PAPERS IN ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

Introduction

Many governmental and non-governmental agencies engaged in the publication of academic works are facing a variety of academic and technical problems at various levels of book publishing in the country including copyright and translation rights. In spite of the book industry in India taking a leading role in Asia , the production, promotion and distribution of academic publications that are restricted to select audiences need improvement in the context of advancement of technology.

       One of the main activities of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (C.I.I.L.) is disseminating the results of research in the area of linguistics and inter-disciplinary research through its publications. With this experience, the institute felt the need for a common forum in the rea of book publishing to identify a strategy for improvement of academic and technical quality keeping in view the National Book Policy in the country. On this line, the Institute conducted a National Seminar on Academic Publishing (1986).The present volume is the outcome of the proceedings of that seminar.

       Seventeen papers are included in this book. These papers discuss various problems of book production at different stages and focus on the latest developments with the application of computer technology, particularly of academic publications. These papers are arranged in the order of editing, publishing, marketing and general which are the main stages of book production and are based on the content they deal with.

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Editing

The editor is the key person for the success of a publication. A production-oriented editor can be more effective and pivotal in the programme of publications, discusses N. Krishna Swamy in his paper Key Role of Editor in the Production of Publications. Whereas G.L. Anand's paper on Textbook Editing pinpoints that the role of an editor has not been recognized properly by the government and other textbook agencies and discusses in detail about the role of the editor, editor-author relationship besides other aspects of textbook production. He opines that textbooks have a unique position in the educational system. In the paper Critical Editing of Ancient Manuscripts. H.L.N. Bharathi describes the nature of critical editing of an ancient work, the rights and duties of a critical editor, the problems that come before him while critically editing manuscript and the system of critical editing and explains what textual criticism means. In his paper Editing of Catalogues and Bibliographies, Sahebzada Shaukat Ali Khan, opines that editing, especially of critical texts and other scientific manuscripts like catalogues, bibliographies, etc., is a ticklish job and can be categorized in multidisciplinary subjects of intrinsic values and varieties. He describes his experience while editing the catalogues and bibliographies in Arabic and Persian. He developed a separate system of editing of Arabic and Persian. He developed a separate system of editing of catalogues in a renovated and improved form by adapting the salient features from the world-renowned bibliographers and cataloguers like Brocke mann, Storey, Rieu, Ethe and Steingass. He says that a scholar while compiling and editing catalogues faces discouraging and dejecting problems and has to tackle the unsurmoutable difficulties in sorting out the themes, tracing out the titles and sub-titles, etc.

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Publishing

        D.P. Pattanayak describes the academic publishing scene in India and streses the need for training the translators for accurate, authentic and effective translation of academic books, lack of which may affect the growth and development of Indian languages. He justifies that the central and state governments entered the field of academic publishing not in competition with the private publishers, but with a view to providing the general public, reading materials of basic significance which the private publisher is not in a position to do. In the Book in India – a Change in continuity, Abul Hasan gives a historical perspective of the post-independence scenario of book publishing in India along with figures of titles produced till 1982-83 and language-wise book production. He also discusses about publishing houses, university level books, imports and exports, copyright and public sector publishing. He concludes that book publishing is a complex industry and its infrastructural development depends on government support in a variety of ways. Thambi Srinivasan stresses the need for a working manual in his paper The Need for Working Manual for Book Producting in Languages. He says that there is a scope to improve language books in designing, format, typesetting, lay-out and press copy preparation. He emphasizes that a language book need not be secondary in quality in spite of limitations in number and area of circulation. A well produced reading material reduces the `dropout' rate in Indian schools as it is a necessary attraction to the young reader. It is a child's right to expect neat production in anything supplied to him, like a toy, food or book. In the paper Problems in the Production of Academic Publications in a Semi-governmental Agencies, C. Nagaraj discusses various problems faced by the semi-governmental agencies like universities and other educational institutions in publishing academic works. He points out the drawbacks in semi-governmental agencies which are the major hurdles in the production of academic publications and which affect the in-time production and quality production and provide measures for improvement which help to achieve the quality as well as increased productivity of academic publications by the semi-governmental agencies.

       Abul Hasan's paper on University Press in India , exclusively discusses the conditions of University Presses in India . He says that the purely administrative attitude of the authorities and lack of mutual co-operation among the editorial, production and distribution departments becomes a major set back in the University Presses. He hopes that there is a lot of scope for the improvement of the situation when the concerned authorities have clear understanding of the role and functions of the University Press and when the government provides adequate support—both financially and technically—as the University Press is not a commercial publisher. J.C. Moona distinguishes what is a book and what is a bad book and describes the qualities of a book in his paper Preparation of Standard Books at University Level. He says that most of the Indian books do not attract many readers and many of them may not be termed as `good books'. The text-books published by the universities, educational institutions and governmental and semi-governmental agencies are meant for specific readers and are more technical in nature, without caring for creating interest or arousing response in the general readers. He desires that a book should be readable by all, both specific and general readers. For that the proposes a few measures to standardize the university level books in all aspects, i.e., in terms of content, design, style and language. He also suggests that a textbook writer may adopt the co-operative method, which is a popular one in the West for producing standard text material for the students.

       R.P.Arya stresses the need for preparation of atlases and wall maps in all the recognized languages in the country that are used in schools in the paper Atlases and Wall Maps for Indian Schools. He says that atlases and wall maps are the two primary visual tools for dissemination of geographical information more meaningfully. He opines that the central government, state governments, various directorates of education and national level educational institutions should associate themselves with some skilled map making agencies in the country and produce accurate geographical aids of international standards and list out a few tasks for producing accurate maps and atlases.

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Marketing

       Mohan Primlani's paper on Marketing Academic Books discusses marketing, its activities, philosophies involved, strategies, planning, product pricing, promotion, distribution, etc., in detail. He says that the ideal philosophy of marketing textbooks is a balanced approach that recognizes both traditional and innovative marketing activities. In his view the books should be innovative marketing activities. In his view the books should be distributed like consumer products reaching the total potential market instead of reaching only a few through booksellers. C.K. Mahadevan also discusses some common problems in selling the academic books in his paper Some of the Common Problems in Disseminating the Scholarly Books. He opines that book publishing is becoming political and commercial. For maximum sale of books at reduced unit cost, he suggests merchandising strategies and tactics to be used and gives some tactics for sales. In Promotion, Discount and Pricing Formulae, Baikunth Nath Thakur describes various problems in distributing the academic books, particularly published by the Bihar Hindi Granth Academy . He says that when the academic publications create interest amog the general readers, then only these books get wider distribution. He also stresses the need for co-ordination among the academies, especially the five academies of Hindi belt, while publishing an academic book. That is, he suggests one time publication of a book by one academy, so that the others need not publish the same book. This will reduce the cost of production as well as the price of the book considerably because of the large print run and there is a scope to print the book more attractively with uniformity of printing, format, cover design, etc.

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General

       C.R. Sulochana, in her paper, the Problems of Acquisition and Promoting the Use of Academic (Linguistic) Publications in Special Libraries, discusses the problems of acquisition and use of linguistic publications in a special research library, identifying publications of academic interest through bibliographies, selecting or ordering for them, non-availability of bibliographical sources for Indian books which affect the identification of publications, particularly linguistic publications, Indian National Bibliography and Indian books in print and accession list of the US Library of Congress for India, Pakistan and Nepal. She also discusses the adoption of international standards such as ISBN and ISSN which will contribute to international movement towards the concept of Universal Bibliographical Control (UBC) which the UNESCO is promoting . The use of academic books, cataloguing the quick accession were also discussed. She suggests a modified system of "Cataloguing in Publication Data" (CPD) on the lines of USA which started it in 1958 internationally accepted in 1971. Kala Thairani's paper Copyright and Academic Publishing explains the relevant provisions in the Indian Copyright Law incorporating concessions in favour of developing countries for translation and reproduction of copyright works for purposes of works for purposes of instructional activities and the formalities that are required to be observed for grant of a compulsory licence. She says that the purpose of the copyright system is to afford legal protection of the rights of authors of intellectual works as well as those concerned with the dissemination of those works in order to prevent unauthorized appropriation. Finally the paper on use of Desk Top Publishing of Academic Books by K. Srinivasacharya describes the advantages and disadvantages of the use of D.T.P. while bringing out the academic books, especially linguistic and regional language books with reference to the Central Institute of Indian Languages.