Dear Colleagues,

I know it's been a while for this discussion, but I did some digging this morning and thought that others might be interested in Brill's profit margins and how they brag about increased revenue from academic journals in recent years. A few highlights:

Brill had a "sharp increase of profit" from 2015 to 2016 (here), followed by another increase in 2017 (here)

From 2015 to 2016, Brill acquired more journals, and "journal revenue grew by 5%" (here).

In their 2017 Half Year Report, Brill named two specific journals among their acquisitions, saying "It is expected that the [two] journals will contribute to the revenue and profit in 2017" (here). Perhaps SAIH will merit a mention in the end of year report?

For more about investor relations and the financial health of Brill, see here. 

Audrey 

Audrey Truschke

Assistant Professor

Department of History
Rutgers University-Newark

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 2:43 PM, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Thank you, Andrew.  

On 9 July 2017 at 20:09, Andrew Ollett <andrew.ollett@gmail.com> wrote:

Gladly: 

2.  http://www.brill.com/brill-open-0.  Brill also allows for proofs (not the final publication) to be uploaded on academia.edu.

3.  No processing fee.

​One would never expect to pay a processing fee except if the article​ is being published OA.  And in that case, yes, Brill charges about €2000 per article for CC-BY.  See the pricing charts here.  

A related question is whether, having paid this fee, the author retains copyright and issues the CC-BY license, or whether Brill takes the copyright and the author's money, and they issue the CC-BY license.  The latter is the case with this journal.

 

4.  Yes, Brill owns the right, but permissions for reprint are rather easily granted:  http://www.brill.com/about/policies/rights-permissions

​I balk at asking permission to photocopy my own articles.  It's just not right.  A more equitable situation is for the author to retain copyright and issue to the publisher a license for them to do specifically what they wish.  See some sample licenses and information here.

In the past, I have written to Brill saying "no" they can't have my copyright, but that I'm willing to issue them a license.  And to my surprise, they said yes immediately, and sent me a ready-printed license agreement.  The terms weren't great, but at least they knew what I was talking about and were prepared to let me keep copyright of my own work.

Sadly, because of the above issues, I personally do not find this new journal offers authors a modern, fair deal.  It's obviously an exciting and intellectually valuable initiative.  But it is a great pity the founding editors did not press Brill harder to offer authors a more liberal deal that respected their rights.

Best,

Dominik

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Professor Dominik Wujastyk

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Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polit

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Department of History and Classics, ​University of Alberta, Canada

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ualberta.Academia.edu/DominikWujastyk

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Professor Dominik Wujastyk*
Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity

Department of History and Classics

University of Alberta, Canada

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