Dear all,
I'd like to echo Ken's comments -- due to similar reasoning I also withdrew any association with conference and publisher, not long after Ken did. Additionally, I had a similar experience when I resigned, in that my name kept being listed despite my clear requests to take it off.
Although I agree that CC is not a predatory publisher, it's saddening to see these business models increasingly popping up. Even more saddening is the knowledge that academics are placed under such a pressure to tick resume boxes that they need to consider these options to grow their careers.
I sincerely miss the days when academics were given the space/time/resources to focus on quality output only.
Best Wishes,
Daria
daria loi, phd
principal engineer | ux innovation @ intel
"Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts."
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Wednesday, March 1, 2017 10:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Common Ground Publishers
Dear All,
This is the last note in my discussion of book publishing, journal publishing, and conferences. My thoughts this week began when I answered an off-list question about Common Ground Publishers. Common Ground has an unusual business model, as they work in all three areas — they publish books, they publish journals, and they organize conferences.
The off-list question involved Common Ground as a book publisher. My personal view is that there is no point publishing a book with Common Ground. Common Ground is a legitimate publisher in the sense that they are a real publisher producing actual books. But they do not give books the serious attention that any responsible publisher should give to a book.
Checking their list of design titles, they seem to have a few books by designers, but only one is by a major figure. The new online bookstore aggregates all Common Ground publications, treating single journal articles in the same way that they treat books. If you publish a book with Common Ground, it will essentially be a print-on-demand title competing with several thousand articles in the same field, each available as a spiral-bound offprint and as a .pdf.
The Norwegian Register places Common Ground at level 0 as a book publisher. This means that they are not one of the 3,033 among the world’s publishing firms deemed a responsible or serious publisher of any kind.
https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/Forside
With respect to books, I would suggest that no one should do a book with Common Ground. The question of journals is different, and slightly more nuanced.
Three issues are worth raising. All three have come up in earlier conversations on the list. Because I will answer with respect to one specific publisher, some of what I write here will overlap with my earlier note. The three issues are:
(1) With the increase in online journals, PhD students and researchers ask which journals to publish in. How can people tell a predatory journal from a serious journal?
(2) PhD students and new researchers face the problem of integrating their work with a larger community of scholars. They need good advice. Similar questions involve conferences.
(3) Finally, pay walls and open access are becoming a broad issue. The has been made more interesting in recent years by a “pirate publishing model” that makes paywall protected articles accessible to everyone at this URL:
http://sci-hub.io
With respect to the journals from Common Ground, it is worth noting that Common Ground is not a predatory publisher. Rather, they have developed a dicey business model that manages to mimic some of the attributes of serious publishing without doing the real work of editing journals or managing serious conferences.
As a result, they produce apparently real journals of low quality. Because the quality is low, nearly nothing they publish is cited. The special trick of their business model is to arrange swift conversion from conference paper to journal article while inviting authors to review other papers for a credit as an “associate editor” of the journal. This means three ticks on an author’s CV. Conference participants who become journal reviewers and authors present a conference paper, publish a journal article, and attain an “associate editor” designation, all for the same price. The problem is that none of these credits is meaningful.
There are many ways to determine whether a conference or a journal is serious. It is difficult for PhD students to know them all. Unfortunately, there is also a lack of knowledge among people who should know better. This is one problem that arises from taking a PhD in programs where supervisors and tutors fail to do an effective job.
This note on Common Ground offers my thoughts. It is sobering to realise that a publisher this bad is far from the worst. There is a massive global business in extracting publication fees and conference fees from people who are desperate to present and publish their work.
It is especially sad that good material published by Common Ground will never be cited simply because no one bothers to read Common Ground journals or books. A few years back, I happened to read about a book published by a designer that seemed interesting. I acquired a copy. It is published by Common Ground. When I wrote him about the book, he wrote back to say that I was the only person he had ever heard from who read the book.
I wrote back to him to explain that a publisher like Common Ground has no reason to market books. They publish titles on demand. Their real market is the authors of books that also attend their conferences and otherwise fit into their business model. Authors are the true customers of Common Ground.
Real publishers invest in books. They support editorial offices, print production offices, marketing offices, etc. Since they must make money, they must sell books. They do not publish books they cannot sell because they must sell books to stay in business. This is to an author’s advantage. When a major university press or a trade publisher takes on your book, they will do their best to make sure that people buy it, read it, and talk about it, at least in book reviews.
Common Ground makes no such investment. They make a slight profit from every book they sell because they only produce a book *after* someone buys the book. . They suffer no loss on unsold books because they make no investment in any book they have not already sold. A good book is no different to Common Ground than a mediocre book or a bad book. They are all the same in the Common Ground business model.
Since the author owned the copyright to his book, I suggested that he withdraw it from Common Ground and offer it to a real publisher.
One reason that I question Common Ground is that the owners of this private, closely held company are professors. They know enough about publishing to stay on the edge of respectability. They manage a highly profitable venture with a focus on conferences and publishing. In addition, many company employees are members of their own family. Their prosperous and valuable enterprise serves the members of their own family. They do little for their authors.
Academic publishing is somewhat different to trade publishing. It may seem to junior researchers that publishing is in itself a desirable thing. But publishing is only one issue. Achieving visibility and impact is another.
It is difficult for the authors of articles in serious journals to achieve impact. It is equally difficult for those who publish books with serious presses.
Visibility and impact are next to impossible with predatory publishers, and almost that bad with publishers are are problematic even when they stay just on the right side of predatory publishing. In my view, there is no point in publishing books with Common Ground when there are so many serious publishers looking for books. With at least 3,033 publishers seeking new books, there is no point in publishing with a company that is not good enough to make the list.
For conferences and journals, the answer is slightly different and it requires greater nuance.
The Design Principles and Practices conference cycle is part of the Common Ground Publishing group of books, journals, and conferences. These have been discussed extensively on this list over the past decade.
I see the Common Ground conference cycle as problematic. This is a for-profit conference by a profit-making conference organisation that has little to do with the research field or most of the research fields in which they hold conferences. As a result, nearly no one of any stature participates except for the keynote speakers. This makes the presentations meaningless. No one whom you wish to reach will hear your paper.
The primary purpose of for-profit conferences is to enable people maintain that they are research active for the purpose of university metrics. The sad fact of such conferences is that universities must pay for the conference fees, travel costs, and accommodations of the people they send to conferences that are hosted only for the purpose of representing to one’s university that a speaker is engaged in research that someone wishes to hear. When a company with no connection to the larger discipline makes its living from hosting conferences, they accept every paper that someone will pay to present.
The Design Principles and Practices conference series is linked to the Common Ground journals. There have been two main changes to the journals since my first posts. Instead of the 17 journals that they published with the same two editors, they now publish something like 77 (!) journals. Their pitch is a bit more clever than it once was, and they have added new editors. The same two editors no longer edit every Common Ground journal. The single design journal they once published has grown to become a collection of six journals and a yearbook — seven (7!) publications.
Design Principles & Practices Collection
• International Journal of Design Education • International Journal of Design in Society • International Journal of Designed Objects • International Journal of Visual Design • International Journal of Design Management and Professional Practice • International Journal of Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design • Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal, Annual Review
One can become an “associate editor” of these publications simply by engaging in the peer review process. As when I first posted on this publishers, this means that someone gets three ticks on their metric boxes by 1) submitting a conference paper to the series, 2) sending the same paper to the journal, and 3) reviewing a few other papers for the conference or the journals.
If you visit the web site, you will note that all six journals and the yearbook have the same two editors. Anyone who edits a serious journal knows that editing a single journal takes real work. No one can edit six serious journals and a yearbook. But there is a secret to managing the workload — no one actually does the same kind of work editing these journals that we see at most journals. I’ve never heard of a paper being rejected at a Common Ground conference. All Common Ground conference papers are invited for pass-along journal publication.
http://commongroundpublishing.com/journals/titles
There are several new wrinkles to the Common Ground act. One of these is that the journals now provide editorial services and citation conversion services — for a fee.
How significant is Common Ground? Consider the supposed awards that Common Ground Publisher receives — from its own exhibition marketing organization. A few years back, Common Ground proudly announced that Common Ground Publishing is ranked #15 in the list of top-ranked publishers compiled by the Library of Social Science.
http://researchpark.illinois.edu/news/common-ground-publishing-ranked-number-15-library-social-science’s-annual-list-world’s-top
The Library of Social Science is not a library, and it is not engaged in the social sciences. The Library of Social Science is an exhibitions agency that arranges book fairs and exhibitions at conferences. The publishers it covers on its list are publishers that hire the Library of Social Science to represent their books and journals. This means that publishers pay the Library of Social Science to place their books at a conference book table, and the Library of Social Science uses these fees to buy exhibit space.
Book exhibition agencies perform a useful service. I support the work they do. I simply don’t think that they belong in the awards business — certainly not giving awards to the companies whose books they are paid to market.
https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com
http://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/exhibits/
No other ranking list of book publishers lists Common Ground as #15 among the world’s 3,000 or so serious scientific and scholarly publishers, nor among the thousands of serious journals. The Norwegian Register lists them, but does not rank them at all on level 1 that indicates any serious book publisher or level 2 for 86 leading book publishers. While Design Principles and Practices is listed as a journal, no one at any Norwegian university has bothered to publish in this journal for many years.
Dr. Daria Loi of Intel organized and chaired the first of the Design Principles and Practices conferences. Daria is terrific, and I was happy to participate as a keynote speaker at the first of these conferences. I was also an advisor, but I withdrew when the organization proved impervious to advice. I formed my views on Common Ground based on experience and careful inspection of the way this organisation operates. When I resigned from the journal advisory board, they continued to use my name long after I resigned. The web site does not currently list journal advisers, so I don’t know if I’m still listed as an adviser. I do know that many of the former journal advisers are listed as conference advisers, even though some have tried to resign. None of them seems to have any real engagement with the conference cycle.
To be clear, I support all serious journal publishers, for profit and not-for profit, paywall and open access, as long as they do the work that a research field expects of a serious journal publisher. Such for-profit companies as Elsevier, Bloomsbury, Taylor & Francis, and Routledge publish leading journals in all fields. So do such not-for-profits as The MIT Press, the University of California Press, Oxford University Press and more.
I do not support for-profit conferences unless they have a solid reason for functioning under the umbrella of a profit-making organisation. It has been my observation that not-for-profit organisations, scholarly and scientific organisations, and academic institutions do the real work of serious conferences. It is difficult to run a serious not-for-profit conference at break-even. Any company that needs to make a conference turn a profit must think of something other than value to the field.
Not-for-profit disciplinary and scientific associations sponsor serious conferences. The reason for this is that an academic or scientific association of expert volunteers provides the peer review services and long-term engagement required for a serious conference cycle. Without this support, a top-notch conference is difficult to imagine.
The great problem of for-profit conferences is lack of integration with the larger field. Common Ground conference participants do not generally participate elsewhere, and the journal authors and editors generally do not appear in other venues. Nearly all reviewing is done by the same group of inexperienced people submitting the papers, and their incentive is to be promoted to associate editors of a journal simply for reviewing papers.
The Common Ground journals maintain two problematic practices that lead to poor quality.
First, everyone that reviews an article is listed as an “associate editor” for the volume in which they review. To confuse ad hoc reviewing of articles taken from the conference with editorial activity as an associate editor is questionable. It is difficult to manage a serious, engaged editorial group with several dozen editors and advisers, along with several hundred reviewers. This requires an active editorial office.To manage or properly work with over 200 “associate editors” in a serious way is impossible. Many journals have large editorial boards — service on an editorial board is different to working as an associate editor. All editorial management takes immense time.
Something is amiss in the editorial model of any journal that labels every reviewers as an “associate editor,” let alone a cluster of seven linked journals — or seventy-seven journals from the same publisher, many with parallel editors.
Second, conference participants are encouraged to publish conference papers as journal articles in the same version presented at the conference. Conference papers are a first step to journal articles. To become serious articles, they require a cycle of enrichment, improvement, peer review, and editorial engagement that distinguishes a conference paper from a journal article.
The Common Ground process underwrites a business model that seems to be successful in financial terms. It does not meet the generally accepted standards for academic publishing. It succeeds financially for an obvious reason. For a single conference fee, a participant gets three ticks for the metrics. First, participants harvest a conference presentation, usually in a city that merits a visit in its own right for museums and fine dining. With travel and hotel paid by the participant’s university, the museums and find dining area nearly cost-free. Second, they get a journal article. Third, if they have done the work of reviewing, they are acknowledged as “associate editors,” along with 200 or so colleagues from around the world.
The Common Ground web site advertises the journal as “peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterion-referenced article ranking and qualitative commentary, ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance and highest significance is published.” The editorial and publishing process does not support these claims.
A few years back, the owners of the Common Ground company wrote a fascinating theoretical article in a serious journal describing their views and their critique of academic publishing. If the Common Ground journals and conferences reflected the issues and concerns of the article, I’d have greater confidence. As it is, these conferences and journals do little to advance any field in which they publish.
If Common Ground were to pursue a model of engaged scholarship that genuinely lives up to the promises and claims on the Common Ground Publishing web site, I’d have been happy to remain involved. As it is, I am a skeptic, and I’d encourage people to think twice before participating in a Common Ground conference. I’m even more skeptical about the journals. Every journal study in the design field shows that the Design Principles and Practices collection of journals has little or no impact in the field. Authors should think twice before submitting an article to a journal with no impact.
With the few hours that most of us have for writing, it is important to choose a journal where articles will be of value to the field. To be of value, they must be read. Our field has forty-five design research journals that range from good to outstanding. They are all actively seeking articles. Given the opportunities available to publish in solid journals that have broad readership, there is no point choosing a target journal with no impact.
Our field has many decent book publishers looking actively for books, as well as some spectacular publishers that also seek books in design. These publishers invest in the titles they produce. With 86 top-ranked book publishers and 3,033 book publishers altogether, there is no point in going for a publisher that does not rank among the 3,033.
Finally, we now have several dozen serious organizations creating and presenting conferences on a regular basis. While one can argue against one conference or another, these are serious undertakings by people that invest in making a conference as good as they can make it. With so many organizations working to improve and enrich real conferences, there is no point paying good money to increase the profits of a closely held family company.
That brings me to the end of this series of notes on publishing and presenting your work. I apologize for overlaps in content and occasional repetition. What I hope for is greater attention to these issues in PhD programs and university induction programs. I will be delighted when this information is no longer new to some and valuable to all because every subscriber to PhD-Design already knows it.
Yours,
Ken
--
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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