This document discusses open access in archaeology. It notes that while open access publishing was initially met with skepticism regarding academic freedom and financial models, it has grown significantly in recent years. Various initiatives have helped promote open access, including automated social media posting of open access articles which gained thousands of followers. However, pressures from journal bundling and rising costs may lead to fewer independent publishers in the future. The document proposes creating an open access publishing system to replace commercial publishers and allow anyone to publish open access archaeology work.

1. The Internet and Open Access in
Archaeology
Doug Rocks-Macqueen

2. 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.

3. How do you let people know you
about the greatness that is Open
Access?

4. 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

5. 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

6. The Open Access Cupcake!
Brain Child of L-P Archaeology

7. 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)

8. Well that was quick….
• 2003 – 1
• 2012- 225
• European Research Council
• US Government
• Gold Open Access outlier- UK

10. 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?

11. 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?

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

13. 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?

14. 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

15. Only technical solutions, not social.
What happens to our societies? Do
we care?
Does publishing change?
Open Access Archaeology-
http://www.openaccessarchaeology.org/