A few years ago, I wrote an annotated
bibliography on Indian Medicine for the OBO project. When I originally did the work, it took *much* longer than I had anticipated. I had thought I could just dust off a teaching bibliography, but it turned out to be several weeks of careful work. I should think my hourly rate of payment for the work was about 10% of the minimum wage. But I was pleased with the result - I think I did a useful job. And OUP's online site is good, and adds various nice internet-tweaks. But it's a licensed product. It's not available to the public, but only to institutional subscribers. Individual articles, like mine, are apparently sold through Amazon and other outlets for about $7 a pop.
Last week I was contacted by OUP and invited to update the bibliography. They offered no payment. I asked, and was offered $50 worth of OUP books. I thought that was not worthwhile. I can't revise the bibliography meaningfully in 90 minutes. So I asked whether I could at least have free access to OBO in return for doing the revisions. I was told that this decision was above my editor's authority, and therefore "no."
I have now sent OUP the following decision not to continue revising my (their) bibliography:
After
some reflection, I can't see why I would do this revision work for no
meaningful remuneration, and no way of accessing my own work once
online, and when OUP is presumably making profits from licensing the
work I created. I hope you can see that there is little incentive for
me. I think, actually, that the overall business model is seriously
flawed.
I
would feel more motivated to do it, I think, if you were able to find
someone in OUP with the authority to give me permanent gratis access to
OBO.
Sincerely,
I know that several of my colleagues here in the INDOLOGY forum have also contributed excellent guides to OBO, so I thought I would share my experience.
I have managed to write this whole email without using the word "exploitation." Oops...
Sincerely,
Dominik