Academic publishing

[Ghoul]

ovo ZLO je samo delimično potaknuto ovde, ali vredi ukazati i na ono što se ređe čuje, odnosno na mračnu stranu prividno glorioznog akademskog izdavaštva.


Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

An editor called me up to ask me if I'd like to write a book. I smelled a rat, but I played along...

Anonymous academic
Friday 4 September 2015


A few months ago, an editor from an academic publisher got in touch to ask if I was interested in writing a book for them.
I've ignored these requests in the past. I know of too many colleagues who have responded to such invitations, only to see their books disappear on to a university library shelf in a distant corner of the world.
If someone tried to buy said book – I mean, like a real human being – they would have to pay the equivalent of a return ticket to a sunny destination or a month's child benefit. These books start at around £60, but they can cost double that, or even more.
This time, however, I decided to play along.
So I got the editor on the phone and he asked if I had an idea for them. "Sure," I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "Perhaps I could write a book about..." – and here I started piling up ugly-sounding buzzwords.

I could hear how he momentarily drifted off, probably to reply to an email, and when I was done with my terrible pitch, he simply said: "Great!"
"The best thing now," he continued, "is if you could jot down a few pages, as a proposal, which we could then send out to reviewers." He paused a second, then added: "If you have any friends who could act as reviewers and who you think could sign off on the project, then that'd be great."
I was intrigued by the frankness.
"How much would the book be sold for?" I inquired, aware this might not be his favourite question. "£80," he replied in a low voice.
"So there won't be a cheaper paperback edition?" I asked, pretending to sound disappointed.
"No, I'm afraid not," he said, "we only really sell to libraries. But we do have great sales reps that get the books into universities all across the world."
"So how many copies do you usually sell?" I inquired.
"About 300."
"For all your books?"
"Yes, unless you would assign your book on your own modules."
I was growing fascinated by the numbers so I asked how many of these books they published each year.
"I have to..." he started (inadvertently revealing that this was a target that had been set) "...I have to publish around 75 of these."
Seventy-five books, £80 each, selling on average 300 copies. That's £1.8m. And he's just one of their commissioning editors. What's more, these publishers are not known for hiring talented illustrators to come up with nice covers – and you rarely see their books advertised in magazines.
"If you don't mind my asking," I said as our conversation drew to a close, "how did you find me?"
A moment of awkward silence, and then: "Um, well, I found your name on your university website."

At the time, there was no information about me on the university website. No publication list, no information about my research interest, not even a photograph.
So I'd been asked to write a book about whatever I wanted, and this editor didn't even know whether I'd written anything before. It didn't matter. It would sell its 300 copies regardless. Not to people with an interest in reading the book, but to librarians who would put it on a shelf and then, a few years later, probably bury it in a storeroom.
Most academics get these requests. A colleague was recently courted by an editor who, after confessing they only published expensive hardbacks (at around £200), explained that this was an opportunity for my colleague to enhance his academic record. He was told he could give them pretty much anything, like an old report, or some old articles.
"I can't believe anyone would write a book that would be too expensive for anyone to buy," the colleague told me over the phone. "Just to add a line to your cv."
Another colleague, on discovering his published book was getting widespread attention but was too expensive to buy, tried to get the publishers to rush out a cheaper paperback version. They ignored his request.
These may sound like stories of concern to academics alone. But the problem is this: much of the time that goes into writing these books is made possible through taxpayers' money. And who buys these books? Well, university libraries – and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the books are not available for taxpayers to read – unless they have a university library card.
In the US, taxpayers are said to be spending $139bn a year on research, and in the UK, £4.7bn. Too much of that money is disappearing into big pockets.
So what are the alternatives? We could stop publishing these books altogether - which may be advisable in a time of hysterical mass publication. Or we publish only with decent publishers, who believe that books are meant to be read and not simply profited from. And if it's only a matter of making research available, then of course there's open source publishing, which most academics are aware of by now.
So why don't academics simply stay away from the greedy publishers? The only answer I can think of is vanity.


http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep/04/academics-are-being-hoodwinked-into-writing-books-nobody-can-buy

E, JEBI GA!
zvučao si kao pametan momak/cura do ovog zaključka, a onda - uprskao-la-lo-li-le-la. 

vanity ima vrlo malo ili nimalo veze s tim: stvar je prosto da je SISTEM takav, da te gura da objavljuješ na ovakvim mestima, i SAMO na njima (ako želiš bodove, reizbor, napredovanje, veću platu...) i nemaš tu mnogo izbora: recikliraj stare stvari, štancuj koješta, nek ti drugari 'recenziraju', nema veze, samo nek se boduje, samo nek se trpa, to ionako niko neće da čita...

[Father Jape]

Neki s ovim povezani Language Log postovi:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17686

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7584

[scallop]

To vam je kao NOVA POETIKA. Oš' da budeš naučnik, pa plati.

[Mme Chauchat]

Opštepoznati akademski ekvivalent dužničkog ropstva Piše se, pod sve strašnijom prinudom, sve više, uz sve manje kontrole (od uredničke do lektorske), za sve manji broj ljudi.
Komentar na jedan od ovih Džejpovih postova vodi na stariji post koji odlično pokazuje kakvo je izrabljivanje u pitanju:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004809.html

Here's the relevant piece of the email:

Dear Steven Bird and Mark Liberman,

I am delighted to inform you that the 6-volume collection "Corpus Linguistics: Critical Concepts in Linguistics" edited by Wolfgang Teubert and Ramesh Krishnamurthy was published by Routledge in June this year. The publication contains the following article of yours: Steven Bird and Mark Liberman, 'A formal framework for linguistic annotation', Speech Communication, 33, 1-2, 2001, pp. 23-60.

In many cases, Routledge contacted only the previous publishers of the article with regard to copyright permission, and the editors are therefore aware that the authors did not receive any royalties from this. In this connection, the editors would just like to inform you that the original publisher of your article [i.e. Elsevier] received 646 pounds for the article from Routledge.

I guess it's fair enough that Taylor & Francis (who own Routledge) paid Elsevier (who own Speech Communication) rather than paying us, since Elsevier never paid us anything either, following the normal political economy of the scientific publishing industry: academics do the research, writing and editing, funded by universities and government research grants, and the publishing conglomerates hold the copyrights and collect the money. (That's in order to reward creativity and to ensure that the authors will remain motivated to dream up new things in the future, you understand.) To add to the fun, this arrived a few days later:

You will be happy to hear that we have managed to persuade Routledge to offer a discount of 40% to the authors of the articles in the 6-volume collection "Corpus Linguistics: Critical Concepts in Linguistics" edited by Wolfgang Teubert and Ramesh Krishnamurthy. You will need to order the collection through Routledge customer services team. The person to contact is Kerry Tobin at XXX@XXX. You need to state that they you were a contributor to The Corpus Linguistics: Critical Concepts set, and mention Simon Alexander (Senior Development Editor, Major Works) as having authorised the discount.

I believe this means that instead of paying $1,395 for this work, we're entitled to buy it for a mere $837. (Unless, of course, this is an odds ratio type of discount, in which case the price would be $1304.33 ... Before considering the offer further, though, I'll need to find out about taxes and shipping, since I can buy the same work from Amazon for $878.85 with free 2nd-day delivery.

[scallop]

Spoznavši zlo "uvođenjem reda" u objavljivanje naučnih radova rejtingovanjem i indeksom citiranja, pre deset godina sam predložio priji u SAD da napišemo rad koji bi bio komparativna studija efekata rejtinga u sportu, kulturi i nauci na nivo postignuća u njima. Kada sam joj obrazložio osnove za analizu zabezeknula se i izjavila da ona ne sme to da napiše. Pre toga sam, u Beogradu napisao sličan rad sa istim efektom na osobu koja je trebalo da tom radu doda autoritet. Birokratizacija u stvaralaštvu neminovno dovodi do eksploatacije stvaralaca.