Again, this was forwarded to me by my grad assistant. You may recall the earlier discussion about Logos’ intent to create a new, electronically published Bible dictionary and the questions raised regarding editorial oversight and exploitation of graduate students. The final details have come in.
Thanks for contacting me. Here’s a bit more about the online Bible dictionary:
This Bible dictionary is intended to fill the niche between popular-level and academic resources by providing in-depth articles free from the scholarly jargon that would be confusing for a reader who does not have a background in Biblical Studies. The articles should give an in-depth look at current scholarship in each area, but in a non-technical language. We are looking for writers to contribute articles of about 1000 words in length. We’re offering compensation in Logos Bible Software products. Currently, the final date of submission is January 31st, 2011.
Below my email signature is a list of 1000 word topics that still need entries written. If you are able to write 10 entries for us before the end of January, you’ll earn $200.00 in Logos software products. If you can take on five entries, that will earn you $100.00 in software.
Please let me know if any of these pique your interest.
Sincerely,
What do you think? How many of you graduate students feel this is a fair deal? Are any concerns you had regarding editorial control addressed? Do we need this? (And the related question, doesn’t wikipedia already fill this niche?)
4 thoughts on “More news on the Logos Bible Dictionary”
I’m participating in the project, even though I’m a bit sceptical about the whole project. I haven’t quite received as many answers from Logos as I would have liked – and the communication hasn’t been as supple as would be desired. Nor did I have the feeling that my expertise and knowledge was considerably noted enough to be sufficiently valued.
The question of whether it’s fair is a good one. If we consider what is often given for scholarly publications, the compensation is certainly reasonable. But if we consider how much time needs to be put into writing this much, and writing furthermore something that is not necessarily ‘adding to the scholarly niveau’, the compensation starts to look less appealing.
The question then is how this might benefit me. How does this experience help me? Not just in the compensation of software but in having another publication listing, writing deadlines, connections with Bible software folk and so on.
I agree with Brenda that this is probably more appealing for the sake of connections than for compensation. I’m wondering if the thing will note who contributed the article, so that one could even demonstrate that they wrote it. Compensation in product is crazy. One would think sense they are not giving cash, they would compensate you in something that cost them $200 – without profit margin. When that is taken into consideration, well, you don’t make much at all.
The internet encyclopedia seems to fit this sort of idea already.
“[Q]uestions raised regarding… exploitation of graduate students”.
I’m sorry – what questions could one possibly have regarding that? Isn’t that what they’re for?!?
/tic