Are they kidding?

To be perfectly honest, I’m glad at this point that I let my AAA membership elapse.

On John’s point, it does seem to relate to the logic of advertising, at least in some ways. But the AAA’s tactic makes so little sense when it’s applied to postprints by scholars whose work is supposed to be available to the people with whom they work (the “subjects”) and to the people who fund their research (the public). Advertising follows a similar logic but the people involved are private groups so the logical implications are different.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/07/anthro

In assessing AAA governance, I want to note that editors and section leaders were made aware of the proposal that led to this decision prior to it being finalized and announced. We learned of it, I think, when it was moving from CfPEP to the CSC.

I am reminded of something I once wrote about advertising in a piece called “Malinowski, Magic and Advertising” in John Sherry, ed., _Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior: An Anthropological Sourcebook_.

bq. As regards secrecy, ads follow a curious cycle. While being planned they are kept secret, lest ideas be stolen and used before they are scheduled to appear. Once published or shown on TV, they enter the public domain, subject, of course to the ownership claims [copyrights, image rights, etc.] sketched above. Then, however, they become, as it were, negative models that reduce the value of similar ads that appear later.

I suggest that academic publishing is much the same. Reputations depend on being first to publish particular insights or observations. Authors are, thus, reluctant to expose their ideas before they are legitimated by the kind of publication that counts toward tenure or promotion. Once published, however, there is no reason not to–and every reason to–make them as accessible as possible, for now the name of the game is citation and making it easy to find and cite your work is a no-brainer.

I acknowledge that what is written here assumes a kind of economizing in knowledge dissemination that is alien to the sentiment that all knowledge belongs to the commons. I am curious, though, as to whether the model sketched here seems realistic to those involved in this discussion.

Isn’t the purpose of research to contribute to a wider body of knowledge. Should it be our first intent to share it / disseminate our finding with the wider community.
No…it’s still thought that what is good has be kept safe and locked away.
Reminds me of my old dolls who lived in boxes and were put away in top shelves so I could dream of them without reach without anything else but my eyes.
When I was allowed to play with them, I had totally lost the interest. They were also quite outdated by then…anyway!