Open Access Community Investment Program Participant
Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology is participating in the
LYRASIS Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP). The program's goal is to help match libraries, consortia, funding agencies, departments and other prospective scholarly publishing funders with non-profit publishers and journal editorial boards that are seeking financial investments to sustain or transition journals to Open Access (OA) publishing through a non-APC model.
About Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology is the peer-reviewed, Diamond Open Access journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA), a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), based in the United States. It is published by SCA on an instance of the Public Knowledge Project's Open Journal Systems platform.
The journal publishes ethnographic writing informed by a wide array of theoretical perspectives, innovative in form and content, and focused on both traditional and emerging topics. Cultural Anthropology is extending the reach of anthropological research and scholarship through its open access articles and its associated non-journal publishing on Fieldsights, which brings the work of anthropologists to a broader public audience, addressing contemporary issues and crises in a manner that is more timely than traditional academic publishing.
The Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA) seeks $56,025/year in OACIP funding for an initial 5-year commitment to sustain the diamond OA self-publication of its journal, Cultural Anthropology. SCA funds nearly half the journal’s budget, drawing on revenue from membership dues and what it receives as a proportional share of revenues from AAA’s publishing contract with Wiley. Both revenue sources are dwindling due to membership declines and the diminishing percentage of (pre-OA) Cultural Anthropology articles downloaded from paid subscription services to AAA’s portfolio and they are seeking more sustainable funding to sustain operations.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Impact
Related to the internationalization of the Cultural Anthropology's readership is the expansion of authorship beyond the United States. Given the problematic history of anthropological knowledge production and the discipline’s ties to western colonial projects, the editorial collectives have prioritized the internationalization of the journal’s contributors and readership. In 2021 (through late November), 52% of article submissions to the journal, and 50% of the articles published were from authors based outside the United States.
The journal is also working with the Public Knowledge Project to develop a plug-in to collect demographic information on authors and reviewers to better measure this progress. Furthermore, in keeping with the SCA’s commitment to accessibility, when redesigning the website in 2018, the editorial collective invested in a UX study and specialized accessibility testing with the Boston-based Institute for Human Centered Design.
The journal’s submissions guidelines includes the following statement on citation practices (reviewers are sent an analogous guideline):
Consider the extent to which citations engage with a demographically diverse set of authors, both as appropriate to the case study, and as generative of fresh theoretical insights that are productive of a more ethical, decolonized, and counterhegemonic discipline. Many fields of classic and contemporary cultural anthropology (e.g., the study of kinship, household, ritual, environments, and colonialism) have rich and complex genealogies that have not been adequately recognized in Anglophone scholarship. Works published in Cultural Anthropology should make an effort to engage with the diverse canon that has constituted these fields. Citing and engaging the work of scholars from the country and region where the research was conducted, as well as other scholars who have worked in that region (including non-English language publications), are also relevant criteria of evaluation.
Investment Criteria
Each OACIP participant completes a standardized form that asks for the criteria that libraries and other investors require in order to make investment decisions. These criteria will provide transparency around issues important to investors in this space.
Funding Goal
Funding Goal: $56,025 annually for five years
Funds committed: $41,900 annually for five years
Funding needed: $14,125 annually for five years
Funding deadline: July 31, 2023
Invest in this Program
Funding Tiers
Five-year commitments are being sought for annual contributions at the tiered levels below:
Support Level |
U.S. Classification (Carnegie Classification-Basic) |
Canada Classification (CRKN Bands) |
Recommended Support(US$) |
1 |
Baccalaureate; Baccalaureate/Associate's; Associate’s; Special Focus Institutions; Tribal Colleges & Universities;
Academic Departments |
Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
$500 |
2 |
Master’s |
Bands 6, 7, 8, 9 |
$1,000 |
3 |
Doctoral |
Bands 10, 11, 12, 13 |
$1,500 |
4 |
Special Programs;
Supporting Organizations; Funding Agencies; Consortia |
Special Programs;
Supporting Organizations; Funding Agencies; Consortia |
$1,500+ |
The Cultural Anthropology Funding Community
- California Digital Library
- University of California - Berkeley
- University of California - Davis
- University of California - Irvine
- University of California - Los Angeles
- University of California - Merced
- University of California - Riverside
- University of California - San Diego
- University of California - San Francisco
- University of California - Santa Barbara
- University of California - Santa Cruz
- Iowa State University
- Johns Hopkins University
- KU Leuven
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Princeton University
- Rice University
- Swarthmore College
- Syracuse University
- University of Arkansas
- University of California - Irvine School of Social Sciences
- University of Chicago
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Rhode Island
- University of Rochester
- University of Texas at Austin
- University of Washington
- Wesleyan University
- William & Mary
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