[INDOLOGY] Dharmapada Bibliography

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2019 at 03:18, Valerie Roebuck via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear Colleagues
>
> ...
>
> The OUP Blibliographies are an ongoing project, to be kept up to date by
> their compilers, so please contact me with any corrections, or notices of
> relevant publications.
>
>
>

The OUP Bibliographies is an amazing project and the standard is very
high.  The materials are endlessly useful and important for students,
particularly.  However, I do not like or agree with OUP's policy about
continuing updates.  Yes, obviously the bibliographies should be revised
and updated from time to time.  But the amount of work that goes into these
bibliographies is huge and severely under-resourced by OUP.   First, the
payment they offer for the original work is completely out of proportion to
the weeks of work that goes into it.  But more shocking is that they offer
little or nothing for the labour of updating these bibliographies.  This is
extremely specialized work.  In any other professional field it would be
very expensive.  Imagine asking a lawyer to "update" some legal
documentation, for example.  The rate would be several hundreds of dollars
per hour.

OUP asked me to update my bibliography and, after some discussion, I
refused because the terms were insultingly meagre.  I think they offered a
couple of free books.  In the real world of professionalism, this would buy
about thirty minutes of time.

I'm not really interested in the money per se.  But it's plain unethical of
OUP to profiteer on our backs like this.  Finally, if all the money goes to
publishers and their investors, it's not going to students and
researchers.  OUP makes noises about being a university press and being
dedicated to research etc., but their business model is not distinguishable
from the most rapacious profiteers.

Best,
Dominik


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