[INDOLOGY] Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens

[Karin.Preisendanz]

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your interest.

I had responded to Matthew immediately after he had sent his inquiry.

Here is a slightly abbreviated version of my reply to him back then.

***

The pre-1991 volumes are not available in scanned form. Even though in 
2013 I spent a lot of (eventually wasted) time on this matter, together 
with the legal department of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (inasmuch 
as its publishing house is functioning as publisher since 1991), the 
Academy finally withdrew from the project of making the earlier volumes 
available on JSTOR because of 1) the demand of an inordinate amount of 
money by the still-extant successor of the Vienna publishing house 
Hollinek that had published the earliest volumes (and, of course, long 
forgotten about this until the inquiry came), and 2) their reluctance to 
get into complicated negotations with Brill which was subsequently 
acting as international "publisher on commission" until the Academy 
publishing house took over in 1991, together with Vienna-based Gerold, 
the second "publisher on commission", which is, however, definitely 
defunct.

To my knowledge, Brill never responded to the inquiry by the Academy. 
The former Department of Indology (succeeded by the Department of South 
Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies) of the University of Vienna was the 
main copyrighted publisher back then, but my (or the University's) 
consent would not have been sufficient from the legal point of view to 
provided scanned versions of the volumes before 1991. Even though no 
online publications existed at the time the contracts were drawn up with 
Hollinek and Brill, the agreed-upon rights for analogue publication (in 
the latter case: the international dissemination of printed copies on 
commission) would automatically apply to any future, different types of 
publication.

In the end, the Academy decided that they would not pursue the matter 
further as the volumes were not published by them in the first place and 
because it did not see much of a benefit for itself if these volumes 
were available on JSTOR at their cost. The task of negotiating with 
Hollinek and Brill would be up to JSTOR whose request had actually 
started our deliberations. This was communicated to JSTOR, but I have 
not heard from them again.

However, almost all back-issues of the Journal are still available in 
perfect condition for sale by the Department; please refer to 
https://stb.univie.ac.at/publikationsreihen/wiener-zeitschrift-fuer-die-kunde-suedasiens-wzks/bestellung/ 
or 
https://stb.univie.ac.at/en/publication-series/vienna-journal-of-south-asian-studies-wzks/order/.

I would be delighted to arrange for these volumes to be sent to you or 
your library.

***

With best regards,

Karin Preisendanz


Am 29.07.2023 22:27, schrieb Oliver Fallon via INDOLOGY:
> Matthew Kapstein sent this enquiry about the WZKS almost two years
> ago, but it does not seem to have had a reply.
> I'm sure many of us would like to access early numbers of this
> journal. Does anyone know if there has been any progress in making
> them available?
> With thanks,
> Oliver
> 
> On Fri, 12 Nov 2021 at 20:35, Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY
> <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> 
>> Dear friends,
>> 
>> From 1991 on the WZKS is available on JSTOR.
>> Is there a accessible source for scanned copies of the pre-1991
>> issues?
>> 
>> with thanks in advance,
>> Matthew
>> 
>> Matthew Kapstein
>> Directeur d'études, émérite
>> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
>> 
>> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
>> The University of Chicago
>> 
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>> INDOLOGY mailing list
>> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
> 
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