronic versions online. There’s webhosting, webspace rental, CPU servers, IT maintenance, uploading, upgrades, and linking. Electronic subscriber upgrade, maintenance, and upkeep also figures in. Computer backup systems are needed too, and depending on how much is backed up, it can be costly.

Software cost must also be figured in. I’m not sure if AnthroSource uses Microsoft Content Server, or another scheme, but network software systems to organize and maintain the data costs money. Right now AnthroSource uses PDFs for electronic document delivery, and depending on the vendor providing electronic files, Adobe Acrobat Distiller might also be required to create PDFs.

These software and hardware costs have nothing to do with paper-version fulfillment. I’m not sure how much detail UCP provides to the Anthrosource committee, but it might be useful to ask about the hardware, software, and IT support UCP is providing to maintain it.

Although the social sciences are relatively new to online journal publishing, the ‘hard’ sciences and medical communities have been involved since the mid-to-late 1990s. PLoS [Public Library of Science] publishes several OA journals, and their OA model includes charging article authors fees to publish, thus recouping some of the extra expense involved. There are many other societies doing OA publishing that partner with publishers such as Blackwell Science, utilizing online delivery pathways the publisher already has available.

Perhaps the AnthroSource committee could look into how the biological sciences and medicine are adjusting to online publishing, their economic models, and vendors/resources, so the committee could assess options for the future of AnthroSource and its society journals. By reviewing other models, at least the committee will have a better understanding of how to deal with some of the issues mentioned in Rex’s posting.

Being in the scholarly publishing industry myself I would say there are many alternatives and options available to the AAA’s publishing future, however the one thing that will not stop is the onward push to online journal publication, OA or private, this I think will continue for a long time to come. I think the idea of AnthroSource was a good one, now the AAA and its society’s need to think about restructuring how they do things to remain profitable in the new scholarly publishing economy.

Susie’s article is helpful, but what we really need (as I said in the post) is the information from the reports she cites — the Mellon assessment, etc. If anyone would like to guest blog to clarify this, or Chris if you have good ideas (other than contacting Susie), that would be great.

In some ways this is a big step forward, since it simplifies all AAA publication, but in other ways, it is a terrifying change, because it means that the sections do not get to rely on revenue from subscription in the same way as previously–but they still have to pay for the same stuff, viz. labor to produce the journal (when it is paid for).

The costs that are covered in the recent switch to Anthrosource probably represent a significant one-time charge–but there is probably also a contract with UC Press that specifies a certain amount that AAA will pay regardless of revenues from journals, just for UC Press to manage ANthrosource. OPen source software would probably mitigate this only in small part, since the charge is probably mostly labor and overhead to maintain it.

Surely there is someone who knows all this… Can we ask Susan to guest blog? or maybe someone else from Anthrosource/UC Press?