September 19, 2007

Anthropology Group Makes Official Its Long-Rumored Publishing Deal With Wiley-Blackwell

The American Anthropological Association formally announced today a new, five-year publishing partnership with Wiley-Blackwell, ending weeks of speculation about a deal in the works. Beginning in 2008, Wiley-Blackwell will publish and distribute the association’s 23 journals and newsletters. It will also host AnthroSource, the association’s online research portal.

The AAA’s Executive Board “saw Wiley-Blackwell’s stellar reputation for creative partnerships with learned societies, its substantial investment in innovative technology, and its worldwide network of offices as providing AAA with the potential to propel AnthroSource to the cutting edge of digital publishing,” William E. Davis, the association’s executive director, said in a written statement .

The deal features a profit-sharing arrangement under which the association will get 60 percent of “excess revenues over expenditures” each year, according to a memo circulated to the association’s journal editors and section heads and sent to The Chronicle. The association is also guaranteed a minimum yearly income that should be worth some $2.7-million over the contract’s five-year life, the memo says.

Initial reaction has been cautiously optimistic, although the association’s leaders continue to take fire for how they went about the search for a new publishing partner. “I can honestly say that I support the move, and that I think the AAA did the right thing,” wrote one poster on the anthro blog Savage Minds. But “the process by which it happened has been demoralizing — more evidence that as a scholarly society the AAA does not see any need to communicate with its membership at large, solicit their input, or operate in an even quasi-transparent manner.” —Jennifer Howard

Comments

1. No indication that the AAA is concerned about the pricing of its journals, which I am prepared to bet will raise at at least 10% per year over the life of the contract. Let’s be clear about what is going on here the AAA is using a private publisher to extract income from universities through their libraries. The bad news though is that university libraries will not be able to afford these increases. In the end fewer subscriptions will be sold and fewer people will have access to this scholarship. If the AAA really cared about scholarship in anthropology they would be pursuing an open access strategy.

   — David    Sep 20, 07:40 AM    #

2. David’s comment above is absolutely accurate. Open access is the means by which scholarly information should be made available, not only to the Association’s membership, but also to the entire scholarly community and the broader interested public. In the long run there will be less access to anthropological research, surely a result contrary to the mission of the American Anthropological Association. It seems quite likely that if the opinion of the AAA membership had been solicited, a membership which is so readily aware of the extortion being made to research libraries expected to provide the revenue for running the Association, the noble anthropologists would have objected. Anthropologists, where are you??? Please, not only speak out in support of open access but also publish your research elsewhere!

   — Susan    Sep 20, 11:42 AM    #

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