Open Science in Archaeology

In archaeology, we are accustomed to investing great effort into collecting data from fieldwork, museum collections, and other sources, followed by detailed description, rigorous analysis, and in many cases ending with publication of our findings in short, highly concentrated reports or journal articles. Very often, these publications are all that is visible of this lengthy process, and even then, most of our journal articles are only accessible to scholars at institutions paying subscription fees to the journal publishers. While this traditional model of the archaeological research process has long been effective at generating new knowledge about our past, it is increasingly at odds with current norms of practice in other sciences. Often described as ‘open science’, these new norms include data stewardship instead of data ownership, transparency in the analysis process instead of secrecy, and public involvement instead of exclusion. While the concept of open science is not new in archaeology (e.g., see Lake 2012 and other papers in that volume), a less transparent model often prevails, unfortunately. We believe that there is much to be gained, both for individual researchers and for the discipline, from broader application of open science practices. In this article, we very briefly describe these practices and their benefits to researchers. We introduce the Society of American Archaeology’s Open Science Interest Group (OSIG) as a community to help archaeologists engage in and benefit from open science practices, and describe how it will facilitate the adoption of open science in archaeology. This citation for this paper and related content is: Marwick, B, d’Alpoim Guedes, J., Barton, C. M., Bates, L. A., Baxter, M., Bevan, A., Bollwerk, E. A., Bocinsky, R. K., Brughmans, T., Carter, A. K., Conrad, C., Contreras, D. A., Costa, S., Crema, E. R., Daggett, A., Davies, B., Drake, B. L., Dye, T. S., France, P., Fullagar, R., Giusti, D., Graham, S., Harris, M. D., Hawks, J., Heath, S., Huffer, D., Kansa, E. C., Kansa, S. W., Madsen, M. E., Melcher, J., Negre, J., Neiman, F. D., Opitz, R., Orton, D. C., Przstupa, P., Raviele, M., Riel-Savatore, J., Riris, P., Romanowska, I., Smith, J., Strupler, N., Ullah, I. I., Van Vlack, H. G., VanValkenburgh, N., Watrall, E. C., Webster, C., Wells, J., Winters, J., and Wren, C. D. (2017) Open science in archaeology. SAA Archaeological Record, 17(4), pp. 8-14.

在考古学领域，我们习惯于投入大量精力从实地考察、博物馆藏品以及其他来源收集数据，随后进行详尽的描述、严谨的分析，并在许多情况下以发表简短、高度浓缩的报告或学术论文的形式公布我们的发现。这些出版物往往是这一漫长过程的唯一可见成果，即便如此，我们的大部分学术论文也仅对支付期刊出版商订阅费用的学术机构中的学者开放。尽管这种传统的考古研究流程长期以来在生成关于我们过去的知识方面一直非常有效，但它与当前其他科学实践规范之间的矛盾日益加剧。这些新规范常被描述为‘开放科学’，包括数据管理而非数据所有权、分析过程中的透明度而非保密，以及公众参与而非排斥。尽管开放科学的概念在考古学中并非新颖（例如，参见 Lake 2012 及该卷中的其他论文），但遗憾的是，一种不太透明的模式往往占据主导地位。我们认为，从更广泛的应用开放科学实践来看，无论是对于个人研究人员还是对于整个学科，都能获得巨大的益处。在本文中，我们简要介绍了这些实践及其对研究人员的好处。我们介绍了美国考古学协会的开放科学兴趣小组（OSIG），作为一个帮助考古学家参与并从开放科学实践中获益的社群，并描述了它将如何促进考古学中开放科学的采用。本文及相关内容的引用信息如下：Marwick, B, d’Alpoim Guedes, J., Barton, C. M., Bates, L. A., Baxter, M., Bevan, A., Bollwerk, E. A., Bocinsky, R. K., Brughmans, T., Carter, A. K., Conrad, C., Contreras, D. A., Costa, S., Crema, E. R., Daggett, A., Davies, B., Drake, B. L., Dye, T. S., France, P., Fullagar, R., Giusti, D., Graham, S., Harris, M. D., Hawks, J., Heath, S., Huffer, D., Kansa, E. C., Kansa, S. W., Madsen, M. E., Melcher, J., Negre, J., Neiman, F. D., Opitz, R., Orton, D. C., Przstupa, P., Raviele, M., Riel-Savatore, J., Riris, P., Romanowska, I., Smith, J., Strupler, N., Ullah, I. I., Van Vlack, H. G., VanValkenburgh, N., Watrall, E. C., Webster, C., Wells, J., Winters, J.，以及 Wren, C. D.（2017）. 考古学中的开放科学. SAA 考古记录，17（4），第 8-14 页。