International Journal for Religious Freedom (IJRF)

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

International Journal for Religious Freedom (IJRF) International Journal for Religious Freedom (IJRF) Journal of the International Institute for Religious Freedom IJRF is the journal of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF). It is published bi-annually and aims to provide a platform for scholarly discourse on the issue of religious freedom in general and the persecution of Christians in particular. It is an interdisciplinary, international, peer reviewed, scholarly journal, serving the practical interests of religious freedom and contains research articles, documentation, book reviews and academic news on the issue. The editors welcome the submission of any item that could contribute to the journal. Manuscripts submitted for publication are assessed by a panel of referees and the decision to publish is dependent on these referees' reports. IJRF is freely available on the web a few weeks after publication: www.iirf.eu Editorial Committee Editors Prof Dr Thomas Schirrmacher (TS) Dr Christof Sauer (CS) Executive Editor Drs Mirjam Scarborough (MS) International Advisory Board of the IIRF Prof Dr Dr John Montgomery (France) Dr Patson Netha (Zimbabwe) Dr Janet Epp Buckingham (Canada) Prof Dr Glenn Penner (Canada) Prof Dr Ken Gnanakan (India) Prof Dr Bernhard JG Reitsma (Netherlands) Prof Dr Thomas Johnson (Czech Republic) Prof Dr Christine Schirrmacher (Germany) Max Klingberg (Germany) Pierre Tschanz (Switzerland) Drs Behnan Konutgan (Turkey) Anneta Vyssotskaia (Russia) Ihsan Yinal Oezbek (Turkey) Godfrey Yogarajah (Sri Lanka) Dr Paul Marshall (USA) Yoshiaki Yui (Japan) IJRF address Subscriptions Bank details IJRF Annual subscription fee for 2 issues: International Institute for P.O. Box 746 South African Rand 200 (~ 20 EUR) Religious Freedom Cape Town Sea Point, 8060 VAT and postage included Bank Standard Bank Rep South Africa See subscription form in the back. Branch Sea Point Tel +27-21 439 32 09 Branch Code 02 41 09 Fax +27-21 433 14 55 For international payments or Account Number 071 117 431 [email protected] donations use: www.givengain.com SWIFT Code SBZAZAJJ International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) of the World Evangelical Alliance Friedrichstr. 38 PO Box 535 32, Ebenezer Place 2nd Floor Edgemead 7407 Dehiwela 53111 Bonn Cape Town (Colombo) Germany South Africa Sri Lanka www.iirf.eu [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] International Journal for Religious Freedom Volume 1, Issue 1, 2008 ISSN 2070-5484 Articles and opinions published in IJRF do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or of IIRF. © Copyright 2008 is with the individual authors or bodies mentioned in the respective items. Printed with permission. Cover art: Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan as enacted by the Mafa people, a north Cameroun ethnic group, and painted by an anonymous French artist. This is part of a coherent set of pictures illustrating 62 scenes of the New Testament. Reproduction with kind permission by the association Vie de Jesus Mafa (Life of Jesus Mafa). All rights reserved. Vie de Jésus MAFA, 24 rue du Maréchal Joffre, 78000 Versailles, France, www.jesusmafa.com. Contents International Journal for Religious Freedom Volume 1, Issue 1, 2008 ISSN 2070-5484 Editorial ................................................................................................. 5 Introducing the International Institute for Religious Freedom ............. 11 In my Opinion Defending religious freedom of Christians benefits all Thomas Schirrmacher ........................................................................... 13 Academic Articles Researching persecution and martyrdom: Part 1. The external perspective Christof Sauer ....................................................................................... 26 A biblical theology of persecution and discipleship: Part 1. The Pentateuch Glenn Penner ........................................................................................ 49 Towards redefining persecution Charles L Tieszen .................................................................................. 67 Research in Progress The impact of persecution upon the Igreja Evangelica Congregacional in Angola 1950-1974 Asaf CN Augusto ................................................................................... 81 Case Study Disinformation, discrimination, destruction and growth Godfrey Yogarajah ................................................................................ 85 Sri Lanka religious freedom profile ...................................................... 95 Religious liberty on the web portal of a national evangelical alliance .................................................................................................. 100 Documentation Religious Liberty Trends 2007-2008 Elizabeth Kendal ................................................................................... 111 Guidelines on reporting for publicity and advocacy ............................. 124 Noteworthy ......................................................................................... 135 Call for submissions and instructions to contributors ........................... 152 Subscriptions ......................................................................................... 155 To the participants of the World Evangelical Fellowship General Assembly, October 25-30, 2008 The team of the International Institute for Religious Freedom gives you greetings and hopes to meet you at our exhibition stand. Our mission is to strengthen all efforts for religious freedom through research and publications. We particularly support the WEA Religious Liberty Commission and National Evangelical Alliances. We hope that you will find the International Journal for Religious Freedom helpful. Please advertise it in your context to academics, leaders and politicians as you deem appropriate. The IJRF is freely available online at www.iirf.eu. For religious freedom Prof Dr Thomas Schirrmacher Director Editorial Introducing the International Journal for Religious Freedom The International Journal for Religious Freedom (IJRF) is dedicated to the scholarly discourse on the issue of religious freedom in general and the persecution of Christians in particular. It is an interdisciplinary, international, peer reviewed, scholarly journal, serving the practical interests of religious freedom and contains research articles, documentation, book reviews and academic news on the issue. Religious freedom is understood as the freedom to exercise any or no religion as defined by the relevant declarations of the United Nations. From a human rights perspective, restrictions of religious freedom and religious persecution are understood as denying anyone the rights connected with practising one's religion, and the denying of rights because of the religious beliefs of those who are persecuted and/or those who persecute. The right to religious freedom is indivisible and cannot be claimed for one particular group only at the exclusion of others. In this sense, this journal is dedicated to religious freedom in general. Owing to the fact that Christians are the largest single group persecuted globally – an estimated 75% of those persecuted for their religious beliefs – and that the editors are themselves Christians, this journal has a particular interest in the religious freedom of Christians. This adds a theological and pastoral perspective to various other disciplines such as law, politics, philosophy and sociology from which religious freedom can be examined in a scholarly way. This journal, therefore, is interdisciplinary and scholarly, serving the practical interests of religious freedom. Before acceptance into this journal, all academic contributions undergo scholarly peer review according to the criteria acceptable in academia worldwide. Original contributions are accepted from all academic disciplines. Non- academic pieces are welcome if they are well substantiated and have verifiable sources. These are not necessarily peer reviewed. As this journal is international, expect to find original contributions from authors who might also be supplying first-hand news material and documentation to advocacy agencies concerned with religious freedom. We aim to include contributions from around the globe and to avoid bias and parochialism. We therefore hope to include 6 IJRF Vol 1:1 2008 more contributions from the majority world and from women authors in future issues than is the case in this one. The IJRF is also international in the sense that it tries to supply an international readership with the best contributions on religious freedom published elsewhere. So there will be the occasional reprints and lots of referrals to noteworthy material, and, hopefully, an increasing number of book reviews. The IJRF is the journal of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) of the World Evangelical Alliance. The IIRF has bureaus in Bonn, Cape Town and Colombo. The World Evangelical Alliance represents a constituency of around 420 million Christians. On their behalf the IIRF also keeps close contact with the World Council of Churches and the Vatican regarding religious freedom issues. The directors of the IIRF are at the same time the editors of the International Journal for Religious Freedom. Prof Dr Thomas Schirrmacher lives in Bonn, Germany, and is also the director of Martin Bucer Seminary. Dr Christof Sauer lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and is associated with the University of South Africa. Both are introduced in more detail in their contributions to this issue. The International Academic
Recommended publications
  • Jurnal Kajian Wilayah 10 No 2 (2019) 1-20 JURNAL KAJIAN WILAYAH P-ISSN: 2087-2119 E-ISSN: 2502-566X
    Jurnal Kajian Wilayah 10 No 2 (2019) 1-20 JURNAL KAJIAN WILAYAH p-ISSN: 2087-2119 e-ISSN: 2502-566x ISU ‘KETUANAN MELAYU’ DI MALAYSIA1 THE PROBLEM OF ‘KETUANAN MELAYU’ IN MALAYSIA Amri Marzali Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengembangan Sosial Politik Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik Universitas Indonesia e-mail: [email protected] Diterima: 20-5-2019 Direvisi: 26-10-2019 Disetujui: 26-10-2019 ABSTRACT ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ is a conception of Malay political hegemony in Malaysia. The terminology was was originally aimed at countering negative propaganda proposed by the Malaysian Indian and the Malaysian Chinese, who accused that the special socio-political privileges given to the indigenous Malaysian peoples in the Malaysia’s Constitution and the affirmative New Economic Policy of 1971 have been a severe strategy to condemn the Indian and the Chinese Malaysians. On the other hand, the Malays in Malaysia traced the idea of Malay political hegemony from the political situation in the period of Malay kingdom of Melaka in the 15th century. In this article, I proposed that what is now called Malay political hegemony could be compared to what was called beschikkingsrecht in Dutch language, in the colonial period of Indonesia. This terminology referred to the sovereignty of the native peoples in Malay Archipelago over their land and political state. Lastly I find debate on the Malay political hegemony in Malaysia recently, whether between the natives versus the immigrants, or between the ruling Malays versus the opposition Malays, are pertaining with 6 articles in the Constitution and Act of Malaysian Armforce of 1972. This set of rules is knownly called Wasiat Raja-raja Melayu (The Wasiat of the Malay Sultans).
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Peer Review?
    What is Peer Review? Scholarly peer review is the process of evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field. The process is designed to ensure that academic publications make substantial contributions to the state of knowledge about a subject and meet minimum standards of reliability. Fundamentals Is it worth it to do the extra work to find peer reviewed sources? When researching, it is important to look at articles recently published in top tier peer Keep in Mind reviewed or refereed journals to understand the current issues and developments of a Many scholarly journals only peer review original topic. research. The standards of peer review for editorials, literature review/survey articles, and How can I tell if an article is peer book reviews may be less stringent (or non- reviewed? existent) even if they are published in refereed Follow these steps: journals. • Check the UlrichsWeb database for the journal (is it refereed, is the content type listed as academic/scholarly). • If the journal is not in UlrichsWeb, try googling it. On the publisher’s website, look for the About page or submission guidelines. These pages will usually explicitly say whether a journal is peer reviewed or refereed and often will describe the process. The Process What is “blind” peer review? Usually the refereeing process involves what is called “blind” peer review. This is when the reviewers do not know who wrote the article they are reviewing. This encourages reviewers to evaluate the sources according to the norms of their community rather than the reputation of the author.
    [Show full text]
  • How Frequently Are Articles in Predatory Open Access Journals Cited
    publications Article How Frequently Are Articles in Predatory Open Access Journals Cited Bo-Christer Björk 1,*, Sari Kanto-Karvonen 2 and J. Tuomas Harviainen 2 1 Hanken School of Economics, P.O. Box 479, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland 2 Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media, Tampere University, FI-33014 Tampere, Finland; Sari.Kanto@ilmarinen.fi (S.K.-K.); tuomas.harviainen@tuni.fi (J.T.H.) * Correspondence: bo-christer.bjork@hanken.fi Received: 19 February 2020; Accepted: 24 March 2020; Published: 26 March 2020 Abstract: Predatory journals are Open Access journals of highly questionable scientific quality. Such journals pretend to use peer review for quality assurance, and spam academics with requests for submissions, in order to collect author payments. In recent years predatory journals have received a lot of negative media. While much has been said about the harm that such journals cause to academic publishing in general, an overlooked aspect is how much articles in such journals are actually read and in particular cited, that is if they have any significant impact on the research in their fields. Other studies have already demonstrated that only some of the articles in predatory journals contain faulty and directly harmful results, while a lot of the articles present mediocre and poorly reported studies. We studied citation statistics over a five-year period in Google Scholar for 250 random articles published in such journals in 2014 and found an average of 2.6 citations per article, and that 56% of the articles had no citations at all. For comparison, a random sample of articles published in the approximately 25,000 peer reviewed journals included in the Scopus index had an average of 18, 1 citations in the same period with only 9% receiving no citations.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Review Papers 2 3 for Academic Meta-Jokes
    How to Review Papers 2 3 For academic meta-jokes: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reviewer2/ 4 “How not to be Reviewer #2 (https://amlbrown.com/2015/11/10/how-not-to-be-reviewer-2/)” - Ashley Brown, U. of Utaha Who is the Reviewer #2? ✘ “Literally, Reviewer 2 is the anonymised moniker given to the second peer to review a research paper. In common parlance, Reviewer 2 can be summarised as possessing the following qualities: ○ Grumpy, aggressive ○ Vague, unhelpful, inflexible ○ Overbearingly committed to a pet discipline ○ Overly focused on a particular methodology ○ Unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt ○ Unwilling to view the authors of a submitted paper as peers” 5 6 What is peer review? ✘ Evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (=peers) – Wikipedia ✘ Scholarly peer review helps editors and program chairs to decide whether to publish/accept specific work ✘ Reviewers work for free (also editors and chairs) – perhaps the weirdest part of any academic’s job to laymen’s eyes ✘ It has appeared 300 years ago (Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society, editor Henry Oldenburg 1618-1677) 7 Why should we do peer review? ✘ Ensures and even improves the quality, value, and integrity of scientific communication ✘ Only the experts in the same domain can provide sufficiently detailed yet impartial opinions ✘ If you do not care about quality of other’s work, eventually everyone will stop caring about your work as well 8 Why should we do peer review? ✘ Scientific ideals aside, certain events just
    [Show full text]
  • Framing Interethnic Conflict in Malaysia: a Comparative Analysis of Newspaper Coverage on the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf)
    International Journal of Communication 6 (2012), 166–189 1932–8036/20120166 Framing Interethnic Conflict in Malaysia: A Comparative Analysis of Newspaper Coverage on the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) LAI FONG YANG Taylor's University Malaysia MD SIDIN AHMAD ISHAK University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur Despite repeated warnings from the Malaysian government, the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) rally drew thousands of Indians protesting on the streets of Kuala Lumpur on November 25, 2007. Mistreatment of Indians and lack of press coverage of their plight had been commonplace for years. By employing framing as the theoretical framework and content analysis as the research method, this study examines what perspectives newspapers have created that influence citizens’ understanding of the Hindraf movement. Three mainstream newspapers were found to focus on the conflict frame, and their representation of Hindraf articulated a hegemonic discourse that was prejudicial to the interests of the group and contrary to a spirit of democratic inquiry. The dissimilar coverage of the same issue by the alternative newspaper denoted that publication’s varied points of view, which were rooted in different political beliefs, cultural assumptions and institutional practices. Introduction Since gaining independence in 1957, the Malaysian government has viewed interethnic relations as a real challenge to the social stability of the country (Abdul Rahman, 2000; Baharuddin, 2005; Brown, 1994). As early as 1970, Mahathir Mohamad, who was then a medical doctor and later became the fourth and longest-serving prime minister of Malaysia, claimed that there was never true racial harmony in Malaysia. In his much-debated and once-banned book, The Malay Dilemma, he argued that although there was a certain amount of tolerance and accommodation, racial harmony in Malaysia was neither real nor Lai Fong Yang: [email protected] Md Sidin Ahmadd Ishak: [email protected] Date submitted: 2011–06–03 Copyright © 2012 (Lai Fong Yang & Md Sidin Ahmad Ishak).
    [Show full text]
  • A History and Development of Peer-Review Process
    Annals of Library and Information Studies Vol. 66, December 2019, pp. 152-162 A history and development of peer-review process Siladitya Jana Assistant Librarian, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, Mohanpur 741 246, India, Email: [email protected] Received: 24 July 2019; accepted 28 November 2019 The paper shows the importance of peer review process in the scholarly communication system and discusses both the closed and the newly emerging open peer review models. It also examines the peer review system at the scholarly academies or societies in their nomination systems for prizes, rewards, etc. It also discusses the various facets of the newly developed open peer review models now prevalent in various journals. The paper may help to understand and appreciate the role played by peer review in the scholarly communication system and the efforts being made to make it more transparent. Keywords : Double-blind peer review; Open access; Open peer review; Peer review; Scholarly communication; Single-blind peer review Introduction learned organisations to publish any material submitted by its members, etc. These factors resulted Peer review is the quality control mechanism in the in the uneven growth of peer review as a means of entire ecology of the scholarly communication 3 system. International Committee of Medical Journal controlling the quality of the publishable materials . Recent reports of peer review fraud also raise Editors (ICMJE) defines peer review as the critical 4,5,6 assessment of manuscripts submitted to journals by concerns about its efficacy and future . 1 experts who are usually not part of the editorial staff .
    [Show full text]
  • Gender Bias in Research Teams and the Underrepresentation of Women in Science 2 Roslyn Dakin1* and T
    bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/741694; this version posted August 24, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Gender bias in research teams and the underrepresentation of women in science 2 Roslyn Dakin1* and T. Brandt Ryder2,3 4 1 Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada 6 2 Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80525, USA 3 Migratory Bird Center, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park, 8 Washington, DC 20013, USA 10 * Correspondence to: [email protected] 12 Abstract Why are females still underrepresented in science? The social factors that affect career choices 14 and trajectories are thought to be important but are poorly understood. We analyzed author gender in a sample of >61,000 scientific articles in the biological sciences to evaluate the factors 16 that shape the formation of research teams. We find that authorship teams are more gender- assorted than expected by chance, with excess homotypic assortment accounting for up to 7% of 18 published articles. One possible mechanism that could explain gender assortment and broader patterns of female representation is that women may focus on different research topics than men 20 (i.e., the “topic preference” hypothesis). An alternative hypothesis is that researchers may consciously or unconsciously prefer to work within same-gender teams (the “gender homophily” 22 hypothesis). Using network analysis, we find no evidence to support the topic preference hypothesis, because the topics of female-authored articles are no more similar to each other than 24 expected within the broader research landscape.
    [Show full text]
  • Download/Articles
    The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Summer 2013 The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Summer 2013 iafor The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film Volume 1 – Issue 1 – Summer 2013 The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film Volume 1 - Issue 1 - Summer 2013 IAFOR Publications Executive Editor: Joseph Haldane The International Academic Forum The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film Editor: James Rowlins, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore Associate Editor: George Radics, National University of Singapore, Singapore Assistant Editors Anna Krivoruchko, University of Southern California, USA Lucille Toth Colombie, University of Southern California/EHESS, USA Advisory Editor Jecheol Park, National University of Singapore, Singapore Editorial Board Murat Akser, Kadir Has University, Turkey Mustafa Kamal Anuar, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia H. Esra Arcan, Instanbul University, Turkey Vicki Callahan, USC School of Cinematic Arts, USA Yann Descamps, Université Paris XII, France Eftihia Mihelakis, University of Montreal, Canada Linda Mokdad, University of Iowa, USA Panivong Norindr, USC Dornsife School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, USA Dahlia Petrus, University of Michigan, USA Nilanjan Raghunath, SUTD, Singapore Olivier Roland, University of Southern California, USA Ayako Saito, Meijigakuin University, Japan Kevin Smets, University of Antwerp, Belgium Chuan Yean Soon, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia Published by The International
    [Show full text]
  • American Hindu Activism and the Politics of Anxiety Arun Chaudhuri
    American Hindu Activism and the Politics of Anxiety Arun Chaudhuri A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Anthropology York University Toronto, Ontario September 2012 © Arun Chaudhuri, 2012 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92758-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92758-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation.
    [Show full text]
  • State of Theworld's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009
    Education special minority rights group international State of theWorld’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009 Events of 2008 State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009 Acknowledgements Minority Rights Group International Minority Rights Group International (MRG) 54 Commercial Street, London, E1 6LT, United gratefully acknowledges the support of all organizations Kingdom. Tel +44 (0)20 7422 4200, Fax +44 (0)20 and individuals who gave financial and other assistance 7422 4201, Email [email protected] to this publication, including UNICEF and the Website www.minorityrights.org European Commission. Getting involved Minority Rights Group International MRG relies on the generous support of institutions Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a and individuals to further our work. All donations non-governmental organization (NGO) working to received contribute directly to our projects with secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples. minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide, One valuable way to support us is to subscribe and to promote cooperation and understanding to our report series. Subscribers receive regular between communities. Our activities are focused MRG reports and our annual review. We also on international advocacy, training, publishing and have over 100 titles which can be purchased outreach. We are guided by the needs expressed by from our publications catalogue. In addition, our worldwide partner network of organizations MRG publications are available to minority and which represent minority and indigenous peoples. indigenous peoples’ organizations through our MRG works with over 150 organizations in library scheme. nearly 50 countries. Our governing Council, which MRG’s unique publications provide well- meets twice a year, has members from 10 different researched, accurate and impartial information on State of countries.
    [Show full text]
  • A New Method and Metric to Evaluate the Peer Review Process of Scholarly Journals
    Pub Res Q (2014) 30:23–38 DOI 10.1007/s12109-013-9339-y A New Method and Metric to Evaluate the Peer Review Process of Scholarly Journals Adam Etkin Published online: 6 December 2013 Ó The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract This paper will propose a new system that produces a metric that is an indicator of the level of peer review conducted prior to the publication of scholarly material. A mathematical algorithm which incorporates weighted values of the roles within the peer review process is created. The h-index, which is a value that ‘‘measures the productivity and impact of a scientist or scholar,’’ is also incorporated. Each round of review is weighted using the square root as later rounds of peer review are often less rigorous than earlier rounds. Once a paper is accepted the calculation is conducted and a ‘‘peer review evaluation’’ metric, or ‘‘Peer Review Evaluation Score’’ (pre-SCORE) is available. It is clear that such a metric would prove beneficial to all engaged parties (authors, publishers, readers, libraries). Authors will know that their work is being evaluated by a trustworthy publication and by experts in their field. Legitimate, ethical publishers will be recognized as such. Readers would have the ability to filter out material which was not properly vetted, and libraries/consortia would have further assurance that their limited funds are spent wisely. Future studies to see if there is a correlation between the pre-SCORE and Impact Factor or highly cited material is possible.
    [Show full text]
  • A Survey of Human Rights 2008
    HINDUS IN SOUTH ASIA AND THE DIASPORA: A Survey of Human Rights 2008 HINDU AMERICAN FOUNDATION Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2008 www.HAFsite.org March 13, 2009 “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 1) “Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety” (Edmund Burke, February 17, 1788) Endorsements of Hindu American Foundation's 4th Annual Report “Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2007” All of us share common values: a respect for other people, their cultures and the beliefs that they hold. But as this report demonstrates, there are still too many instances where that respect is violated and people’s rights are horribly abused. The Hindu American Foundation has done a great service by bringing these human rights abuses to light. Working together, I believe we can deliver the basic freedoms every person is due. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) I commend the Hindu American Foundation on its report, "Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2007." This report importantly documents the plight of persecuted Hindus throughout South Asia. As the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, I have seen how the growth of radical Islam impacts the well-being of the Hindu population. Reports like this are important in documenting these human rights abuses. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) As the world increasingly becomes a global village, it is important to monitor, acknowledge and work towards promoting freedom of speech and conscience for all.
    [Show full text]