[INDOLOGY] [Archiving Open Access publications] Re: question about a soliciation from publisher MDPI

Sun Mar 31 21:05:56 UTC 2019

Krishnaprasad makes a crucial point, I think, when he says that his own
business is structured as a charity or non-profit organization.

I worked for many years for the Wellcome Trust in London (that owns and
runs the Wellcome Library that has thousands of Indic manuscripts).  I have
seen at first hand how a charitable trust can own and run a pharmaceutical
company (the Wellcome Foundation, later sold to Smith-Kline Beecham), and
own major investments (the Wellome Trust owns large tracts of London) and
how all the considerable profits from that can be funnelled into regulated
charitable goals such as education and research.  In my opinion, most major
corporate bodies that are today viewed as for-profit entities should be
re-structured as charities, including all medical facilities, hospitals,
prisons, schools, universities, religious organizations, orchestras, etc.
etc. This sounds utopian.  It would be nice to live in a utopia.

Best,
Dominik

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
,
University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:

sas.ualberta.ca

On Thu, 28 Mar 2019 at 03:31, Krishnaprasad G via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> I am scared to to tell this, that is, not all the commercial publishing
> houses will be started only for profit or wealth maximization.
> But as already discussed profit making businesses are in plenty.
>
> I have started a publishing house 2 years back, to help the community. I
> was not happy with the "Research institutes" already performing. Because I
> am fed up seeing the bad "Directors" and  of whom the tastes are shallow
> and a misconception about what isresearch and what is not.
> But my institute is not "not-for-profit organization" this is because I
> don't have much contacts with academic politicians and hence I will not be
> funded. Another reason being is  The Companies Act is very strict and
> complex and bound by the rules to start non-profit organization.
>
> However the profit margin for all the works I do is very nominal. So that
> even a poorest Sanskrit student could be able to afford it.
>
> For instance (I am receiving many mails from Indology list asking the
> details about font availability, hence writing this wouldn't be irrelevant)
> The fonts are developed by the professionals and. And my I am selling them
> for just INR 1150 (One thousand one hundred and fifty) approx 14 USD and
> this payment is for life time and no hidden costs etc.
>  (I am not sure whether USD 14 is cheap in all the countries, however in
> India 1150 for 3 font families with 3 weights each, is pretty cheap,
> because Unicode compatible fonts are not sold this cheap in the history)
>
> I will shortly publish my website and post the other projects like
> Raghuvamsa with Charitravardhana commentary, Apte Dictionary apps with zero
> errors, Sanskrit Thesaurus etc. But all these with very nominal price I
> sell them. The reason being for not having high profit motive is that,  I
> have  different plan for my bread and butter. This publishing is my
> passion. But still I sell them only, I  need to reach the break even.
>
> I hope I will be supported by all.
>
> Krishna Prasad.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu 28 Mar, 2019, 1:14 PM Jonathan Silk via INDOLOGY, <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> Dear Richard,
>> First, I'm sure all are grateful for this source, and this avenue is
>> interesting. But I do wonder about something, since you state that the
>> publication is Open Access.
>> The copyright notice nevertheless is the conventional:
>> "© Copyright 2018 Sean D. Gaffney. All rights reserved.The Author
>> asserts their moral rights in respect of this work,including their right
>> to be identified as author"
>> According to my understanding, "all rights reserved" means that the
>> publication, despite having been posted for free download, is not in fact
>> Open Access. But perhaps after all I am quite wrong about this; it
>> certainly would be neither the first nor the last time!
>> Best, Jonathan
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 1:39 AM Richard Mahoney | Indica et Buddhica <
>> rmahoney at fastmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jonathan,
>>>
>>> With the agreement of authors and editors, all monographs, editions
>>> and proceedings that I publish will be available in an Open Access
>>> edition to coincide with the initial print release.
>>>
>>> It is relatively easy to ensure the long term availability of the Open
>>> Access edition. Both physical and electronic copies are deposited --
>>> Legal Deposit-- with the National Library of New Zealand.
>>>
>>> The upshot, for example, is that this recently published edition is
>>> available to borrow or to download:
>>>
>>> Gaffney, Sean (2018) sKyes pa rabs kyi gleṅ gźi (Jātakanidāna): a
>>> critical edition based on six editions of the Tibetan bKa' 'gyur.
>>> Indica et Buddhica Jātakanidāna, v. 1. Oxford: Indica et Buddhica
>>> Publishers.
>>>
>>>
>>> Borrow:
>>>
>>> http://bit.ly/2Ywyg9U
>>>
>>> https://natlib-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay
>>> ?docid=NLNZ_ALMA21311447700002836&context=L&vid=NLNZ&search_scope=NLNZ&
>>> tab=catalogue&lang=en_US
>>> <https://natlib-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=NLNZ_ALMA21311447700002836&context=L&vid=NLNZ&search_scope=NLNZ&tab=catalogue&lang=en_US>
>>>
>>> Download:
>>>
>>> http://bit.ly/2FDVSki
>>>
>>> https://natlib-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay
>>> ?docid=NLNZ_ALMA21311447560002836&context=L&vid=NLNZ&search_scope=NLNZ&
>>> tab=catalogue&lang=en_US
>>> <https://natlib-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=NLNZ_ALMA21311447560002836&context=L&vid=NLNZ&search_scope=NLNZ&tab=catalogue&lang=en_US>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best, Richard
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Richard Mahoney | Indica et Buddhica
>>>
>>> Littledene  Bay Road  Oxford  NZ
>>> T: +6433121699  M: +64210640216
>>> r.mahoney at indica-et-buddhica.org
>>>
>>> http://indica-et-buddhica.org/
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Jonathan Silk via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
>>> Reply-to: Jonathan Silk <kauzeya at gmail.com>
>>> To: Dan Lusthaus <prajnapti at gmail.com>
>>> Cc: Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
>>> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] question about a soliciation from publisher
>>> MDPI
>>> Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2019 01:03:46 +0200
>>>
>>> Dear Dan
>>> I hope I am not seen as a shill for publishers, but I would like to
>>> point out that what you say is not quite right. How are contributions
>>> to be found? How is their continued presence to be assured? How are
>>> materials to be distributed? There are many more questions like this
>>> that your brief explanation omits, but that are vital. All of us have
>>> experienced multiple times a 404 message when following a link to an
>>> article or contribution of interest. If we want our publications to
>>> last, this is not a viable model. This statement is not a positive
>>> assertion of what is in fact the optimal model, but it does point out a
>>> weakness in your questioning. I think that there are some viable
>>> options out there, but it's not nearly as simple as you suggest.
>>> Jonathan
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 7:11 PM Dan Lusthaus via INDOLOGY <indology at lis
>>> t.indology.info> wrote:
>>> > While on that subject, our entire profession is fiscally backward. It
>>> > is not just in regard to publications. Would a carpenter or plumber
>>> > pay you to come to your house to build or fix something? But we pay
>>> > hefty fees to go to conferences to present our research. Soon we will
>>> > all be paying to publish our work through “reputable” media.
>>> >
>>> > As for publishers, profit is necessary to stay in business, so as
>>> > hardcopies become increasingly vestigial, and free online material
>>> > increasingly available, who is the profit going to come from? And the
>>> > “free” part of online access is soon to disappear as well. The
>>> > profit, of course, goes to the publishers. Royalties are a tiny
>>> > percentage of what the book makes. The cost of producing a volume,
>>> > which, once typeset (and some of us end up doing camera-ready) is
>>> > just the cost of paper, ink, and delivery. E-versions, which don’t
>>> > even cost that — just server space — are now the same price as
>>> > hardcopy. At the recent AAS (Association of Asian Studies) the
>>> > decrease in the number of publishers displaying wares, and the
>>> > smaller booths rented by them, and the fewer actual items on display
>>> > by many, was clearly noticeable.
>>> >
>>> > Shifting costs to our institutions, which are already experiencing
>>> > financial stresses which they pretend to solve by eliminating
>>> > departments of Sanskrit, Religious Studies, etc., is not a healthy
>>> > solution.
>>> >
>>> > The model is changing, and we are mostly complacent so far.
>>> >
>>> > Dan
>>> >
>>> > > On Mar 27, 2019, at 12:11 PM, Camillo Formigatti via INDOLOGY <indo
>>> > > logy at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > > It’s really interesting that in this discussion none of us has
>>> > > actually pointed out that not only scientific publishers shouldn’t
>>> > > ask authors to pay a fee for publication, they should actually pay
>>> > > us for the work we’ve done. If scientific publishers ask scholars
>>> > > to pay a fee for publication it means that their business model is
>>> > > wrong in the best-case scenario or they’re criminals, plain and
>>> > > simple. Maybe the reason for all this is that scientific publishers
>>> > > shouldn’t be run as businesses? I’m just throwing this idea into
>>> > > the arena, since it seems that the business-like model is now all-
>>> > > pervading in every single aspect of human life, even where it
>>> > > shouldn’t.
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > Dr Camillo A. Formigatti
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> J. Silk
>> Leiden University
>> Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
>> Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
>> 2311 BZ Leiden
>> The Netherlands
>>
>> copies of my publications may be found at
>> https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk
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