Money. Who pays what to whom and how much? A non-member who wants a pdf of an article must pony up $42; that does mount up if one is assembling a set of references. Does AAA pay Wiley for the privilege of turning its content over for them to profit from? Does Wiley compensate AAA for the hundreds of articles it receives and then sells? “Follow the money” is a good maxim to follow here.
Exposure. With such a diversity of topics covered in the AAA stable of some thirty journals, one might hope for a wide readership, much of it non-anthropologists. That is sorely limited by the Wiley paywall. The 10,000 members claimed by the AAA don’t generate much exposure for an article – the impact factor of the Amer. Anthro. is an anemic 1.6. Not encouraging, given that the Amer. Sociological Review has an impact factor of 6.4, the Amer Psychologist 10.9, the Journal of Political Economy 9.1. Even a specialist journal of the AAA, Cultural Anthropology, matches the “flagship” journal’s 1.6. (Will the AAA ever retire that tired imperialist metaphor?) A crucial point – Cult. Anthro. is Open Access.
Open Access. Why did the AAA elect to go with Wiley again when an alternative is readily available? The Open Journals System is fully Open Access and publishes some 1,000 journals. I think Cult. Anthro. publishes through them. Why not jettison the Wiley paywall?
Open Access / Open Comment. Even Open Access stops short of what is necessary for scholarly exchange and debate. Every journal should welcome and encourage Open Comment for its articles – isn’t that what the intellectual life is about? Sadly, even as a few editors congratulate themselves on going Open Access, they are unwilling to Open things up for comment.
Sadly, I don’t think we can look forward to that happening anytime soon.