Open Access again
on Nov 15, 2009 in Open Access There is a nice entry on Open Access on the blog of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development. It starts out:The only purpose of open access to research literature is to provide the widest possible distribution of the latest research findings t...

Elinor Ostrom and archaeology
on Nov 8, 2009 in Archaeology and other disciplines A chance comment from a colleague made me think again about the relevance of Nobel-winner Elinor Ostrom’s research for archaeology. (See my earlier post). I think her work has great potential to contribute to the archaeological analysis of ancient...

New journal: "Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences"
on Nov 5, 2009 in Journals I have just seen a new journal, "Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences." This is published by Springer, under their heading of "Earth Sciences." Although this is a commercial journal that will have toll access, they are offering free access fo...

I have a Nobel Prize winner as a colleague
on Nov 1, 2009 in Archaeology and other disciplines A few weeks, Elinor (“Lin”) Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Science magazine had a short article about this, but it failed to mention that she has an appointment as Research Professor at Arizona State University. In fact, her appointment...

AAA looks at journal costs
on Oct 27, 2009 in Journals Open Access In an article in the October 2009 Anthropology News, Oona Schmid discusses some of the serious issues surrounding the costs of journal publishing by the American Anthropological Association ("The Price of Free: An Invitation to Engage in the Future o...

It's Open Access Week - Here is a great link
on Oct 20, 2009 in Commercialization of scholarship Open Access This passage is from Jason Baird Jackson's blog:"Last year, did you get paid nothing to work hard for a multinational corporation with reported revenues of over 1 billion dollars in 2008? [2] If you have (1) done peer-reviews for, (2) submitted an ar...

Why is it hard to find archaeological information using standard databases?
on Oct 19, 2009 in Bibliographies Bibliographic research I have always been struck with the difficulties in finding archaeological information in standard bibliographic databases. I first had this impression in graduate school, when I worked in the Reference Department of the University of Illinois Library...

Why would publishers reprint outdated textbooks??
on Oct 15, 2009 in Books Quality control Textbooks I may have been too hasty when I praised Left Coast Press for reprinting some out-of-print archaeology books from Academic Press. While some of these books are still valuable today, I can't see why whey would reprint an out-of-date textbook in Mesoam...

How to find a publisher for your book manuscript
on Oct 14, 2009 in Books Publishers It seems that I have had a bunch of requests lately for advice on finding a publisher for academic books in archaeology. In most cases these are young scholars, recent PhDs, and in many cases the book in question is or will be based on a dissertation...

Nova Scientific Publishers again
on Oct 9, 2009 in Journals Commercialization of scholarship Quality control Since my post of May 15, 2009, "Nova Publishers" - legitimate or bogus?", I have gotten several emails with more concerns and problems with this press. The most relevant and useful, from David Bade, includes a link to an online article of his about N...