[Buddha-l] Conservative and liberal Buddhists

[Alberto Todeschini]

Richard Hayes wrote:

> I hear more and more people voicing their disgust with academic publishers.

Yep, as I mentioned on this list before, last I heard the University of
Virginia was paying almost $4 million *yearly* for *e-journals only*. A
copyright lawyer who gave a talk here described the practices of
academic publishers as "monopolistic" and "like a cartel". Rest assured
that they squeeze every last penny that they can out of libraries.

> More and more we find that authors have to do their own copy editing, their own proofreading, and even their own marketing for publishers that then sell academic books at elevated prices. So many of my friends are saying "Why should I put my work out through a publisher, when I could just produce my own pdf version and put it on my website?" This is especially attractive to those of us who have published materials with outfits that explicitly forbid us from publishing pdf versions of our own published writing on websites.

I'm still working, with my friend and colleague Louis-Dominique Dubeau,
on Buddhist Thought (no content yet, but here's a first look at the
website: www.buddhist-thought.info), a peer-reviewed, open access
journal on, well, Buddhist thought. We have about half a dozen reviewers
committed to the project, some well-known names as well as some younger
scholars. Progress is a bit slow, because we want to make sure that we
keep the direction toward high standards.

We haven't finalized the license yet, but it will certainly allow
authors to republish and offer their works elsewhere as they see fit.
They won't even need to ask us.

Best,

Alberto Todeschini