Dear Mr Jain,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this matter.  As one of the most important indological publishers, the community of indological scholars owes it to your company, and others like yours, to work with you to find new, appropriate models for the distribution of scholarly knowledge.

I believe that the models of publishing and distribution that have been in place during my career are now dead.  With the Internet, Open Access, Creative Commons and the wide availability of free journal and monograph publishing platforms like OJS and CreateSpace, everything has changed.  Many people will not realize this for a while, and there are Luddites who will take the rearguard.  But the leading edge of academic publishing is now at a different place.  

To put it bluntly, authors do not need traditional publishers any more, either for text production or for distribution.  I can make a beautiful PDF on my computer, I can create a physical book easily, and I can distribute it without lifting a finger (I now buy all my books from Amazon and other online services).

I agree with you completely that predatory journals (and conferences) are a serious problem.  But there are also thousands of excellent, high-quality Open Access journals that are responsibly edited.  The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides a listing that includes many good journals.  To be listed in the DOAJ requires meeting some moderately stringent requirements.  Open Access is not synonymous with predatory publishing.  And on the other hand, we can all think of books and articles published in the old traditional manner that do not deserve to be in print.  Most notoriously, perhaps, last month's scandal of Gilley's peer-reviewed paper in Third World Quarterly.

I think you are absolutely right to draw attention to the prime importance of peer-review and editorial integrity.  If scholars don't need traditional publishing services then what can a publisher offer that authors will value?  My view is that there are two things that, in future, a publisher will succeed with.  First, true editorial excellence.  That means full service at the referee, copy-editing and typographical stages.  Second, true production excellence.  That means outstanding book and journal design and typography, acid-free paper, etc., and parallel excellence with online offerings (one example, jTEI).

There is a story that the typesetters at Oxford University Press sometimes returned pages of the Rig Veda to Max Muller, saying that they had found an error.  "How?  You don't know Sanskrit"  Muller asked.  "We know that certain combinations of letters never occur, so that alerts us."    Tomorrow's publishers will need to take on some of the functions that are now performed by professors, including especially hight-quality copy editing.  If a publisher offered that, people would come.

This is a big subject, and we are all involved in inventing a new future.  It will take time and sophistication.  But a cartel of publishers fighting a war to preserve a dinosaur is not the way to go.  The past is already dead.  This cartel is trying to revive a corpse, and it will not succeed.

Best,
Dominik Wujastyk



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Professor Dominik Wujastyk
​,​

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
​,​

University of Alberta, Canada
​.​

South Asia at the U of A:
 
​sas.ualberta.ca​
​​


On 18 October 2017 at 03:54, R. P. Jain <rpjain1903@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Dr. Dominik

I really commend Prof. Dominik Wujastyk for his concerns over some Publishers against open research platform, the Researchgate. I’d also like to share my thoughts in this regard. My main question is that how one can ensure the quality of research on such platforms, without being peer reviewed? With free contribution how the papers can be refereed? Again, will the scholars themselves review such projects free of prejudice as there will be no pecuniary benefit involved? You see, the like the commercial considerations of any Publisher, the same work for or against any emerging or reputed scholars.  Today, already we’ve plethora of online International Journals, whose credibility are being questioned increasingly day by day. They are more in the nature of predatory Journals, rather than giving any assistance to any emerging scholar. If still there is still any worthiness left in this sector then that is because of those Journals, who already have established their reputation through their hard copy publications.


After facing the onslaught of online publications for a decade, I can confidently say that online stream of any kind can only work as assistance, but they can never take place of hard copy publications either in ensuring creditworthiness or ease in reading. Still, being the Publisher myself, I’m in support of fellow Publishers’ cartel of ACS Publications

Sincerely
Rajeev Jain
Motilal Banarsidass

On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 9:14 PM, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
A cartel of publishers, amongst whom I am very sorry to see Brill, has come together to shut down Researchgate.  The cartel consists of ACS Publications, Brill, Elsevier, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer.  These are companies that control quite a section of indological publishing.

Springer is not part of the cartel, and is holding separate talks with Researchgate.  There is hope that they may come to some agreement.

I am not surprised to see the industry moving against open research in this way.  The free circulation of the creative work of academics is obviously a direct threat to their revenues.  They depend entirely upon us to create research output, and then give them all our rights so they can profit from from our work.  I know there are other points of view on this issue, but I have thought about this as much as many people, and I take the position I take.

Best,
Dominik Wujastyk

References: 


​
--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk
​,​

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
​,​

University of Alberta, Canada
​.​

South Asia at the U of A:
 
​sas.ualberta.ca​
​​


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