This is a matter that has concerned me for a number of years especially since I work at a university which serves several developing countries. I have a recent edited volume with John Benjamins that nobody I know can afford. This is sad since even persons who are not linguists wanted to buy copies of the book. I get a book grant from my university but the sum per year is hardly enough to buy 5 books from publishers such as Benjamins or Mouton. The money normally gets spent on introductory texts and material to enhance my teaching and cannot really stretch to buy specialist volumes to enhance my research. One solution is spending my research time or my sleeping time to scout used book sellers online to get bargains.<br>
<br>I have also noticed that purchasing one PDF version of a journal article is the same as buying a book elsewhere. There is something fundamentally wrong here, even in a capitalist market.<br><br>It has already been pointed out by Sebastian and a few others that we need to change the political culture in academia. When we stop (automatically) judging publications on which publishing house they are produced by as opposed to their content then we should see an improvement. Senior scholars who make decisions in terms of appointments and promotions need to ensure that the works of their colleagues are evaluated based on merit and not on publishing house. Until we do that we really cannot point fingers at publishers. They are in it to make money and if they can get EUR 139 for one book they will take it! <br>
<br>By the way, two years ago when I had a full-time faculty position in Jamaica, EUR 139 represented 11% of my monthly salary.<br><br>JOseph<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 11 November 2011 07:41, Martin Haspelmath <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:haspelmath@eva.mpg.de">haspelmath@eva.mpg.de</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
I haven't made a systematic survey, but it seems to me that the
claim that Mouton grammars are especially expensive is largely a
myth.<br>
<br>
For instance, consider the following recent Lincom grammars:<br>
<br>
Marian Klamer, A short grammar of Alorese, 142 pp., EUR 48,80<br>
Muhammad Fannami & Mohammed Aminu Mu'azu, An introduction to
morphology and syntax of the Kanuri language, 292 pp., EUR 74,60<br>
Stevenson, Grammar of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic, 98 pp., EUR 42,70<br>
<br>
These cost on average EUR 0.31 per page.<br>
<br>
Or consider the following Benjamins grammars:<br>
<br>
Dileep Chandralal, Sinhala, 296 pp., EUR 110<br>
Ramesh Vaman Dhongde and Kashi Wali, Marathi, 340 pp., EUR 110<br>
Yamuna Kachru, Hindi, 309 pp., EUR 125<br>
<br>
These cost on average EUR 0.36 per page.<br>
<br>
Now compare the four most recent Mouton Grammar Library books:<br>
<br>
Marian Klamer, A grammar of Teiwa, 540 pp., EUR 149.95<br>
Birgit Hellwig, A grammar of Goemai, 612 pp., EUR 149.95<br>
Nęss & Hovdhauden, A grammar of Vaeakau-Taumako, 380 pp., 139.95<br>
Tasaku Tsunoda, A grammar of Warrongo, 850 pp., EUR 149.95<br>
<br>
These cost on average EUR 0.24 per page.<br>
<br>
What is special about the Mouton Grammar Library is that it's the
only grammar series of a major linguistics publisher that includes
grammars of very small languages, i.e. languages that are
interesting only to comparative linguists (this is unlike the
Benjamins grammars, for example, which are all on major Asian
languages).<br>
<br>
I think that in general, journals of shareholder-owned publishers
are the real culprits; compare the following estimated page prices
of selected journals (2011 volume):<br>
<br>
Lingua (Elsevier): EUR 0.47 per page<br>
Language Sciences (Elsevier): EUR 1.42 per page<br>
Australian Journal of Linguistics (Taylor & Francis) EUR 1.32
per page<br>
<br>
(For this reason, I've made it a personal policy not to collaborate
with shareholder-owned publishers. These include Elsevier, Springer,
Taylor & Francis, Routledge, Pearson, and Wiley-Blackwell.)<br>
<br>
But the points raised by Harald and Sebastian are still very much
worth debating. The conclusion to draw from their messages is that
the publishers just do what the academics want. If we change our
behaviour, they will, too. <br>
<br>
Martin<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 11/11/2011 03:12, Harald Hammarström wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>Dear Mark,</div>
<div>I don't know if it can be called a solution but one
possibility for<br>
</div>
authors is to submit to open-access monograph series that welcome<br>
descriptive materials, e.g., Cadernos de Etnolinguistica for<br>
(South-)Americanists or Himalayan Linguistics Archive for<br>
Himalayanists, or even the MPI EVA Language Description Heritage<br>
repository (<a href="http://ldh.livingsources.org/" target="_blank">ldh.livingsources.org/</a>)
then it'll be accessible to any<br>
scholar with a computer and some indirect or direct access to the<br>
internet. I suppose few authors are ready to do this because of
the<br>
prestige associated with the magna publishers. But the prestige
comes<br>
from senior scholars acting as series editors, reviewers and the
like,<br>
who might as well do this for an open-access publisher. I have
never<br>
understood why senior scholars continue to do this instead of
doing<br>
the same for an open-access publisher. Perhaps someone who knows<br>
better could comment?<br>
<br>
If you are thinking of a printed and bound version to be
affordable to<br>
a member of the speaker community who is not necessarily a scholar
or<br>
has access to a computer, it seems possible to have a local
publisher<br>
publish the grammar/dictionary giving a much more reasonable
price. I<br>
believe Robbins Burling did exactly this, with a publisher
somewhere in<br>
<div>NE India (so it should be comparable to your case) but I
don't know what</div>
<div>the exact price was and whether it was affordable and
actually bought</div>
<div>by many interested locals.<br>
</div>
<br>
It is sometimes argued that high book (& journal) prices is
necessary<br>
and justified for added value and development of infrastructure
with<br>
frontline publishing companies. But the overview of profit margins
with<br>
academic publishers by McGuigan and Russell [1] claims that this
is not<br>
at all enough to explain the profit margins (and thus, in turn,
the book/<br>
journal prices). For this they cite a report from an analysis
conducted<br>
under Deutsche Bank which I have not read, but in any case, does
anyone<br>
know the specifics for de Gruyter, Mouton, and/or the MGL book
series, i.e.,<br>
what are their profit margins and what is the added value they can
be<br>
said to bring? <br>
<br>
all the best,<br>
<br>
H<br>
<br>
[1]<br>
Glenn S. McGuigan and Robert D. Russell, 2008. The Business of
Academic Publishing: A Strategic Analysis of the Academic Journal
Publishing Industry and its Impact on the Future of Scholarly
Publishing. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special
Librarianship, volume 9, number 3.<br>
<a href="http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/mcguigan_g01.html" target="_blank">http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/mcguigan_g01.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">2011/11/11 Post, Mark <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mark.post@jcu.edu.au" target="_blank">mark.post@jcu.edu.au</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Dear
Typologists,<br>
<br>
I thank Bill Croft for raising this point, but would further
suggest that there is a deeper issue involved, particularly as
regards large-scale descriptive work such as grammars and
dictionaries. Most work currently being done in language
description relates to communities or localities in which
institutions and individual scholars alike have so little
purchasing power that obtaining an MGL volume is a
straightforward impossibility - with or without an ALT or
similarly-scaled "discount". While exceptions can be found,
the overall effect of this situation is, one, to radically
restrict research opportunities in exactly the places where
they are often most in demand, and two, to foster inequality
among our colleagues. I'm sure I will be reminded that most
scholars are aware of this problem, and that there is no point
in bringing it up unless I can put forth an acceptable
solution. I really wish I could. But I do want to propose that
the current status quo is ethically flawed to a very serious
extent, and that authors contribute to this problem when we
submit our work to publishers whose pricing schemes are so
dramatically prohibitive as is MGL's (whatever other merits
they may have). I would also warmly welcome suggestions for
how matters might be improved from listmembers who might have
made more progress in their thinking about potential solutions
than I seem to have.<br>
<br>
Regards all around,<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
<br>
<br>
Mark W. Post<br>
The Cairns Institute<br>
James Cook University<br>
Smithfield, QLD 4878<br>
Australia<br>
<br>
Tel: <a href="tel:%2B61-7-4042-1898" value="+61740421898" target="_blank">+61-7-4042-1898</a><br>
Eml: <a href="mailto:mark.post@jcu.edu.au" target="_blank">mark.post@jcu.edu.au</a><br>
Web: <a href="http://jamescook.academia.edu/MarkWPost" target="_blank">http://jamescook.academia.edu/MarkWPost</a><br>
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:<a href="mailto:LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" target="_blank">LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</a>]
On Behalf Of Bill Croft<br>
Sent: Friday, 11 November 2011 1:28 AM<br>
To: <a href="mailto:LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" target="_blank">LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</a><br>
Subject: Mouton "discounts" for ALT members<br>
<br>
Dear typologists,<br>
<br>
Some of you have taken advantage of the discounts that
Mouton has<br>
offered to ALT members for the Mouton Grammar Library and
Empirical<br>
Approaches to Language Typology series. The discount,
available in a<br>
list at the Lingtyp website, used to be around 50% of the
(very high)<br>
list price of the volumes in these series. After 2009, no
new volumes<br>
were added to the discount list. Now the new discount list
has<br>
reappeared but the discount has shrunk to 20%.<br>
<br>
The change in the discount has made the MGL and EALT
volumes go<br>
from (barely) affordable to completely unaffordable to
individual<br>
scholars. This is particularly serious because Mouton
volumes are so<br>
expensive - pretty much the most expensive in the field of<br>
linguistics - that it is difficult if not impossible for
university<br>
libraries to purchase them. I inquired about the change,
and was told<br>
that De Gruyter decided to standardize the discount for
all societies<br>
at 20%, and since Mouton is owned by De Gruyter, Mouton
has to<br>
conform to De Gruyter policies.<br>
<br>
At this point, according to the current ALT discount
list,<br>
volumes published before 2009 are still available at their
original<br>
discount price. I do not know how long that will last.<br>
<br>
I do not know if it is worth trying, but I would urge
members to<br>
object to this change in policy to Mouton and De Gruyter.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
Bill Croft<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
</div></div><font color="#888888"><pre cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a href="mailto:haspelmath@eva.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@eva.mpg.de</a>)
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Tel. (MPI) <a href="tel:%2B49-341-3550%20307" value="+493413550307" target="_blank">+49-341-3550 307</a>, (priv.) <a href="tel:%2B49-341-980%201616" value="+493419801616" target="_blank">+49-341-980 1616</a>
</pre>
</font></div>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><font face="georgia, serif" size="2"><span><b>Joseph T. Farquharson</b></span></font><div><font face="georgia, serif" size="2"><span><b>Lecturer<br>Department of Liberal Arts<br>
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine</b></span></font><div><font face="georgia, serif" size="2"><span><b>Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies </b><br><b><br>Telephone: (868) 662-2002 ext. 3493 | Fax: (868) 663-5059<br>
Email 1: <a href="mailto:jtfarquharson@gmail.com" target="_blank">jtfarquharson@gmail.com</a> <br>Email 2: <a href="mailto:joseph.farquharson@sta.uwi.edu" target="_blank">joseph.farquharson@sta.uwi.edu</a> <br></b></span></font></div>
<div><font face="georgia, serif" size="2"><span><b>Website: </b></span></font><font size="2"><a href="http://www.jotifa.com" target="_blank"><font face="georgia, serif"><span><b>www.jotifa.com</b></span></font></a></font><font face="georgia, serif" size="4"><span><font size="2"><b> </b></font></span></font></div>
<div><b><font face="georgia, serif">New co-edited book: <i><a href="http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=CLL+37" target="_blank">Variation in the Caribbean</a></i> (2011)<br></font></b><br></div><div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
Higher than the highest human thought can reach is God's ideal for His children. Godliness--godlikeness--is the goal to be reached. Before the student there is opened a path of continual progress. He has an object to achieve, a standard to attain, that includes everything good, and pure, and noble. He will advance as fast and as far as possible in every branch of true knowledge. But his efforts will be directed to objects as much higher than mere selfish and temporal interests as the heavens are higher than the earth. - E. G. White</blockquote>
</div></div><br>