Today I came across HAU, an ethnological journal now up to Volume 3, Issue 3. In their own words, it's: "...an international peer-reviewed, open-access journal which aims to situate ethnography as the prime heuristic of anthropology, and return it to the forefront of conceptual developments in the discipline."

What stands out about this journal is that it is peer-reviewed, has excellent production values, and does not charge contributors or for access. The quality ofarticles is very high. Unsurprisingly, this is the result of institutional support, in this case from a network of university anthropology and sociology departments and a few private foundations.

Is this the ideal model? Perhaps. Quality does come at a price. Currently it's paid for by institutional subscriptions, or in the case of some journals by the authors themselves. The first of these options has led to the creation of an inflexible and costly knowledge infrastructure, and the second is both ethically questionable and unfair on authors. So, to me this model makes perfect sense; if moreinstitutions were willing to cover the costs of properly hosting and maintaining a quality OA journal, the collective costs to institutional libraries of access to articles would come down. It's a fairer and more efficient way of spending money -- money that ultimately comes from the same source!