Comments on Macro-Typography: Studia Patristica

Wonderful news! Congratulations on a job well done...

2013-07-08T13:33:48.467+02:00

Wonderful news! Congratulations on a job well done. I will be looking out for my volume ...

Just to let you know that Studia Patristica 53-70 ...

2013-07-05T16:14:38.166+02:00

Just to let you know that Studia Patristica 53-70 were released today, have a good read,
Yours Markus

Interesting that we all agree on the basics that w...

2013-03-03T19:05:49.794+01:00

Interesting that we all agree on the basics that we need the private publishers to help us scholars with quality and to move after some time to open access. You will be pleased to know that the UK funding bodies have decided that everybody who applies for government funding in the future has to make sure that the output will be published in places which allow for open access after an initial paid for period, so we are all on the same track.

Peeters are undoubtedly an excellent publisher who...

2013-03-03T16:58:06.071+01:00

Peeters are undoubtedly an excellent publisher who do much for the scholarly community.

The situation still is a crazy one, tho, as J.B. says. How to square the circle?

Hello Markus, The rigour of the publishing process...

2013-03-03T16:14:40.748+01:00

Hello Markus,
The rigour of the publishing process is highly appreciated, and we would all agree that rigour cannot be obtained for free. But it would I think be desirable to have a moving-firewall policy with fine journals such as Studia Patristica, putting the material on open access after the recovery of the initial investment.
Roger Pearse recently pointed in a blog post to the disturbing case of De Gruyter demanding 126 dollars for offprints of a 1926 monograph.
I find it scandalous that access should remain blocked generations later. The rewards for rigour should be calculable, and I would think that few publishers would count on returns beyond the first decade. A return nearly 90 years after publication is not an incentive: it is a gambling windfall.
Of course a moving firewall does require planning, ideally with copyright releases by the authors, editors and publishers at the time of publication. We would need to consider it now simply to see the fruits mid-century.
Regards,
Jean Baptiste

Dear Jean-Baptiste, thanks so much for your kind w...

2013-02-24T11:50:46.771+01:00

Dear Jean-Baptiste,
thanks so much for your kind words. With regards to publishing policies and the question of open access arrangements, I am really undecided yet. I have always advocated that as scholars write (mainly) for scholars, we should have access to our own products for free. However, life is often more complex than that. I have learned over the past years that a rigorous publishing process (though, I believe not an anonymous, but a transparent one), helps to improve the quality and reliability of published works. For this, however, we need professional help in forms of publishers and the private trade. And this has to be paid for. So how to square the circle? I think, Peeters is a fantastic publisher who is trying to do this, for years now. Publishing a series like Studia Patristica (even with the hundreds of subscribers to the series) is still a risk, but the publisher has also taken other risks (so he started with me the new series Eckhart: Texts and Studies) without charging the authors or funders a penny (something rare in the trade), but entirely relying on the success of the series in the scholarly world (meaning that colleagues ask libraries to subscribe to it).
Perhaps, it is possible, to add to these paid for books and databases a free open access branch of publications, either after a few years of publication or, without the rigorous publishing process - at the cost of less reliability.
Life is complex, but I am happy with the circles that are not always round,
yours Markus