Unlike with other positions there is not a great range in the possible pay that an assistant professor in archaeology could obtain. The average is around 60k a year (all numbers are assumed to be full time employment) and the majority of positions offer pay around the range with a few outliers. As mentioned several times in previous posts these are adjusted numbers based on the fact that archaeologists appear to make about 90% of the average pay of professors at universities. If you are an assistant professor chances are that your probably making between 50-69k  but a few make a little more.

This is the distribution by individual associate professor and not by department. The majority of the associate professors actually make less than the 80k average.  The range is pretty great from 48k to 114k.  It should be stressed that these are averages from universities converted to average archaeology wages so the actual pay may differ slightly (see methodology here). The sampling is not perfect with some archaeologists left out do to a lack of data on their averages about 20. The actually distribution may differ slightly from this.

This is the distribution by professor and not by department. Some departments have 10 faculty while others have 1. This gives better over all view of pay distribution for full archaeology professors across the whole discipline. From the figure you can see that there is a clustering near the average of 105k but there is also a huge range in pay from 54k to 175k . It should be stressed that these are averages from universities converted to average archaeology wages so the actual pay may differ slightly (see methodology here). I still find it hard to believe that an archaeologists could make that much but the average pay at Harvard (where the 175k comes from) is 194k  so it is plausible. Also, this does not take into account pay adjusted for cost of living, $100,000 Albuquerque New Mexico does not buy you the same sort of house in Los Angles, California.

As said before about 20 professors were not included in this data which mainly come from smaller colleges with probably lower pay so the distribution is a little high.

The results are in the thousands.

The difference between men and women is not known for sure. As described in the methodology below, these numbers are based on general averages for universities so it is possible that archaeology is more gender equal, or unequal, than their peer professors at universities. There are of course ranges to these averages with some making more and some making less. On average an Instructor makes little more than crew chiefs and probably less than project managers in Cultural Resource Management (private sector).

Full Archaeology Professors are actually, on average, in the 94th percentile (i.e. they make more money they 93.9% of the population) of Americans- calculator here. If of course you are lucky enough to get the job this is not a bad job to have pay-wise. It is important to remember that there are less than 500 professors out of about 15-20,000 archaeologists. Also, one has to wait 15-20 years of being paid Associate and Assistant Professors’ wages before making the big bucks.

More detailed breakdown of Full professors pay can be seen here , Associate professors here, and Assistant professors here.

Methodology-

There are no official numbers on how much an archaeology professor makes but there are numbers for the average salary of a professor makes at a specific university provided by American Association of Professors. Of course different types of professors make different amounts of money-

These numbers are from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Not the same data used to figure out salaries.

Looking at the average pay of the a professor in the AAP data against the SAA salary survey in 2004 of archaeologists it is possible to see that archaeologists make roughly between %92-88 of what the average professor does. Thus with the average pay (all, men, and women), the difference between the average and what an archaeologists makes, and the number of archaeologists at each university it is possible to figure out the average pay roughly of all archaeologists -

Ex. 5 archaeologists at university A make z each and 4 archaeologists at university be make y each = the average salaries  (5z + 4y)/9. Here are the averages-

There numbers were then mutilated by .9 to get the estimations presented at the top. Those numbers line up fairly nice with the 2004 SAA numbers if they kept up with inflation. These numbers are a little higher but not all of the universities with archaeologists were represented in the AAP data. Most that were not were small colleges that probably would have lowered the average slightly. Of course if they line up with inflation then why bother going through this extra work and just calculate the average from 2004 based on inflation? For one, it double checks the numbers through a different method and two it allows for the estimation of distributions of pay. How many professors make above or below the average? Who makes the most? Who makes the least? All of these questions can be answered as well as cost of living comparisons.  100k in New York does not go as far as in Wyoming, some archaeologists make make 20k less but still have more money to spend. This will be covered in a later post.

Assistant Professor

Associate Professor

Professor

Over all numbers

There are currently 468 temporary/non-tenure track archaeologists working at universities (see here for how these numbers were gathered). A very interesting finding was that about 7%+ did not actually have a PhD but had either an MA and in some cases a BA. Apparently you don’t need a graduate degree to work at some universities, however one of those BA’s was from 1956 so the person does have close to 60 years of experience, something to consider. It was also much harder to find information on these positions as many universities do not including a lot of information on their temp workers. Here is a break down of when they got their degrees.

Not surprising those who got their degrees in the last few years hold a good portion of these positions (also 1998 for some reason), probably taking these jobs to pay the bills as they attempt to find more permanent employment. This group also tends to have a more diverse background with some of their terminal degrees coming from a diverse group of international universities.

However, the majority of terminal degrees (i.e. BA, MA, PhD which ever was the last degree they earned) came from US based universities-

As would be expected a lot of the universities that provide a large number of permanent positions also provide the temp ones as well. I believe this is because these are large programs that produce lots of graduates and so lots of them end up with jobs in archaeology. Overall the numbers are not too surprising except for ASU, they provide a unusually large amount of temp. positions. However they also list 20 of these temp positions on their department website and 15 of them have ASU degrees. This means that the results are because of a reporting bias and not a death sentence for ASU grads with eyes on a permanent academic position.

If you want to know more about associate professors see here, assistant professors see here, or methodology used to collect the results see here.

There are rouglhy 494 full professors of archaeology (plus a few who don’t teach in archaeology/archaeology related departments) in the United States. Most of the professors obtained their PhD’s 20+ years ago but some are more recent. (it should be noted the 2001 and 2002 dates are unknown if they are full professors or not the school websites were vague but the 2000 is confirmed)

Amazingly there are people who got their degrees in the 1960′s and are still full time faculty. The average age of a new Archaeology PhD in the 1960s was about 30 so some of these prof. are about 75-80 yrs. old and still working. About 7% of them got their degrees from universities outside of the US.

The majority got their degrees from inside the US

Since these archaeologists received their degrees at least 20 years ago you can use this as a rough guide of what schools use to be dominate and who are up and coming. For example Texas A&M only has two of its graduates in full prof. positions but they have three times as many assistant professors (those that have got their degrees in the last few years). It looks like their program has increased their success in getting their graduates into academic jobs.

I hope to figure out an rough average pay soon and will post on it.

The more recent ones e.g. 2008, 2007, appear to be archaeologists who have work at the university for a long time but only recently completed their degrees.  Some of them could also be errors on the websites or in the AAA e-guide were the information was gathered from. As would be expected most of the associate professors got their degrees 8-20 years ago (usually have to spend 5-6 years as an assistant professor). Of note is that some archaeologists obtained their degrees decades ago and still have not been made full professors. As full professors make more than associates it must be hurting some of their life time earnings.

Of interest is where these tenured profs. got their degrees from-

Non-US Universities

US Universities-

Compare those numbers against that of the top 15 schools for assistant professor positions (those jobs obtained in the last 5-6 years)

You see some familiar schools but you also see some that have put a lot more students into academia than other schools recently. As I said already- BEFORE anyone reads into these numbers that- AZ, MI, Harvard, Penn, etc. are the best programs for producing academic archaeologists, it is important to remember that the number that matters is  number of jobs against the number of graduates they produce.

A big concern/complaint is that there are no jobs to be had at research universities e.g. those that give out PhD’s. I took a look at these positions by the degree given at their respected university department they work for-

There is no previous research to compare this against so it is hard to tell if this is a good thing or bad thing for those trying to get jobs at research-based departments. I would say that 44% at departments that give out PhD’s is pretty good but maybe not for those who don’t want to teach at a liberal arts university.

Assuming these numbers roughly translate to the number of posts available in the last 6-7 years then the number of jobs that have opened up is roughly- 37-43 per year. These numbers are pretty much in line with what you see offered on the Archaeology Academic Job wiki for the last couple of years. Though with about 145+ archaeology PhD’s being produced each year the odds of getting a job are still not great (must take into account those that did not get a job the year before will be competing as well or looking at the numbers above, those who didn’t get a job in the last 10-30 years).

An interesting breakdown in when these archaeologists obtained their jobs shows that:

1. When you got your degree does not necessary preclude you from obtain an academic degree, contrary to the belief that if you haven’t landed an academic job within fives years of obtaining your PhD then you are done. Some people who obtained their degrees in the 1980′s have recently gotten jobs. Though the majority of archaeologists have graduates in the last ten years.

2. It appears that it might take a few years after graduating to obtain a position-

So what programs are producing these graduates? Well some obtained their degrees at non-US universities, about 8%-

The majority obtained their degrees from US-based universities-

Close to 65 universities out of the roughly 88 or so PhD programs in the US. Not bad but roughly 26% of programs are not producing any academic archaeologists. BEFORE anyone reads into these numbers that- AZ, MI, Harvard, Penn, etc. are the best programs for producing academic archaeologists, it is important to remember that the number that matters is  number of jobs against the number of graduates they produce.   If Harvard produces 200 graduates but only 12 jobs that is a horrible rate of placement while if UA graduates 15 and places 12 they have a great success rate. I will have to look to see if I can find graduate numbers to compare against these results. Till then those are the numbers to ponder.

On the flip side a pretty generous definition was used- that is a faculty profile mentions archaeology or archaeology-like interests e.g. lots of osteo people are included. Whether or not these people consider themselves archaeologists is not know. This probably equals out some of those missed.

I will be posting more details on each group over the next week but here are the general numbers-

Lectures/visiting profs/adjucts/researchers/post-docs (basically anyone who is not a tenure track academic)- 468

Assistant Professors-260

Associate Professors-344

Professors- 494

Archaeologists in other departments- 70

For a grand total of 1636 archaeologists employed at universities. This count tries to exclude CRM companies affiliated with/owned by universities but does include many of their staff who teach in an adjunct complicity. In all, around 1100 probably have steady employment but this is not know for sure as some positions, like researcher, might be permanent just non-teaching. This means roughly 2/3s of academic archaeologists are in tenure track positions but only about half actually have tenure. Archaeology does not appear to be worse off then some other disciplines that have more then half of their staff in temp. positions. How this relates to the number of PhD’s being produced for these positions is another story and one that will be explored over the next week.

One last note several archaeologists (mainly temporary positions) teach at more then one university but were only counted once.

http://heritagebusinessjournal.com/

It covers the world with correspondents in the UK, USA, Canada, Brasil, and Australia. It is recently launched so more correspondents will be joining up from other countries.

Here are some of the most recent articles-

UK report on labor issues in commercial archaeology

Preservation benefits the economy of Colorado, USA

Boom times in Brazil

2012 increase in built environment compliance services forecast for the U.S.

What does GDP have to do with the heritage industry?

Where in the world is the business?

The AAA’s role is to be vigilant when it comes to proposed legislation that aims to limit dissemination of research, and that may disproportionately protect private over public interests. At the same time, AAA’s role is to protect the sustainability of our publications program, for anthropology as a whole and for individual authors.  We continue to investigate models that both support broad dissemination of knowledge and a sustainable publishing program.

To this end, the Executive Board has adopted the following motion:

Acknowledging the Association’s commitment to “a publications program that disseminates the most current anthropological research, expertise, and interpretation to its members, the discipline, and the broader society,” but also the need for a sustainable publication strategy, and building on the Association’s support for a variety of publishing models, the AAA opposes any Congressional legislation which, if it were enacted, imposes a blanket prohibition against open access publishing policies by all federal agencies.

I had commended them for reversing course but now several other people has pointed out some flaws in this statement. From the comments on the post-

From Chad-

I assume this is in response to the Research Works Act (HR 3699). That bill would prohibit “dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher” or policies that require “network dissemination of a private-sector research work”. In other words, it doesn’t prohibit open access; it prohibits the government from mandating public access.

At the same time, Executive Director Davis’s letter to the Office of Science and Technology Policy suggests, “broad public access to [peer reviewed publications that result from federal funding] currently exists, and no federal government intervention is currently necessary.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/scholarly-pubs-%28%23282%29%20davis.pdf

Taken together, are these statements an expression of support for the current status quo, and a request that the government do nothing to support or oppose open access?

Mike Fortun-

I have to conclude that the confusion this statement creates in people like the commenter above is intentional on AAA’s part, so that it’s own members can’t really tell what its positions are. Other observes like open access scholar Peter Suber,are also left wondering “What happened between January 12 (date of AAA submission to the White House RFI) and February 3 (date of the new AAA public statement on OA)?” https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/Tgp9xqxCTgo

For those trying to understand the murky, vague statement here, I offer the following history:

On January 18, the Executive Board of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, in response to statements opposing the Research Works Act (HR3699) that had begun coming out in early January, passed the following resolution:

“To: Bill Davis, Executive Director; Leith Mullings, AAA President,
From: SCA Executive Board
RE: Research Works Act (HR 3699)
On January 18, 2012, the SCA Executive Board voted UNANIMOUSLY to pass the following resolution:
On behalf of the SCA membership, the SCA Executive Board urges the American Anthropological Association to oppose the Research Works Act (HR 3699) introduced into Congress on December 19, 2011, and to distance itself from the endorsement of this legislation by the Association of American Publishers, of which AAA is a member.
The Research Works Act would repeal the open access policy of the National Institutes of Health, whereby publications produced with federal funding are made publicly available in a repository 12 months after their publication, and block similar policies at other federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Opposing the RWA does not entail a full embrace of open access philosophies; for-profit publishing is perfectly compatible with the current status quo. Opposing the RWA does not entail renouncing membership in the AAP; a number of AAP members have distanced themselves from the AAP position on RWA but continue to affirm their relationship.
Indeed, a number of AAP members have spoken out against the RWA while remaining committed to AAP. The University of California Press, the MIT Press, the Rockefeller University Press, ITHAKA and Penn State University Press have all done so, and this motivates the SCA to request that AAA follow their initiatives. As the Director of Corporate Affairs for Cambridge University Press stated, ‘We support all sustainable access models that ensure the permanence and integrity of the scholarly record… The Bill as proposed could undermine the underlying freedoms expected by and of scholarly authors.’ (See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Research_Works_Act).
The Executive Board of the SCA shares this view of the proposed legislation, and urges the AAA to formally oppose it.”

No one on the SCA Executive Committee was aware that, on January 12, AAA Executive Director Bill Davis had already sent his letter to the White House (linked by the commenter above), which while not mentioning the Research Works Act, was nevertheless unrepentantly defensive of the status quo and unequivocally opposed to open access mandates from the federal government. The commenter above cites one telling passage from that letter; here is another:

“We know of no research that demonstrates a problem with the existing system for making the content of scholarly journals available to those who might benefit from it…[and] we dispute assertions…suggesting that the federal government has the legal right to mandate public access to scholarly journal articles which result from federally funded research…Mandating open access to such property without just compensation and lawful procedural limitations constitutes, in our view, an unconstitutional taking of private property…”

On February 3, the SCA executive board received an email from AAA President Leith Mullings, which simply directed them to see the statement posted above. But there is no reference to the Research Works Act (the subject of the SCA resolution sent to Mullings and Davis); there is no date, or any account of why the executive board made this statement at this time; there is no mention of Davis’s letter; there is no link to this “position” of the AAA on either the “Issues & News” page, or on the “Public Policy/Advocacy” page, or on the “Public Position Statements” page. It just sort of floats out here in cyberspace, unattached to anything, only creating confusion should you happen to find it.

(By the way, if you decide to add those appropriate links for the sake of clarity and honesty, you might want to go ahead and update the “Partners” page (http://www.aaanet.org/about/partners/index.cfm) so that we don’t have to see that sad reminder of what Anthrosource was supposed to be.)

As a former editor of Cultural Anthropology, I thought I had become inured to the murk, doublespeak, or outright hostility that any mention of open access elicited from the upper levels of AAA. But apparently not: I find this statement, which skillfully avoids stating anything at all of substance, absolutely discouraging. Who could possibly want to join in a “conversation” about the sustainability of AAA publishing, which the AAA claims it wants to have, when Davis’s strongly and clearly worded letter isn’t even posted here as a AAA “position” or “statement,” but instead we get this kind of non-statement from the executive board, completely untethered from real world events and issues? And who could possibly want to join in a “conversation” about the sustainability of AAA publishing, when years of previous “conversation” with numerous dedicated AAA members have only led to Bill Davis informing the White House that “we know of no research that demonstrates a problem with the existing system”?!?! That’s a recipe for frustration, and I have had enough of that…

Mikes Second comment-

Well, I guess not quite enough: since I’m here, I’ll just add that if the AAA would like to learn how to make a clear statement about the Research Works Act, it could learn from the American Association of Universities and the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities: http://www.aau.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=13018

After reading these comments I fully agree the AAA is waffling and are trying to hedge their bets. Giving token lip service to open access but at the same time hoping for status quo. I know that the economics of publishing are tough for societies but they are hoping for a status quo that is going to hurt them in the long run. They, the AAA, estimate that by 2013 (next year) they will be back into the red as far as journals are concerned, losing money. Instead of seriously embracing the need for change they are hoping by extend their deal with wiley-blackwell till 2016 (2017? not clear) they will have enough time to find an alternative. In the mean time hoping that this status quo, that will start to hurt them next year, doesn’t change. I don’t see this as leadership that is needed right now.

I was looking at it this morning and it has blogs, blogfeeds, Data and resources, Journals, lists of other archaeology link resources, magazines, maps, and the list goes on.

It seems to focus heavily on Egypt and that part of the world but it does have a range resources listed. I would recommend checking it out. In fact, I will have to add many of the open access journal to open access archaeology.

It also has links to websites in multiple langauges so it is not just english centric.

• Pay- Yes, everyone also said pay was bad but no one has ever quantified it. Well a few reports did but they were hidden away and none dealt with the regional difference in pay (this is for North America). As I have said before part of the reason I started this blog was to help people find accurate numbers on pay.

• Gear- People say get a trowel but not all trowels are created the same. I prefer a Marshalltown for sandy soils but a WHS/pick-ax for clay and other harder soils. Also, the little things like line levels, pencils that work, pens that work, markers, compass, a clipboard that works, etc.

• Cloths- I know lots of people who buy snake guards once and then realise that places that have poisonous  snakes are also very hot. You quickly realise that that extra layer of thick cloth is not great in 100 degree heat (40 C). I have seen someone heat stroke out because of them.

• Basic ability to identify lithics, ceramics, hearths, etc. – Not just identify while standing still or in a lab after someone have told you its an artefact and handed it to you. No, while you are on the move, huffing it over steep and tough terrain in 100 degree heat. At a fairly decent pace, the type demanded of pedestrian survey ( I realise not every were in the world does this sort of survey) you can pace over the edge of a site in a matter of sec. and can easily miss a site if you have no idea what you are looking for. Picking out an arrowhead is easy for anyone but picking out a flake 1cm long in bad light is a skill. I remember when I first did survey I had no clue what I was looking for and afraid to stop everyone every tens sec. to say, “is this something?”. Yes, I picked up the skill eventually but man it would have been nice early on.

• Laws- many times you are out doing archaeology with only at vague idea of why. It would be great if I known the laws before hand (US, UK) instead of picking them up as I went.

These are just a few of the things I wish I had known.

From Jim-

• Insects, surprisingly, insects are a concern and we have seen freshly minted archaeologists quit because they could not put up with those annoying biting pests (it’s not that anyone really likes them). If you want to be an archaeologist, spend some time outside before you commit to a degree.

• Diet, if you have allergies or other dietary conditions – when working in small towns and remote locations it can be a real bear trying to find something that you can actually eat. The usual response is that people then don’t eat. Unfortunately, if you are working outside all day, eating is important. So think about how to manage your needs before you go into the field (don’t expect your crew supervisor to have thought it through for you).

From Robert-

I wish someone had told me about the need to protect your knees and hands! When I first started in archaeology in Ireland, kneelers were unknown. On far too many sites along the way they were a rarity. The macho culture being what it was, many of us never made a fuss about it and just trowelled our way along through the cold and the wet. Same with protective gloves – on many of the sites they were available we didn’t use them (and the pay was often so bad, it was considered an extravagance to buy your own). Today, after two decades in the field, I have arthritis in my hands, knees and one of my hips. All the same, I’ve got many more positive things to take from my career than negative ones … still wish someone had pointed me in the right direction early on!

From Bajr- 101 tips in Archaeology  http://www.scribd.com/doc/400953/101-Tips-in-Archaeology

From Margarita- These are some great tips. I would hope that anyone seeking to take on archaeology as a career will know the two very basic things: you’re gonna get dirty, and you’re not gonna get paid much doing it. BUT, you will love your job (and you will get by!).

Over the years, I have met quite a few people whose love for the job waned over their desire for stability. So, my contribution to this list is this: Remember that you will have an irregular schedule, taking you out of town for potentially long periods at a time.

From Jennifer- Wow, where to begin… I think pay is a big one. I knew that the pay was a bit on the low side, but didn’t realize it would be so flat after all these years. I don’t think anyone expects to be rich working in archaeology, but you hope that after some time you are going to make more than when you first start out. Without an MA, you’re often not making a lot more than folks out of field school. When I was a student, I didn’t have a real sense of how much earning a decent wage really mattered. The student loan payments hadn’t hit yet, and I didn’t have many ‘real’ bills looming. It’s not until someone is out in the real world that they realize how hard it is to stretch that low field archaeology pay.

On a related note, I wish I would have realized how important it was to make use of non-receipted per diem. I blew too much of it on silly stuff through the years and should have pocketed the extra money.

So few firms actually offer real benefits like health insurance and 401ks. I only worked for a handful of companies that did. If I had to go back and do it again, I would have stuck it out with those firms for the long haul instead of jumping ship and going to another project when the work temporarily dried up.

I didn’t know how difficult it would be, in some aspects, to have a ‘normal’ life working as a nomad in CRM. When you are on the road most of the time, it’s difficult to establish and maintain relationships at home. Factor in a family, proximity to home and daycare costs, and continuing as a field archaeologist/parent suddenly becomes very difficult. I am a mom of two young boys and my husband often travels for work, so I am limited to working locally. I’ve had a tough time finding work in my area, and to make matters worse, there aren’t any local CRM firms here.

As far as travel, there are also other issues that go hand in hand with being away from home so much of the time, like making arrangements for someone to take care of an apartment, banking, bill paying (a lot easier with almost everything on the web now), etc. I made a lot of bad decisions in retrospect (like having an expensive apartment I rarely saw).

Andrew Hoaen- When to quit. Fun as it is, archaeology is a pretty hard row. Try and work out your goals, and how many deadpersons shoes you will have to fill to reach your goal.

What about you? Please comment below or blog about what you wish you had known. I would love to know what other people think. (I will post it here)

As I and others have discussed the American Anthropology Association has turned its back on the public to support commercial publishers. I have discussed that in their letter justifying this that they claim to represent the membership and that this membership is happy with their access to the journals, even though their own reports show otherwise. I have also mentioned that it looks like they would not be really affected by a blanket requirement to make Federal government support research open access. Well I did a little digging and got better numbers for that but before I delve into that lets take a quick look at what the AAA sold us out for:

According to 2010 annual report publications cost $965,164 while revenue was $970,730. Yes, their grand profit for a deal with commercial publisher was $5,556.

Edit 2/5- apparently some different ways of account has gone on. The $900,000 is intake and costs but a further $900,000 comes out of members dues to support the AAA journals as well. This some how is not included under publication costs. This explains the sudden drop off of $1,000,000 from the AAA budget I discuss below.

That’s the 30 pieces of silver they sold the public out for. It gets better in 2003 the annual report shows that the AAA published, without the help of a commercial publisher, 29 periodicals (unsure on this number as the wording is ambiguous but if true it would be more than now) and this only cost $696,894 and brought in $794,164 for a profit of $92,720. In fact, looking at all of the annual reports we see costs and revenue from publications follow an interesting pattern.

The AAA actually use to make a fairly decent profit off of publishing before it started digitize all of its publications starting in 2004. This if followed by a few years in red as they digitized all of their publications. Then they make a profit in 2007 which is right before they sell out to Wiley and hand over the keys of the kingdom they digitized. It appears the AAA actually lost money the first year of the deal and have done mildly better since then. The number that really interests me, and horrifies me, is that one million dollars falls off the books when the AAA switches to a commercial publishers, also the prices of the journals went up 108% . What happened to that $1,000,000? More importantly if the prices doubled then the take in would have gone from $1,900,000 in 2007 to $3,800,000 in 2008. Yet, the AAA only sees roughly 1,000,000 of that, means we are actually seeing 2-3 million falling off the books. This numbers are two generic and broad to make any firm statements as publication costs and profits could come from books and other publications but it looks like Wiley is bringing in several million. How much of this is profit?

Edit 2/5- at least one million of this has been switch around in the accounts of the AAA and goes towards costs but is not listed as such in the annual report. This leaves roughly a million more with Wiley, assuming they have kept revenue up. This means the $5,000 is actually money not being subsidized by the members of the AAA

In defense of the AAA they did lose several $100,000 at different points so $5,000 could also be looked at as $5,000 + ($100,000 they are not losing).

Back to the question of would a blanket federal requirement that all publications from the projects it funds must be made open access after a year really hurt this $5,000 that the AAA makes? Well, lets take a look at all of the articles in the AAA publications, for 2011, that were funded by federal funds (includes Fulbrights and dissertation funding)- 68 out of 383 articles (AAA arch papers are from 2010 as 2011 was not available). Yes, 17% of articles in the 2011 AAA journals might be made open access if the federal government mandated it. This is what the AAA came out against. In the defense of the AAA they probably did not even look at how many of their articles came from federal funds. I have to ask, would the fact that 1 in 6 articles might become open access after a year really stop anyone from subscribing? I can’t picture the conversation at a university,

“hey, what journals should we cut?”

“Anthrosource, there is a 1 in 6 chance the article we might need will be available in a few years”

“I like those odds, lets do it!”

I could be wrong. Maybe a 1 in 6 chance of any given article being open access after a few years is enough to cause people to unsubscribe, not of course the ridiculously high prices of the journals themselves. I still believe that the AAA threw the public under the bus for a small amount of money that would not hurt their journals. If the mandate ever goes through then we will see who was right.

EDIT 2/5- I looked at the video provided by the AAA  on the subject and it appears that some of the money they get has to do with downloads of individual articles/page counts. Though the connection is not clear. It is unclear how this relates to over all fees that the AAA receives as part of its deal and if less articles being downloaded would hurt journals (e.g. there is a pot of money given to the AAA and each journals gets a share according to downloads) or hurt the AAA (e.g. AAA receives pay from only the articles downloaded from its journals) Also, of note is that by 2013 they will be running into problems with money as the projections are that enough universities will unsubscribe to AAA journals that they will start to lose money. High prices are causing its own problems. Unfortunately, parts of the wiley-AAA contract can not be made public and so we are left in the dark about what exactly will hurt the AAA and what won’t.

Here is the data on the articles so that you may check my numbers your self-

If you want to follow all of these blogs I have created an RSS feed using google bundles- here it is.

*The term death touchers in the title comes from once when I and a osteoarchaeologists told someone we were archaeologists and their response was “you dig up people? Your like a death toucher.” The name has since stuck to the osteoarchaeologists.

If you want more great blogs check out the full list here.

Powered by Osteons-   http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/

“Kristina Killgrove is a biological anthropologist. This is her personal blog about archaeology, bioanthropology, and the classical world.”

Bones Don’t Lie- http://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/

Katy Meyer’s blog- “This blog was created to serve as a way for me to keep up to date with current mortuary and bioarchaeology news, as well as a way to work on my own scholarly writing. Since then it has evolved into a way for me to explore a variety of regions, theories, interpretations, perspectives, and methods in the discipline.”

Bring Out Your Dead- http://bringoutyourdead.wordpress.com/

“So, you’ve made it to Bring Out Your Dead, a blog about all things, well, dead.
Come here to read mainly about funerary archaeology, but feel free to occasional expect posts about osteology,  rituals, and anything else weird, wonderful and probably grim  that takes my fancy.

It might seem obvious, but if you are one of those squeamish types, this might not be for you.”

Historic Graves- http://historicgraves.ie/blog

A blog about the historic graves of Ireland. They do some really great posts on graves and graveyards. They also have a great collection of photos.

Osteoarch- http://osteoarch.wordpress.com/

This blog is from a “freelance osteoarchaeologist specialising in human and animal bones from archaeological sites” who loves archaeology. “this is a blog about my projects with bones and community archaeology events.”

These Bones of Mine- http://thesebonesofmine.wordpress.com/

This blog concentrates on ” experiences and interests in Human Osteology and the fields of Archaeology and Human Evolution, with little bits on either films, music or literature!”

Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives – http://ancientbodies.wordpress.com/

” While examples from “the past” are sometimes brought into discussions in allied fields like anthropology or gender studies, and material histories are sometimes included with documentary histories, most archaeologists, myself included, complain that these uses misrepresent both what we know, and how we know, about past ways of being men and women. The power of the past to naturalize what we should question is something many feminist archaeologists, myself included, want to combat. I know from teaching hundreds of students from across the university that the best way to make others understand the power of the past, and its dangers, is to engage directly with primary materials. So the book project is paradoxical: it provides a single-authored text that has as its goal not to be simple straight-forward story-telling about the past, but rather, clear and compelling narrative about doing analysis of the material traces of past lives.”

Now that it is no longer mid-night and I have had a few hours of sleep I will better articulate why the American Anthropology Association AAA coming out in favor of a Research Works Act concept is an epic FAIL(internet slang) (my previous post was more emotion and less facts). Of course there  is the basic argument that the Research Works Act is an attempt by commercial publishers to keep US tax payers from accessing the results of research they paid for and is wrong. To be fair, the AAA does present a case, in their full response scholarly-pubs-(#282) davis, as to why they are against taxpayers accessing the research they pay for. As pointed out by Daniel (read this, it is much better then my first post on the subject) they use research that is for medical journals, not anthropology, and the model they are trying to protect mainly helps publishers.

Moreover, Daniel points out that “First, many will dispute Davis’ implicit definition of the relevant “public” in the AAA January 12th letter. In the opening paragraphs, there is mutual agreement about “enhancing the public understanding” and reaching “those in the public who would benefit from such knowledge.” But Davis’ definition of “public” changes dramatically when he argues against expansion. Rather than the multitude of publics an anthropologist might imagine – the general reading public, the communities with whom we work, advocacy groups located outside the university system – Davis restricts access to researchers and scholars. Since these groups already have good access, no further expansion is needed.” I would like to expand upon this and show why this is hypercritical of the AAA. They say, “A separate study found that 93% of the researchers surveyed reported easy access to original research articles in journals. This study surveyed 3,800 researchers and evaluated their access to 18,000 journals. … AAA independently corroborated there results in a survey about anthropological information with its members who reported in February 2009 very high levels of access to peer-reviewed journals and scholarly monographs”. Funny thing is I went looking for this February 2009 report on the AAA website and all I found was the Work Climate, Gender, and the Status of Practicing Anthropologists (Prepared for the AAA, 18 February, 2009) report that has as a complaint section about the AAA, “The need to promote equal representations in publications and access to publications” (p. 61) here is a quote from that section-

“Non-affiliated anthropologists (not affiliated with a university), that is, have difficulty
getting access to scholarly journals, current research, AAA resources.” (Female, 40-49,
Business)

Now maybe I have the wrong report, the AAA puts out so many survey reports over the years, (sarcasm- the webpage has the results of 17 since 1973, 1 every year and a half) but if not they lied to the federal government. I am not accusing the AAA of lying as I do not know which report they are referring too but the report I found tells a very different story-  “Practitioners report that they are largely dissatisfied with programs and services provided by the AAA” (executive summary) and many anthropologists “have difficulty getting access to scholarly journals, current research, AAA resources.” .

I digress, even if the whole of the membership found they had decent access to publications, clearly women anthropologists don’t feel that way, that is only 11,000 out of 310 million Americans (there are Canadian and citizens from other countries who are members but for arguments’ sake we will say 11,000 our of 11,000 are American) which is .00000354 of the population. That is not the not the 99% vs. the 1%, that is the 99.99% vs the .001%. I find this stance hypocritical as only a few months ago the AAA complained about Governor Rick Scott’s comments that we don’t need more anthropologists. How can we say that the world needs anthropologists when we are willing to throw under the bus 99.99% of the public?

It gets worse, in the defense of not letting the public view research they paid for they say, “One final note: in anthropology and in the humanities, book-length publications is still a meaningful publication unit. Journals play a critical role in the success of these works be reviewing the books and publications. In 2010, AAA’s journals published 411 book reviews. If the AAA journal publishing program cannot be sustained, it may be that university presses and other scholarly publishers of book-length works could also be irreparably damaged.” The real irony is that by defending journals the AAA is actually killing books. The prices of journals are increasing above inflation (estimated at 6-8% for 2012) and have so for decades. In the 1990′s when prices of journals were going up by 10% a year most library switch from spending 40% of their budgets on books to 30% while journals went form 60% to 70%. In 2002 “the ratio was roughly 83:17 serials to books” for universities in Australia. In 2007 the Southern Illinois University Carbondale only spent 10% of their library budget (all budgets are for acquisition and not total library budgets) on books and were worried that a raise in periodical prices would wipe out their book budget.  It is very hard to get recent accurate numbers but let me tell you a quick story-

I am on the library committee for my school, as the student archaeology representative, so I have a view of the research materials budget. Usually, we receive an allotment (determined by university to college to school to department) to purchase both books and journals. The journal subscriptions are automatically taken out at which point staff and students can submit monograph titles to be purchased. When that money runs out the titles requested, but not bought, are put in a queue and when next years budget rolls around they are first in line to be bought. Well this year was the first year that our backlog wiped out this years budget (left over after journals- a number that keeps shrinking). In other words, we don’t have any money to buy new books this year because we had to buy last years books (we eventual went cap in hand to the history department which gave us a little money). This will probably occur again next year and the year after. The queue of books will get longer till the point that several years will pass between a request and actually getting the book. In  probably less than 5-7 yrs there will be no book budget because it will all go to journals.

By supporting journal publishers the AAA is killing the monograph. Budgets for books and journals come from the same source, by giving to one you are taking away from another. If no one can buy a book then no one will make a book. I am not just talking hard copy but digital books as well. No money affects both digital and hard copy resources.

NOW FOR THE KICKER

The AAA is killing books and throwing the 99.99% of people under the bus for being forced to make this number of articles open access (numbers are open access article in 2010 i.e. after the one year embargo has to be lifted):

• American Anthropologist – 0
• American Ethnologist – 0
• Annals of Anthropological Practice  - 0
• Anthropology of Consciousness – 1
• Anthropology of Work Review – 0
• Anthropology & Education Quarterly – 0
• Anthropology & Humanism – 1
• Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association – 0
• City & Society – 0
• Cultural Anthropology – 0
• Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment – 0 (special issue is free as a promotion)
  
• Ethos – 0
• General Anthropology – 0
• Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology – 0
• Journal of Linguistic Anthropology – 0
• Medical Anthropology Quarterly – 1
• Museum Anthropology – 0
• North American Dialogue – 0
• PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review – 0
• Transforming Anthropology – 0
• Visual Anthropology Review – 0 (special issue free as a promotion)

YES, three articles are open access out of 21 journals. Another, kicker is I don’t even know if they were forced to make them open access as per the requirement about taxpayers funding (mainly only applies to HEALTH funding, currently) or if they were made open access by other means. Even if the mandate was expanded to all federal funding how much federal funds go to anthropology and how many of those funded projects would get published in a AAA journal?

Edit I have run the numbers and it turns out that 17% of articles would be affected see full numbers here

Here is the original post sections

Lets look at the numbers: 255 grants for archaeology from the National Science Foundation between 2007-2011 which is roughly 50 a year. There are over 250 English language dedicated archaeology journals to publish in of which one is run by the AAA. Assuming a even distribution of funded projects among journals the math puts it at 1 possible article every 5 years that the AAA would have to worry about from Archaeology. Cultural Anthropology has 181 (2007-2011), which includes doctoral awards, about 35 a year. I don’t know how many cultural anthropology journals there are but assuming there is 200 and the AAA has about 18 of them that is roughly 3 a year they might have to publish for free (after one year of charging to see that article), maybe. I could go on but the point is that even if the federal government mandated open access for all projects they funded you are looking at maybe a handful of articles (biological anthropology might have the most but not from NSF sources only 157 awards 2007-2011 chances are it would be from other grant bodies other than the NSF)

In summation, the AAA is helping kill books and throwing the world under the bus for a grand total of 0-5 articles spread out over 21 publications 1 in 6 articles that they might have to make open access every year (again, the mandate of open access currently only applies to health funding and only a portion of that. Even if it did apply more broadly the impact will not be much). If you read my first rant you can kind of understand the emotion of “how crazy are you?” that came out in that one. I think this qualifies as a epic FAIL.

This is a bit of a rant and I have better articulated my reasons for saying the AAA has made a huge mistake here You can read my more passionate response below.

Sometimes you get on a streak, it could be in sports or work or life were things just don’t click. Well the American Anthropology Association(AAA) is on one of those streaks. Last year around this time they opened up a can of worms when they tried to take the word “science” out of their mission statement. Well that didn’t sit so well some people ( a really good coverage of the whole event can be seen here). In fact some people have quite the AAA over it, lots of anthropologists were upset by it. Well they have done it again! The AAA has come out in favor of the Research Works Act concept. If you are unfamiliar with it, the Research Works Act, basically it is attempt by commercial publishers to keep US tax payers from accessing the results of research they paid for.

It appears the AAA are in full support of this initiative to stop taxpayers from viewing what they paid for. The federal government made a “Request for Information (RFI) soliciting public input on long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of federally funded research, including peer-reviewed scholarly publications as required in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.” You can see it and the responses here. This is the very same act that the Research Works Act is trying to overturn. How does AAA respond? Here is the full response scholarly-pubs-(#282) davis

My favorite part is “We write today to make the case that while we share the mutual objective of enhancing the public understanding of scientific enterprise (We think what your are doing is great!!! yeah keep it up) and support the wide dissemination of materials that can reach those in the public who would benefit from such knowledge (consistent with our associations’ mission) (more we think this is great topped with some needless pandering), broad public access to such information currently exists, and no federal government intervention is currently necessary.” (but we actually don’t think the public should access the material they pay for)

The balls on the AAA! In one sentence they say it is great, letting taxpayers view the research they paid for, and in the same sentence say but we don’t think the public should actually see it.

It gets better, at the very end the make the statement that it might be book publishers that suffer because of this- “On one final note… If the AAA journal publishing program can not be sustained, it may be the university presses and other scholarly publishers of book-length works  could also be irreparably damages.”  Again, the balls on the AAA. Equating their book reviews with the health of publishers which is not backed up by facts, no figures are mentioned, and just sounds silly.

Now I write this pretty pissed off as the bullshit is just too much. I should really wait a few days then make a response but I don’t think that would change my thoughts or reactions (this is pretty much the only time I have sworn here). We will see if a couple of days makes it easier to take the AAA’s …. and if I will have to apologies for my language. Actually, I apologies for my language now but not for my thoughts. AAA FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If only I but had a membership, so that I may too quite the AAA.

The #AAAfail has been brought back on twitter if you want to follow the conversation.

If you have been following this blog then you would have seen some of the research and also realize some of the numbers are dating. That’s is because I submitted the paper over a year ago but it has taken a long time to make it to press. Not a bad thing, as it just shows you that Open Access publications have a robust demand with lots of authors trying to get published in them. I take it as a very good sign, even if my paper had to wait a little while.

Fair warning the paper does not paint a pretty picture of the pay conditions of those on the bottom in commercial archaeology.

“Within the heritage consulting industry, obtaining data upon which to make sound business decisions is difficult. There is more information available, though, than most management teams are aware. However, data quality is variable, data are not always quantitative, and sometimes you have to read between the lines. Heritage Business Journal aims to present some of these data along with insights, interpretation, and commentary. “

It looks to be a great blog especially for those who work in archaeology.  First post is pretty good talking about the possible distribution of the system- “…These data show that 47% of revenue was from the United States, 35% was from Western Europe, and only 18% was from the rest of the world….”