Journal of Ethnographic Theory

The Society for Ethnographic Theory is firmly committed to the idea that access to knowledge and publishing quality must be achieved by ediating gratuity with sustainability. The journal pursues this ideal with two innovative models, where a balance between high publishing standards, knowledge sharing and sustainability is achieved without relying on unpaid labour, famished departmental research budgets and individual membership dues.

Each journal issue will be available to download for free for one month after release and be Green Open Access (in compliance of the UKRI requisites for REF submission).

Each issue will include up to 5 Gold Open Access articles, which the Society would like to dedicate to indigenous authors or scholars from the Global South.

HAU journal is published (not owned) by the University of Chicago Press through an unprecedented, hybrid open access+subscription model. The decision to move towards this model was shaped by detailed consultations with HAU's External Advisory Board in 2015-2017. UCP offered to keep the journal open access for 1 month after the release of each issue, to provide a Managing Editor, IT, marketing, typesetting support at any level, and to offer five articles per issue as permanently open access, and even free subscriptions to poor institutions. This is an unprecedented arrangement. A university press is trying very hard to invest in our initiative and preserve its mission and nature. A university press is a non-profit institution, a completely different entity from corporate behemoths like Wiley-Blackwell, Elsevier, or Taylor & Francis.

Few anthropology series today can offer the wide exposure and features that HAUBooks can offer: open access and an extremely affordable paperback printed and distributed by one of the world’s main social science university presses. Since 2015 we have released over 40 books books which have been featured in the Times Literary Supplement, Wall Street Journal Online, New York Review of Books, and in all the main disciplinary journals. Its growth occurred initially with no institutional or grant support. The series can only be maintained because it is subsidized either by our HAU-NET members or grants raised by the authors. HAU Books received a “pledged grant” from Knowledge Unlatched, a Berlin-based organization supporting open access publishing. The grant is to be claimed by Knowledge Unlatched from libraries who endorsed our forthcoming titles.