Publishing

[Stephen Morey]

Dear All,

I want to clarify some of the comments I made earlier on this matter and apologise for not being as clear as I should have been. The opportunities for publishing grammars have been enhanced by the new situation of Pacific Linguistics, allowing for more electronic publication, and including the prospect of print on demand, already mentioned by Gwen Hyslop in her post a little earlier. I've now learned just how low the costs of the print on demand can be these days (for example a book of over 100 pages selling for $12 is available through Lulu as a guide to the kind of cost involved).

In my initial comments I only wanted to say that I wasn't sure whether the prospect of getting multiple copies at a very reasonable price for distribution / making available to communities was still there. It is now clear that PL at least is making provision for the low cost publication of hard copies and I'm certainly very pleased about that.

I'm immensely grateful to Pacific Linguistics, the Board and editors, who made it possible for me to get copies of earlier books at low cost so that they could be distributed into villages in North East India; I think there's at least one copy of the grammar in each village in which said language is spoken, and that is important. 

I'm very sorry if my earlier comments have caused any problems; the response has certainly clarified in my mind that the future for publication and the making available of our materials to communities is looking very bright.

Stephen

Stephen Morey
Australian Research Council Future Fellow
Centre for Research on Language Diversity
La Trobe University
Website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/StaffPages/morey.htm

Language data website: http://sealang.net/assam
Dictionary websites: http://sealang.net/ahom;  http://sealang.net/singpho; http://sealang.net/phake

Linguistic data archived at::
DoBeS:  http://www.mpi.nl/DoBeS and follow a link to projects, then Tangsa, Tai and Singpho in North East India
ELAR: http://elar.soas.ac.uk
PARADISEC:  http://www.paradisec.org.au

North East Indian Linguistics Society: http://sealang.net/neils

________________________________________
From: The Tibeto-Burman Discussion List [tibeto-burman-linguistics at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] on behalf of Gwendolyn Hyslop [gwendolyn.hyslop at ANU.EDU.AU]
Sent: 04 April 2013 13:58
To: TIBETO-BURMAN-LINGUISTICS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: Publishing

Dear All,

Just a quick response to Stephen's point regarding PL. Although a Pacific
Linguistics series is now being handles by Mouton, the entity that was
Pacific Linguistics Publishers in Canberra still exists, but under the new
name Asia-Pacific Linguistics (A-PL). Our focus now is on electronic
publications that are available for free download. For those who still
like access to printed copies, we are working to get something set up with
a company like Lulu (or perhaps that's already there) so that print on
demand is an option for a reasonable price.

This is all to say that A-PL should still be a good option for this sort
of publishing. Here's a link to the website for those who are interested:
http://pacling.anu.edu.au/

Best,
Gwen
--
Gwendolyn Hyslop
Research Fellow, Linguistics
School of Culture, History and Language
ANU College of Asia-Pacific, ANU
Acton, ACT 0200 Australia
gwendolyn.hyslop at anu.edu.au
https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/hyslop-g
+61 6125 7644; Bhutan: +975 17762177
USA: +1 608-515-8219






On 4/04/13 12:28 PM, "Stephen Morey" <S.Morey at LATROBE.EDU.AU> wrote:

>Dear All,
>
>Some thoughts on this.
>
>I have published two grammars on North East Indian languages through
>Pacific Linguistics - an option no longer available. Thanks to the
>generosity of PL, I was able to purchase multiple copies of the books (at
>a reasonable rate) and distribute them to as many villages as I could;
>the cost of buying them would certainly have been well out of reach of
>almost all consultants. Now that PL is in different hands, I'm not sure
>that option exists any more.
>
>Consequently I'm not sure what I will do the next time I complete a
>grammar of a North East Indian language (or group of languages); the
>pressures of academia and the need to publish with 'respected' publishing
>houses will push in one direction, the desire to make the thing available
>in the NE will push in the other. For younger scholars, prestigious
>publication remains very important for future job prospects.
>
>Two things that are now possible which help to mitigate this a bit
>
>1) For many community members the more important thing is access to the
>original data, recordings and in some cases transcriptions. The former
>are still large files and not easily downloadable from the various
>archives because of internet speed (even if they are on open or
>relatively open access); but it is now much cheaper to buy pen drives and
>copy onto those and I've been able to do this for several communities
>with recordings going back to the 1990s. Recently I joined Facebook and
>have gathered many friends there from the different communities I have
>been working with, and I can announce to them where on-line or copyable
>resources are and how to get them.
>
>2) Once our field accepts that on-line publication is absolutely as
>prestigious as printed publications - if the review and editing processes
>are equally rigorous - then there's less reason to publish in print at
>all, and the on-line varieties ought to be very cheap or completely
>without cost.
>
>This doesn't solve the problem of the community members wishing to have a
>printed book in their hands, of course,
>
>Stephen
>
>Stephen Morey
>Australian Research Council Future Fellow
>Centre for Research on Language Diversity
>La Trobe University
>Website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/StaffPages/morey.htm
>
>Language data website: http://sealang.net/assam
>Dictionary websites: http://sealang.net/ahom;
>http://sealang.net/singpho; http://sealang.net/phake
>
>Linguistic data archived at::
>DoBeS:  http://www.mpi.nl/DoBeS and follow a link to projects, then
>Tangsa, Tai and Singpho in North East India
>ELAR: http://elar.soas.ac.uk
>PARADISEC:  http://www.paradisec.org.au
>
>North East Indian Linguistics Society: http://sealang.net/neils
>
>________________________________________
>From: The Tibeto-Burman Discussion List
>[tibeto-burman-linguistics at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] on behalf of Mark
>W. Post [markwpost at GMAIL.COM]
>Sent: 03 April 2013 22:45
>To: TIBETO-BURMAN-LINGUISTICS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Subject: Publishing
>
>Dear Listmembers,
>
>I am sending the following link on behalf of Rob Burling. It is a post
>by Rob Burling on the LSA's Ethics Blog relating to high-cost private
>publishers, descriptive works, and the ethics of making such works
>available to speech communities (or not, as the case may be), and
>focuses in particular on North East India. Rob has mentioned that he
>hopes to hear comments and suggestions on this topic, which is certainly
>timely as a number of young TB-ists are no doubt thinking, or soon will
>start thinking, about where to publish various grammars and
>dictionaries...
>
>http://lsaethics.wordpress.com/
>
>Cheers
>Mark
>
>--
>Mit freundlichen Grüssen
>
>Dr. Mark W. Post
>Universität Bern
>Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
>Länggassstrasse 49
>3000 Bern 9
>Switzerland
>
>Tel +41 31 631 37 07
>Eml markwpost at gmail.com
>Web unibe-ch.academia.edu/MarkWPost