COIMBATORE: Two Tamil research scholars from two educational institutions in Coimbatore on Saturday alleged that a scam, similar to that of the purchase of controversial books for the Periyar Arivulagam, had taken place at the Kalaignar Centenary Library (KCL) in Madurai too.
The researchers — Sathishkumar S and Premkumar R — who spoke to the media on the Periyar Arivulagam campus in the city, jointly said, “While going through the books at the KCL, we found that hundreds of English books published by Phoenix Publications were purchased on March 30, March 31, and April 4 in 2022 under the name of Thenmozhi B and registered in the ISBN portal.”
The researchers said that a cross-verification with the ISBN catalogue revealed discrepancies, including differences in the details of the book title and the author, for some of the books published by Phoenix Publications. They said, “For instance, when we checked the ISBN of the book ‘Economics During Pandemic’ in the KCL, the result showed the book title as ‘Differential Calculus’ on the portal. The author’s name was mentioned as Waldo Albert in the book, but the portal showed it as Joseph Edwards. However, the publisher’s name was shown as Thenmozhi B.”
The two said, “It is shocking that many science books from Phoenix Publications were attributed to foreign authors. There were no Indian authors’ names. We confirmed that there is no real author, and these are not genuine books.”
The researchers said, “The prices of many books were also very high, up to `2,200. For instance, a 204-page book titled ‘The Chapter: Public Domain’, related to sociology, was priced at `2,895.” Further, the two have decided to check whether the books contained AI-generated content by analysing one chapter each from 20 books.
Sathishkumar said that Premkumar had informed writer Perumal Murugan, who brought the Coimbatore library issue to light, about the alleged irregularities at the Madurai library. He said the two would submit the data collected to the school education minister.
Further, the research scholar challenged the owner of Agalvilakku Publications to publicly present at least 10 authors who had written books under the imprint.
