Mana’o 2.0: Just in time for Open Access Week

While many readers know that Open Access Week was last week, fewer will know that in Hawai’i we traditionally celebrate Open Access Week a week later than the mainland US. This means that we are in the middle of our celebrations of Open Access Week here in Honolulu. Since the time is right I’m happy to announce the re-launch of the Mana’o repository.

Mana’o began back in 2007 as a little skunkworks type of project to provide anthropologists an open access repository of their own which could host their work and educate them about open access in the process. Unfortunately the project was a victim of its own success — more and more people were interested in submitting even as the resources dedicated to the project (i.e. my free time) dwindled.

Luckily, the Mana’o project turned out to be ahead of its time, not just a quixotic personal crusade on my part — a nice change of pace! Since it was originally launched the University of Hawai’i Library has created two institutional repositories, each filled with numerous collections available free of subscriptions or payments. Thanks to the good graces of library staff Mana’o was dusted off, transferred to the University of Hawai’i servers, and is now ready to grow again with the anthropological community.

All of which is a way to say: We are open for business and ready to take your submissions! You can take a look at the repository here to see what we’ve got so far. Our focus is on anthropology and the Pacific and (because I started the thing) we are also working on collecting open access work on World of Warcraft. If you’ve written anything on those topics — we’d love to host it. To learn more or start depositing please email submit@manaoproject.org and our small but dedicated staff of volunteers will help you get started.

Mana’o’s goal is to both host material you have the rights to share, and to help you learn more about preserving your rights to share when you sign author agreements with your publishers. We are aggressive in testing and expanding the limits of open access, but we are not interested in acting unethically or illegally. If you want to post JSTOR PDFs of your own work, please do it on a mainstream site like Scribd, which is designed to facilitate that sort of thing. If you’re looking for a stable, academic home that preserves honest-to-goodness metadata for your work then come around to see us!

We’re hoping to have a website and more clearly ‘branded identity’ in time for AAA but in the mean time take a look at what’s on offer on the site and consider submitting yourself!

Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His book Leviathans at The Gold Mine has been published by Duke University Press. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org

2 thoughts on “Mana’o 2.0: Just in time for Open Access Week

  1. Rex, this is really exciting. Now, for you next big project, how about an anthropological version of GalaxyZoo and its already proliferating spinoffs. The following is cross-posted from the latest email newsletter.

    ——-

    Thank you for taking part in one of the citizen science projects in
    the Zooniverse, whether it’s Galaxy Zoo, Moon Zoo or Solar Stormwatch,
    or all three. We’ve had a busy few weeks, launching a new project (Old
    Weather) and updated most of our existing ones. In case you missed it,
    here’s what’s been going on:

    Old Weather : Our latest project at http://www.oldweather.org takes
    you back into the past – we have World War I ship’s logs from 280
    Royal Naval vessels for you to explore. Whether in battle, in port or
    on patrol, the ship’s crew recorded information about the weather.
    That information is critical for climate scientists trying to improve
    their computer models. As well as rescuing those weather observations,
    we’re also asking you to record the personal and political events
    aboard the ship. It’s great fun and highly addictive: you have been
    warned!

    Moon Zoo : Following the overwhelming success of our challenge to you
    all during International Observe the Moon Night, we’ve made the
    Moonometer (http://www.moonzoo.org/moonometer) a permanent feature of
    the site, so that you can keep track of our collective progress,
    whether you count the number of square miles, the area of Wales or
    even the number of Disneylands (currently over 219,000). We’ve also
    improved My Moon Zoo so that you can explore interesting areas of the
    Moon once you, or others have found them.

    Galaxy Zoo : If you haven’t explored the weird and wonderful mix of
    galaxies that haunt the distant Universe, please get stuck in at
    http://www.galaxyzoo.org. We’re nearly ready to add a new batch of
    Hubble images to the mix, but we can only do that once you’ve got
    through our existing set. Further confirmation that each and every
    click counts arrived last week, too, as the first paper to use data
    from Zoo 2 was officially accepted by the Zoo. Congratulations,
    everybody!

    Supernovae : The first paper from the supernova team has been
    submitted too, and it shows that you really can make a difference by
    discovering exploding stars. Little and often is the trick here, but
    you can sign up for daily emails that tell you precisely when we need
    your help at : http://supernova.galaxyzoo.org/notifications

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