The Internet and Open Access in Archaeology

Doug Rocks-Macqueen

In the Beginning… 2011

• Open Access is what?

• Open Source my paper?

• Why share?

• All the people that “matter” already have access.

• Open Access = anti-academic freedom, pay only model, neo-liberal/communist plot, etc. etc. etc. etc.

How do you let people know you about the greatness that is Open

Access?

Rise of the bots

• 11,777 OA Archaeology articles before stopping- CAA, Ubiquity, & ADS

• Automated posting

– 2.5 years on Twitter at one every two hours

– Tumblr, Facebook too

– 4,900+ followers on Twitter, 750+ on Facebook, 2300+ on Tumblr

BUT how many of them are real?

• Twitter

– 4% fake

– 37% inactive

– 59% Good

• 100-200 clicks a day

• Most researcher only read by editor and reviewers

The Open Access Cupcake!

Brain Child of L-P Archaeology

Well that was quick….

• ROARMAP: Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies

– Institutional Mandates (207)

– Sub-Institutional Mandates (44)

– Multi-Institutional Mandates (9)

– Funder Mandates (89)

– Thesis Mandates (110)

Well that was quick….

• 2003 – 1

• 2012- 225

• European Research Council

• US Government

• Gold Open Access outlier- UK

Pressure Cooker

• Number of Journals Growing Exponentially

• Size of journals growing

• Library budgets Flat

• Digital products move towards monopolies

Results in:

• Bundles, mergers, etc.

• Sophie’s Choose- do you cut 1 journal or 20 journals?

The Maney Expansion

• 2012- 16ish Archaeology Journals

• Today- 29? (not counting Costume, etc.)

• “(Maney) are trying to 'corner' the archaeology journal market”

• What happens when there are only 1-2 ‘traditional’ archaeology publishers?

At current rates in 6-12 years there will be no more independent publishers– Just Traditional Commercial and Open

Access

So What Happens Next?

• Hope that larger organisations fix the problem?

• Do we aim for ultra low APCs?

– Current levels are Elsevier, Springer, etc. are unsustainable, not applicable, and plain stupid.

• Create our own system?

What Would Our System Look Like?

• The goal- anyone can use it…

• Replace OJS?

• Wordpress based system?

– Easy to use

– Wide support and updating

• Crossref, LOCKSS, Doi’s etc.

• OCA for legacy

Only technical solutions, not social. What happens to our societies? Do we care? Does publishing change?

Open Access Archaeology- http://www.openaccessarchaeology.org/