Full sympathy!
Though I have no experience with OBO I have experience of writing for Indian origin encyclopaedias. The first time I wrote at the age of 26-30 I was paid nothing by an ancient Government Institute of fame. Next I wrote for one Hindu Encyclopaedia and paid half of what was promised. The third time I had an experience with an Institute at Bangalore. They did not pay anything. None of them replied to my queries.
Only the Asiatic Society, Calcutta paid.
But at present I decline to write for such projects.
Naturally, I have full sympathy for you but think that you are not in so bad a position as that in which a connectionless, non-influential Indian contributor often is.
Best
DB
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
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