Thirangie Jayatilake, Educational Arm, reporting from Sri Lanka

Tambapanni Academic Publishers (TAP) was launched online on the 21 of August, 2021. TAP Founder Professor Sasanka Perera addressed the audience regarding his stance on the current state of the academic publishing industry, as well as the social sciences and humanities in Sri Lanka.

He began by stating that in Sri Lanka, most disciplines within the social sciences and humanities are “exiled to the lower strata of academic hierarchies as irrelevant soft subjects by educational decision makers and political leaders”. In addition, he said that individuals within these disciplines have not enhanced their own research and intellectual engagement.

However, he highlighted that this was a systematic issue and outlined four reasons for why the Sri Lankan academic publishing industry is not up to standard.

  1. “often problematic nature of networks and forums which contemporary scholars have become a part of”
  2. “lapses in the quality of publications in the social sciences and humanities”
  3. “ways in which social sciences and humanities engages with and generates theory in locals intellectual settings”
  4. “extent to which Sri Lankan humanities and social sciences’ knowledge production impacts the global discourses in these disciplines”.

Firmly stating “we have to recognise that the quality of social sciences and humanities is a very serious problem”, professor Perera mentioned that Sri Lanka lacks university presses and commercial academic publishers.

Sri Lanka did once publish high quality academic work; however, the University of Ceylon press shut down in the 1970s and other commercial publishers like M. D. Gunasekera publishers and Saman press which published academic works in the 1960s and 1970s are also no longer in function. Professor Perera acknowledges that although more academic publishing forums have expanded in the past twenty years, giving more people the opportunity to publish, these forums are not up to standard.

Professor Perera stated that “today, we have printers who publish almost anything” but there are significant “issues regarding careful peer review, selection of what to publish. . . copyediting. . . [and] referencing”.

Professor Perera concluded by stating two aims of TAP.

  1. TAP aims to bring knowledge about Sri Lanka [this is perhaps in reference to Sri Lankan scholars who publish outside of the country with international publishers that are rarely sold or referenced in Sri Lanka] and the world to Sri Lanka, as well as take knowledge from Sri Lanka to the world.
  2. To make knowledge affordable. He stated that Sri Lankans publish their work with international publishers for example, like SAGE and Columbia Press. However, books published by these international publishers are too expensive for Sri Lankans.

 

Originally appears in https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2021/09/10/weekly-updates-from-the-front-lines-of-world-literature-25/