Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your interest.

I had responded to Matthew immediately after he had sent his inquiry.

Here is a slightly abbreviated version of my reply to him back then.

***

The pre-1991 volumes are not available in scanned form. Even though in 2013 I spent a lot of (eventually wasted) time on this matter, together with the legal department of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (inasmuch as its publishing house is functioning as publisher since 1991), the Academy finally withdrew from the project of making the earlier volumes available on JSTOR because of 1) the demand of an inordinate amount of money by the still-extant successor of the Vienna publishing house Hollinek that had published the earliest volumes (and, of course, long forgotten about this until the inquiry came), and 2) their reluctance to get into complicated negotations with Brill which was subsequently acting as international "publisher on commission" until the Academy publishing house took over in 1991, together with Vienna-based Gerold, the second "publisher on commission", which is, however, definitely defunct.

To my knowledge, Brill never responded to the inquiry by the Academy. The former Department of Indology (succeeded by the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies) of the University of Vienna was the main copyrighted publisher back then, but my (or the University's) consent would not have been sufficient from the legal point of view to provided scanned versions of the volumes before 1991. Even though no online publications existed at the time the contracts were drawn up with Hollinek and Brill, the agreed-upon rights for analogue publication (in the latter case: the international dissemination of printed copies on commission) would automatically apply to any future, different types of publication.

In the end, the Academy decided that they would not pursue the matter further as the volumes were not published by them in the first place and because it did not see much of a benefit for itself if these volumes were available on JSTOR at their cost. The task of negotiating with Hollinek and Brill would be up to JSTOR whose request had actually started our deliberations. This was communicated to JSTOR, but I have not heard from them again.

However, almost all back-issues of the Journal are still available in perfect condition for sale by the Department; please refer to https://stb.univie.ac.at/publikationsreihen/wiener-zeitschrift-fuer-die-kunde-suedasiens-wzks/bestellung/ or https://stb.univie.ac.at/en/publication-series/vienna-journal-of-south-asian-studies-wzks/order/.

I would be delighted to arrange for these volumes to be sent to you or your library.

***

With best regards,

Karin Preisendanz


Am 29.07.2023 22:27, schrieb Oliver Fallon via INDOLOGY:
Matthew Kapstein sent this enquiry about the WZKS almost two years
ago, but it does not seem to have had a reply.
I'm sure many of us would like to access early numbers of this
journal. Does anyone know if there has been any progress in making
them available?
With thanks,
Oliver

On Fri, 12 Nov 2021 at 20:35, Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY
<indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Dear friends,

From 1991 on the WZKS is available on JSTOR.
Is there a accessible source for scanned copies of the pre-1991
issues?

with thanks in advance,
Matthew

Matthew Kapstein
Directeur d'études, émérite
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris

Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
The University of Chicago

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