Last week, I became involved in a brief Twitter discussion with mrgunn (William Gunn), Director of Scholarly Communications at Elsevier, about how and to what extent commercial publishers such as Elsevier actually contribute to the production of academic journals. This is an important question, because commercial publishers often justify their profits by claiming that they…
Pseudoarchaeology as opportunity part 3: Yes, there are good things about the release of Graham Hancock’s America Before
It started late one evening when our 23 year old son messaged me on his own initiative, in itself an event to be celerated. He had a few questions about the Cerutti Mastodon site. I sent him some links and we chatted a bit. It turns out he is a regular Joe Rogan listener, and…
In our approach to pseudoarchaeology, different audiences need different approaches
A pair of articles from last week, one in Science and on in Time, renew warnings about the dangers of unchecked pseudoarchaeology. The big week in pseudo was capped by the highly successful session on pseudoarchaeology at the Society for American Archaeology in Albuquerque, organized by Sara Head and Stephanie Halmhofer, which I was very…
Québec research funding body (FRQ) releases open access policy: only slightly worse than Plan S
Earlier this week, The Fonds de Rercherche du Québec, the Province’s main science funding body, released, with not quite enough fanfare, its open access (OA) policy. Like Plan S, the policy is a small step in the right direction, but it could be much better. The Fonds has three branches covering health (FRQS), technology and…
ArcheoThoughts 