Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Update: Wiley has backed off and sort of apologized
Even though I have read many fine pieces of research in your pages, you have to go. Like others in the science blogging community I am appalled at the heavyhanded tactics Wiley has decided to use against fellow ScienceBlogger Shelley at Retrospectacle. In an era where it is vital the knowledge be freely disseminated, where science is under attack from both politicians and religious fundamentalists, where the world faces many problems engaging in censorship is appalling. What makes it particularly heinous is the fact that Wiley is in the business of spreading scientific knowledge. For those of you who have not heard of the story, Shelley wrote a post about a study in one of WIley's journals and used a chart and a graph from the study. Wiley has put their lawyers on it and is threatening legal action if the chart and graph are not removed. A gross perversion of the scientific endeavor and spread of information is how I would characterize it. Not being a scientist, I can't boycott Wiley by refusing to publish in their journals, but I can refuse to mention any research that appears in their journals. I can also be happy that I, recently, let my subscription to Evolutionary Anthropology lapse. I was thinking about renewing, but not anymore.
Boycott Wiley!
Update: Kambiz reminds me that this isn't the first time Wiley has acted dubiously.
Update 2: Note to Blogosphere:
Yes, Hawks does say:
Retrospectacle is a ScienceBlogs site, and they run advertising. In other words, somebody is taking money for running the ads. Now, whether the ScienceBlogs should be considered a part of Seed Magazine or merely a loss-leading subcompartment of the Seed Media Group, it is understandable that a scientific publisher might balk at the use of their copyrighted figures in that context without permission or royalty payments. I'm not saying that this particular case was not fair use; just that it isn't an obvious conclusion.
But then he goes on to say:
I'm concerned about the chilling effects of copyright, because for most of the papers I review, the data aren't so easy to transcribe. Many papers don't supply their data at all. In some papers, the essential data are photographic. If the weblog is going to be a vehicle for commentary on research, it is necessary to use figures sometimes, and these figures cannot simply be replicated from data tables. It is entirely foreseeable that aggressive copyright enforcement could be used to block dissent from published results (will they let you use a published figure in a submission to another journal?).If that's not a worry for you, then consider that a journal going after a blog for posting a figure is uncomfortably close to a journal going after an author for posting a PDF. After all, that's not distribution of a single figure (which might drive some people to buy the whole thing), but distribution of the entire paper -- and many, many papers are available from authors' own websites.
Which makes me feel really bad because I have a buttload of links to just such websites in my sidebar. So, if any of you get in trouble, I do apologize. I had the best of intentions when I linked to you. It goes without saying that I probably couldn't write this blog without those links...
Comments
You know this is not the first time that Wiley has been playing dirty.
Remember back in January when Wiley was uncovered to be part of the ploy to down play open access to scientific research? Since that happened so recently, I'm not surprised by their guerrilla tactics against fair use.
I've advocated this time and time before, that big name publishers have lost focus of what they are in the business of, to document and disseminate knowledge. And the hands that feed them are the very scientists who choose to publish in their journals. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but hopefully this will help build more momentum in publishing in open access journals that better facilitate scientific advances than these corporate thieves.
I think its right to boycott their journals. Wiley is a pitiful company. I hope the executives that manage these companies see the outrage they are causing with their totalitarian moves, and readjust their ethics and modes.
Kambiz
Posted by: Kambiz Kamrani | April 25, 2007 11:51 PM
I had forgotten that until you mentioned it. Thanks for the reminder. I agree with you 100 % on this issue. These companies have forgotten what they are in it for. Which reminds me, I'm going to have to go through my links and get rid of links to Wiley publications...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | April 26, 2007 12:29 AM
Wiley needs to keep in mind that more and more scientists are active in the blogosphere. In other words, potential authors and reviewers of articles for their journals will see how they treat a grad student who merely posted on figure from one paper. Having published in a Wiley journal and having reviewed several papers for them, this certainly makes me think twice about whether I want to deal with them in either capacity next time.
Posted by: TR Gregory | April 26, 2007 8:44 AM
I mentioned this at Panda's Thumb, but not everybody reads there.
A Wiley publishing sales jock wants me to adopt one of his textbooks. I'm balking. Since he would get 700 copies/semester he has promised to send this up the food-chain. I dunno how closely Wiley International journals are related to John Wiley and Sons textbook publishers - but I figure it can't hurt.
Just my two cents.
fusilier
James 2:24
Posted by: fusilier | April 26, 2007 10:07 AM