Publish or perish at your peril

Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

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.

He or she makes some excellent points about how tax dollars are being used for research that is being output in short runs of books no one but universities can buy. The publish or perish model of things really needs to be rethought (especially because while research is important, so are competent academic teachers). And don't even get me started on predatory publishers taking advantage of the publish or perish model in the open access world, either. Thanks to Vanessa Irvin for the link.

Did you see this?

Who's Afraid of Peer Review?

A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.

On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

Not that open access itself is necessarily the problem; you can still have academic rigour with this model:

The rejections tell a story of their own. Some open-access journals that have been criticized for poor quality control provided the most rigorous peer review of all. For example, the flagship journal of the Public Library of Science, PLOS ONE, was the only journal that called attention to the paper's potential ethical problems, such as its lack of documentation about the treatment of animals used to generate cells for the experiment. The journal meticulously checked with the fictional authors that this and other prerequisites of a proper scientific study were met before sending it out for review. PLOS ONE rejected the paper 2 weeks later on the basis of its scientific quality.

But this does expose the flaws in a system where the OA has been milked as a lucrative pay-to-publish model that essentially acts as a vanity press charging often exorbitant author's fees in exchange for one's name in print, preying especially on academics under pressure to publish to attain tenure, etc.

Yay!

I got my book review finished and submitted. It really came together this morning (I really must come to terms with the fact that despite being a night owl for most of my life, due to the diabetes and post-lunch slump, my best work really is done in the mornings these days). I learned a lot about the subject matter, so that's a plus. And it's always nice because you get to keep the book. I got a notice the other day that another book review I had done for another journal was accepted for publication. I have four published, that makes five accepted, and another submitted. I am becoming the book review queen. Also, I agreed to be a library selector/reviewer for Doody's for the seventh year running. :) I haven't done anything really research-oriented, but I've done some writing/publishing as I can:

Broadbent, LK, 1986 Checklist of Kentucky State Publications. Frankfort, Ky.: KDLA, 1992 (under former name).
Rowan, EE. Providing Library Services in a Unique Pediatric Orthopaedic Setting: Experiences at the Shriners Hospitals for Children. Journal of Hospital Librarianship. 5(2). 2005, pp. 65-72.
Rowan, E. Library Selector. Doody’s Core Titles in the Health Sciences 2006. Doody Enterprises, Inc., 2006 through 2012. [Orthopedics]
Rowan, E. Medical Librarian, Pediatric Hospital Library. A Day in the Life. Ed. Priscilla K. Shontz and Richard A. Murray. Libraries Unlimited, 2007.
Rowan, EE. 'Caring for Patients From Different Cultures, 4th edition Geri-Ann Galanti', Journal of Hospital Librarianship. 10(2), 2010, pp. 205-206.
Rowan, EE. 'Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan on a Shoestring by Emily Knox', Journal of Hospital Librarianship. 10(4), 2010, pp. 420-421.
Rowan, EE. 'The Accidental Health Sciences Librarian by Lisa A. Ennis and Nicole Mitchell', Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 11(2), 2011, pp. 204-205.
Rowan, E. Orthopedics. The Medical Library Association's Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences. Ed. Laurie L. Thompson. Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2011.
Rowan, E. Orthopedic Nursing. The Medical Library Association's Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences. Ed. Laurie L. Thompson. Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2011.
Rowan, EE. ‘Effective Blogging for Libraries by Connie Crosby’, Journal of the Medical Library Association. 99(4), 2011, pp. 321-322.

I still have some time before I go out with friends to see Beautiful Creatures out at the Fayette Mall Cinemark (for which I have a free ticket courtesy of our employee appreciation gifts). Then we're going to go to Cheddar's, which believe it or not, I haven't been to. Now, I say 'we'. Actually, they're on a post-Valentine's date and I'm the ride, so I'll probably be sitting separately at the movie and possibly the dinner. But, hey, I have my phone, tablet, and Kindle with me. (Ooh, plus my camera--maybe I can get a nice picture of them together; the last one I have is from Yule of 2001. And I have photo paper for my printer.)

It's sunny, although cold, but very pretty outside. I went out to the car after taking my shower and getting dressed to get the package of toilet paper that's been sitting in my trunk. The sky is clear and beautiful.

I have about an hour and a half before I need to go over there. Not sure what to do with my time. I should do some actual cleaning around here, but I don't want to get into it and then have to leave. I have already allotted some time to really give the apartment a good straightening up and cleaning coming up. And I don't know, I might be able to do something this evening. I don't have to do the game notes (I've already finished them, and put them where I can access them later), so that's a plus. Hopefully today will be relaxing. Tomorrow should be the game, and possibly a grocery run.

Two links shared by Vanessa Irvin Morris, a fellow librarian

Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Show

The publishing industry has expanded in the past three years as Americans increasingly turned to e-books and juvenile and adult fiction, according to a new survey of thousands of publishers, retailers and distributors that challenges the doom and gloom that tends to dominate discussions of the industry’s health.

What People Don't Get About Working in a Library

Thanks for the info! :) Check out her website.

A look at Barnes & Noble in the age of e-books

Quick Change in Strategy for a Bookseller

For readers, e-books have meant a transformation not just of the reading experience, but of the book-buying tradition of strolling aisles, perusing covers and being able to hold books in their hands. Many publishers have been astounded by the pace of the e-book popularity and the threat to print book sales that it represents. If the number of brick-and-mortar stores drops, publishers fear that sales will go along with it. Some worry that large bookstores will go the way of the record stores that shut down when the music business went digital.

“The shift from the physical to the digital book can pick up some of the economic slack, but it can’t pick up the loss that is created when you don’t have the customers browsing the displays,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “We need people going into stores and seeing a book they didn’t know existed and buying it.”

Thanks to Bibliofuture of LISNews.org for the link. And Minh Uong's graphic of a tree of books and of e-books is great.

Oh, my

Have I mentioned that I think the era of the copy editor is over? That more and more books I read have glaring typos or errors? And yet this proves--so much--that we need editors (and editrices!) to continue to correct mistakes before something like this happens:

Cook-book misprint costs Australian publishers dear

An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.

And it's not just some fly-by-night publishing group--it's Australia's Branch of Penguin (yes, the publisher of all those great classics you read in school).

A wonderful video

that looks at the stereotypes of how people view the young, and what the reality is, when it comes to the publishing industry and books. It was produced by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books for a sales conference, but it holds true for how librarians have to approach the Millennial generation, too.



Thanks to David Rothman for sharing it on his blog.