Dr John Ebnezar , an Internationally Renowned Author in Orthopedics, floated this new Association for Orthopedic Writers

 

Why such an Association?

1. Unity is strength

2. All the medical writers need to unite under one umbrella

3. There is no such body existing in India and is an urgent need of the hour

4. To encourage doctors to take up writing medical books.

5.  To safe guard the rights and interest of the medical authors

6. Medical publishing is largely an unregulated field with virtually no guidance to the doctors who take up writing.

7. Publication houses have their own rules which is largely in the interests of the publishers and a body like this is required to support the authors

8. To create a forum for the medical authors to voice their opinion and ideas and discuss problems and issues relating to their books

9. To streamline the agreement clauses which is most of the times decided unilaterally by the publishers

10. To have our own news letter and magazine to be circulated among the doctors regarding the books released, sold and also to help market the books of our members.

11. To evolve a system of regulating the books printed, distributed sold in the local, national and international markets.

12. To interact with the respective medical journals and promote the interests of our members

13. To interact with various Medical Universities to help get recognition and recommendations for our members

14. To standardize and bring uniformity in the publishing field

15. Many more such issues to keep the interests of the authors safe

16. To start our own  OAAI publishing house for our authors as most of the publishing houses are run by businessmen who are not professionals and the authors do not get the support and re-numeration they richly deserve

Patrons

 

Dr S M Tuli

Varanasi

 

Dr G S Kulkarni (Ortho)

Miraj

 

Dr Ashok Johari

Mumbai

 

Office bearers

 

Dr John Ebnezar                                                                     

Founder President

 

Dr Hitesh Gopalan

Secretary

 

Dr Sureshwar Pandey

(Ortho), Patna

 

Dr. Atul Bhaskar (Ortho)

Mumbai

 

Dr Lalit Maini

Delhi

 

Dr Parag Sancheti

Pune

 

Minutes of Orthopaedic Author’s Society: first meeting held at IOACON 2010, jaipur

• Dr John Ebenezer: introduced the concept of Author’s club and explained its aims and objectives. He said that such a club is the “need of the hour”.

• Dr S. Rajasekharan: suggested importance of chapter writing, the need for copy editors since there is wide variation among style of writing among authors.  He also suggested the need to identify professional writers. He also stated that for his Ganga Hospital video atlas, Jaypee Brothers has not paid any royalty in the last 2 years since its release

• Dr Lalit Maini: suggested that it is the publisher who usually fixes a particular topic and the publisher tries to negotiate with the author. For example, he was asked to write an MCQ book, when  his interest was in writing on acetabular fractures

Also, said that none of the publishers pay proper royalty

• Dr John emphasized that we need to look into the Publisher’s contract and read it clearly before going ahead and signing it. The agreement laws are purely favoring the publishers and take away all rights of the authors. He stated that there should be a change in the agreement clauses, which was uniformly accepted

• There was also a suggestion that the Publishers should be called for our meetings and all the issues should be discussed with them in our meetings and an explanation sought

• Dr Hitesh Gopalan and Dr Ebenezer suggested the need for IOA to have its own publication house, similar to the AAOS

• The house emphasized the need for a stall or a table for display of books written by Orthopaedic Authors from India at every IOACON and this resolution needs to be passed at the executive committee of IOA.

• It was uniformly decided that Dr John Ebenezer would serve as President, Dr Lalit Maini as Secretary and Dr Hitesh Gopalan as Joint Secretary