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PHD-DESIGN  October 2013

PHD-DESIGN October 2013

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Subject:

Re: Avoid Lambert Academic Publishing and Verlag Dr Mueller

From:

Terence Love <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 15:16:53 +0800

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Parts/Attachments

text/plain (171 lines)

Hi Ken,
I'll reiterate.
1. Profitable publishing that can afford the usual editor time (an editor
doing around 8 books a year or less) is restricted to mass public sales.
2. Academic publishers get by economically with a combination of high retail
prices and guaranteed sales to courses with large numbers of students(i.e.
books published as confirmed course texts ).
3. Increasingly, the main roles of reviewers of academic books is to
evaluate the likelihood that there will be a strong economic market for the
book being reviewed. 
4. The criteria for academic  books to be economically successful in an
undergraduate market in which curricula were set some time ago frequently
conflict with the idea of books having value because they publish cutting
edge new knowledge.
5. Change is happening faster. The window of value of new knowledge is
smaller and more tightly defined. The lifetime of sales value of a book with
good quality new knowledge occurs both sooner and for less time than in
years past.
6. Book prices are being driven down in customer expectations.  In the
proportions of  book economics this cuts the proportion  of income available
for editorial support. 
7. Distribution is required more globally to achieve necessary sales
numbers. This has its own costs and time constraints.
8. Changes in knowledge consumption towards modular mix and match chunks
smaller than conveniently presented in book format  and with need for
interconnection with other sources..
8. Strong competition from alternative channels, particularly free online
sources (e.g.  Researchgate, Academia, Google Scholar etc)

The consequences of the above create a perfect storm for classic
editor-based academic publishing of quality new knowledge:  less time for
editing, less profit, driven by marketability and ease of teaching rather
than knowledge quality,  inappropriate format, less money available for
editing, pressure on going to press sooner, smaller sales window, increased
competition.

Second, it results in academic publishing being a poor proxy of quality of
knowledge or reported research.

The same scenario is also increasingly evident  in academic journal
publishing. It seen for example in criteria given to reviewers that try to
elicit market information about whether enough other people  would be
interested in reading (and hence paying for reading)  an article.

The  above publishing factors act ON researchers and universities, rather
than researchers shaping publishing decisions. 

I suggest the  implication is the status quo on the valuation of the role of
book and journal publishing is in significant transition. Historical
academic viewpoints about the importance of publishing that might have been
valid only a few years ago are fast becoming irrelevant.

Best regards ,
Terry

---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI

Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask] 
--





-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Thursday, 31 October 2013 1:31 PM
To: Colleague
Subject: Re: Avoid Lambert Academic Publishing and Verlag Dr Mueller

Dear Terry,

Whatever else may be true of VDM and LAP, their practice with respect to PhD
theses is predatory. There is something wrong with any publisher offering to
publish a book sight unseen.

Your views on the publishing industry are inaccurate with respect to
academic and scientific publishing. None of the nearly 90 academic,
scientific, or scholarly presses in the list I posted produces airport
books. One or two have had surprise best sellers that got to the airport
bookstore market through a secondary paperback publisher. But let's be
serious - when is the last time you saw a book from Edinburgh, Oxford, Brill
or Duckworth next to John Grisham in an airport?

Outside the 90 top research publishers, there are many more good publishers
who produce carefully selected, well edited books. These will not become
best sellers. They will do well for authors willing to revise a PhD thesis
into a serious book. While VDM may publish a few serious books, these are
invisible. The companies in the VDM group release over 50,000 titles a month
- 600,000 titles a year. There is no way that a  company of that size can
pay attention to the content of each titles. They bury occasional good
titles in a pile of dross, and they do not market any of their books
effectively.

You may believe that everything is changing - and you may even be right. One
of the changes, however, is the problem of information overload, and people
need a reason to order one of the estimated 2,000,000 or so new books
published every year. (I don't know whether this estimate includes those
600,000 VDM titles.)

An author needs a respectable publisher to influence positive university
decisions for hiring and promotion. Many universities look on LAP and VDM as
predatory publishers. Even the decision to publish with VDM or LAP works
against an author. It suggests that an author lacks proper judgment. It also
suggests that he or she lacks the ability to publish with a serious press,
not even one of the many small but serious publishers who release those
2,000,000 or so titles a year. Universities do not make decisions based on
airport books or a distribution deal with one of the global big six. What
they look for is a serious book produced by any responsible book publisher
with proper editing and production. That is not the VDM model.

There are differences of opinion on all matters involving university life
and research. As a result, there must be those who agree with your gloomy
opinion of Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago, MIT, California, Edinburgh, Brill,
Harvard, Bloomsbury Academic, Blackwell and the other publishers on the
Norwegian list of top research publishers.  Such a list of what you describe
as "previously prestigious publishers" may be a "a tool of conservatism to
attempt to keep things the way they were." For my part, I don't see Oxford
or MIT as "previously" prestigious. They are still prestigious publishers in
my view, and I remain interested in the books they publish.

Given my choice, I would rather publish with a press such as Chicago or
Cambridge than with a publisher such as VDM. Economics does play a role, so
this requires writing a book that will attract enough readers to justify the
investment needed for a properly edited book. It doesn't require airport
sales or a film option.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor |
Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia |
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830
462 | Home Page
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<h
ttp://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>    Academia Page
http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page
http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
Shanghai, China



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