[INDOLOGY] "Religions" Special Issues or the new trend of paying to be published

Wed Feb 5 13:00:50 UTC 2025

Dear Christophe,

Like everything else in the modern world, the good and progressive idea of
"open access publishing" has been turned into a corporate kāmadhēnu. This
list probably needs no background on the general issues (see FOASAS
<https://foasas.org/index.html>), but it is totally standard for journals
to charge "article processing charges" for open-access publication. I don't
know what you mean by "our area of studies," but certainly journals
like *Indo-Iranian
Journal, Journal of South Asian Intellectual History*, and *Philological
Encounters* (Brill, $2,595), *Journal of Indian Philosophy* (Springer,
$3,2900), *International Journal of Hindu Studies* (Springer, $3,190), *Indian
Economic and Social History Review* (Sage, $3,000–$4,000), and *South
Asia* (Taylor
and Francis, $3,300) do charge very high APCs for open-access publication.
(They don't charge APCs for traditional articles, but as we know, the
subscriptions make these APCs look cheap.) Journals published by university
presses (like *Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies*), I
believe, negotiate APCs on a per-case basis, and I don't know what the
average is. According to Wikipedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge>, the average APC
is now $1,626, which makes *Religions* technically on the cheaper end, and
I believe that MDPI is technically a non-profit. But MDPI was classified as
a "predatory publishers" by Jeffrey Beall in the past, and still today
their core model involves (a) volume (they are the largest open-access
publisher in the world), (b) speed (anecdotally, *Religions* has a faster
turnaround rate than almost any other journal in our "field"), and (c)
special issues. The last feature, which you also mentioned in your message,
is connected with a number of intellectual and ethical issues, including
(a) the relative roles, and relative amount of labor, of the journal staff
(including the editors) and the organizers of the special issue in
soliciting papers, organizing review and copyediting, helping the authors
revise, etc. (b) the integrity and the rigor of the peer review process.

The same, by the way, is true for monographs, where the open-access fees
are generally between $12,000 and $18,000.

Now obviously I think this situation is unfortunate and wrong, and I
believe (as someone on Reddit said) "friends don't let friends publish in
MDPI," but this is unfortunately the way that academic publishing is
developing, or rather has developed. Still, I would assume that in the case
of most, if not all, of the special issues you linked to, the APCs for all
of the papers were probably paid by the editor's home institution, or
through a funded project. That was the case when I published in
*JSAIH* recently.
And it may be the case that the editors are able to broker some kind of
deal with the publisher. (I now see that Brian Collins has refuted these
naive assumptions of mine --- I was trying not to be so cynical!)

The choices for researchers in our field, especially early-career
researchers, remain pretty miserable. If you want to publish your research
in a major journal, the probability approaches 100% that it will be owned
by one of the "big five" corporate publishers, with huge profit margins, or
alternatively, pay-to-play schemes like MDPI. There are few truly
independent journals (I believe *Bulletin de l'École française
d'Extrême-Orient* is one), and few "diamond" open-access journals, which do
not charge APCs (see the FOASAS <https://foasas.org/index.html> again), but
which are mostly just starting out and do not have the name-recognition,
selectivity, or even the indexing that researchers (and promotion
committees) often look for.

Andrew

On Wed, Feb 5, 2025 at 5:42 AM Christophe Vielle via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear List,
>
> I would like to draw your attention on the following issue. Having
> naively expressed my interest after being invited by colleagues to
> contribute to a collective volume on a topic sounding to me, I was
> surprised to discover this new (?) type of publication promoted by the
> controversial MDPI/Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI on "Finnish downgrading" and
> "proliferation of special issues"). The concerned journal is "Religions",
> and its current or planned "Special Issues" on Indological topics, for
> which there are invitations to submit with a submission deadline between 1
> Feb and 31 Aug 2025, are no less than 9:
>
> Beyond the “Spice Routes”: Indic and Sinitic Religions across the Asian
> Maritime Realm
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/9P1M8049VT>
>
> Buddhist Meditation in Central Asia
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/236DSD0UI7>
>
> Hindu Sacred Texts and Rituals in Sanskrit Literature
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/1O9I38H1S3>
>
> Jainism and Narrative
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/0W9OR9E09H>
>
> Old Texts, New Insights: Exploring Buddhist Manuscripts
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/V6HUT4QX32>
>
> Thresholds of Reality: Exploring the In-Between in Indian Thought
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/21MBCCKZMA>
>
> A Sociological Approach to the Study of the Sanskrit Purānas
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/B9136AO0GV>
>
> Religion and Performing Arts in Contemporary India
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/0MQ1NB9G31>
>
> The Encounter of Colonialism and Indian Religious Traditions
> <https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/67UHFH1W13>
>
> The benefits of publishing in a special issue are extolled on the above
> pages — "All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind
> peer-review process" (led by the guest editors) and the published articles
> are in open access <https://www.mdpi.com/about/openaccess/> (for reading
> them).
> However, what is less common in our area of studies, is the fact that "The Article
> Processing Charge (APC) <https://www.mdpi.com/about/apc/> for publication
> in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs)" (= ± € 1900  or $
> 1950). Such a prohibitive cost  certainly constitutes a denial of access to
> publication for most of the scholars in our field, especially the young
> ones (unless their own institutes or research fundings are willing or able
> to pay as much for their publications). However, in the (guest
> editors/publisher combined) invitation email (which is in fact optional,
> since the invitation to submit a proposal of paper is in the same time made
> to anybody on the Special Issue page), it was added that "should you have
> any difficulties with the fee, please let us know; given your
> qualifications and reputation, the journal is able to waive the fee for
> your submission" ("However if you are able to obtain any funding to cover
> either a portion or the whole of the APC…, either from your institution or
> other sources, this will help to support the journal" — this APC is
> requested at the end of the publishing process). This difference in
> (financial) treatment based on criteria that are devoid of objectivity is
> disturbing. And more fundamentally, in the case of a journal article, why
> pay for being published... I am not convinced by either the model or the
> results of these "Special Issues" (inevitably lacking of coherence), which,
> if they are successful according to MDPI ("Normally, a successful Special
> Issue consists of 10 or more papers, in addition to an editorial (optional)
> written by the Guest Editor(s)"
> https://www.mdpi.com/special_issues_guidelines — I wonder which issue of
> the above list will reach this goal) would mean much more expensive volumes
> (paid by the authors) than the collective ones provided from reputable
> traditional publishers (when the open access is paid by the scientific
> editors themselves, through institutional research funding previously got
> for their collaborative project).
>
> Maybe the guest editors (who are apparently never among the paying
> contributors) of these special issues could tell us a bit more about
> the(ir?) interest (?) of this way of publishing (or attracting contributors
> ) and why they have decided to use it (even if they could have been
> misinformed about these mercantile aspects at the time they applied, or
> were invited, to become Guest Editor of such Special Issues, since nothing
> about the APC is found on the relevant MDPI pages :
> https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/religions /
> https://www.mdpi.com/special_issues_guidelines
> On the other hand, are the Editorial Boards of the journal "Religions", no
> less than 3 plethoric different ones, somewhere really involved in the
> editorial process? https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/editors —
> probably not, which removes all scientific credit from it).
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Christophe
>
> –––––––––––––––––––
> Christophe Vielle <https://uclouvain.be/en/directories/christophe.vielle>
> Louvain-la-Neuve
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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