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Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

theguardian.com

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Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#21

Post by 1971genocide »

DrNuke wrote: post #20

Broadly speaking, cheap e-books from non-stellar academics are an incredible amount of data leaked for free: top peer-reviewed journals are not cheap at all and relevant conferences proceedings are often run on a pay-for-view scheme. The non-stellar academic from Windy Hill University, Nowhere, will sell a good summary of his/her field and an up to date literature review for less than $20. Bargain.

I can tell you are not a millennial student or else you wont have that view.

We are made to buy extremely expensive books and waste time reading crap books all the time.

The best books in my field were written randomly over the last 300 years.

I think ALL information should be free in the digital age. its the maximum rate of efficiency.

There are 6 billion people in the world without a proper high class uni education like myself.

How is it that we are okay supplying free weapons to poor people but go to great deal to restrict the supply of information ?

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#22

Post by harry8 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #10

And students are being hoodwinked into buying them. The books also often include minutiae which change from edition to edition, so you have to get the nth edition in order to take your class - because in physics, for instance, there are Q&A in the books which differ between editions. The main book we had to get was written by two of the lecturers, and was £300. It was so half-assedly bound that you had to cut the pag…

name the book, author and publisher. If what you say is true they don't deserve protection.

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#23

Post by harry8 »

brohoolio wrote: post #12

The article states people are getting hoodwinked but then goes on to blame academics. "So why don’t academics simply stay away from the greedy publishers? The only answer I can think of is vanity." Or that the publishers are misrepresenting how the books might sell.

Why didn't the author name the publisher? So librarians, unfamiliar with esoteric fields can put a black mark next to that publisher's name and only buy from that publisher if requested or approved by an academic in that field. Surely the reputation damage that should be inflicted would stop such practises if they exist. But we have a claim with no evidence at this point.

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#24

Post by jakobegger »

patio11 wrote: post #16
jakobegger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you drastically overestimate the quality of the books this article talks about. These publishers will publish any rubbish you give them just to profit from selling to librarians who do not understand enough of the subject matter to know they are being scammed. I've been contacted on Facebook by these scam publishers, inquiring if I'd like to publish some of my university essays. There are plenty of alternativ…

I don't think we disagree very much about the likely level of subject-specific due diligence these publishers will do. I think we disagree very much about the likely level of subject-specific due diligence done by any publisher on any title picked at random from a university library. Peer review is, like Santa, a story we tell to motivate little children; academics (particularly in the humanities) are their own QC de…

I agree that a lot of low quality work is published even with peer review. But I don't think publishers should be gatekeepers; it's generally impossible to judge the quality of academic work without being heavily invested in the field yourself.

So I don't have a problem with publishing rubbish as long as you pay for it yourself.

What I do have a problem with is that these people try to collect anything that they can get their fingers on, put an ISBN on it, and then sell it to libraries at horrendous prices.

This is not about making knowledge accessible, this is solely about scraping a bit off library budgets with the least amount of effort.

(Edit: language)

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#25

Post by wolfgke »

1971genocide wrote: post #21
DrNuke wrote: post #20

Broadly speaking, cheap e-books from non-stellar academics are an incredible amount of data leaked for free: top peer-reviewed journals are not cheap at all and relevant conferences proceedings are often run on a pay-for-view scheme. The non-stellar academic from Windy Hill University, Nowhere, will sell a good summary of his/her field and an up to date literature review for less than $20. Bargain.

I can tell you are not a millennial student or else you wont have that view. We are made to buy extremely expensive books and waste time reading crap books all the time. The best books in my field were written randomly over the last 300 years. I think ALL information should be free in the digital age. its the maximum rate of efficiency. There are 6 billion people in the world without a proper high class uni education…

Relevant:

Aaron Swartz - Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#26

Post by a3_nm »

patio11 wrote: post #3

Academics spend years writing books nobody will buy. That's practically the definition of academic writing. They go into incredible amount of depths for a very, very niche audience: other academics interested in, e.g., the experience of women in Japanese detective novels of the 19th century. (n.b. Actually a book, assuming I am remembering all the details correctly. An advisor spent years on it.) This is exactly the…

Why do these books have to cost $150? The academics won't be getting this money, those publishers essentially won't be involved in helping improve the book, and it doesn't cost $150 nowadays to get something published, even if you want a printed version.

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#27

Post by garbal »

patio11 wrote: post #3

Academics spend years writing books nobody will buy. That's practically the definition of academic writing. They go into incredible amount of depths for a very, very niche audience: other academics interested in, e.g., the experience of women in Japanese detective novels of the 19th century. (n.b. Actually a book, assuming I am remembering all the details correctly. An advisor spent years on it.) This is exactly the…

As an academic I check out and buy super specialized books all the time. $150 is not too expensive if it can save me a few hours of work by summarizing an esoteric topic, which frequently is the case. The publisher doesn't matter, just the reputation of the author.

This is not beach reading, it is an input to an industrial process.

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#28

Post by AlexeyBrin »

hellofunk wrote: post #5

This article could easily be expanded to include software developers as well as academics. I've seen several excellent developers with strong reputations contributing to the open source community get "hoodwinked" into rushing out shallow books for companies like Apress. I've seen other developers also get sucked into the game, only to see less income from the work in one year as you'd need to buy a modest used car --…

Packt Publishing is worse than Apress. They basically take a subject, say Cocos2d-x, and publish a bunch of shitty books that cloud the book market with outdated information and bad code practices.

Packt and Appress ebooks are not even properly formatted for a programming subject (text alignment, code highlighting ...). Compare any Packt/Appress ebook with Pragmatic or LeanPub ebook formatting, the difference is staggering.

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#29

Post by [deleted] »

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #28
hellofunk wrote: post #5

This article could easily be expanded to include software developers as well as academics. I've seen several excellent developers with strong reputations contributing to the open source community get "hoodwinked" into rushing out shallow books for companies like Apress. I've seen other developers also get sucked into the game, only to see less income from the work in one year as you'd need to buy a modest used car --…

Packt Publishing is worse than Apress. They basically take a subject, say Cocos2d-x , and publish a bunch of shitty books that cloud the book market with outdated information and bad code practices. Packt and Appress ebooks are not even properly formatted for a programming subject (text alignment, code highlighting ...). Compare any Packt/Appress ebook with Pragmatic or LeanPub ebook formatting, the difference is sta…

[deleted]

Re: Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

#30

Post by datashovel »

patio11 wrote: post #3

Academics spend years writing books nobody will buy. That's practically the definition of academic writing. They go into incredible amount of depths for a very, very niche audience: other academics interested in, e.g., the experience of women in Japanese detective novels of the 19th century. (n.b. Actually a book, assuming I am remembering all the details correctly. An advisor spent years on it.) This is exactly the…

So if I understand correctly, we should depend on a corporation to decide where these books end up and who has access to them? It sounds like a terrible idea to me. Not all great thinkers / researchers / inventors end up being University professors.

If it doesn't end up being a book or article or in some way shape or form in writing, that the professor wants anxiously for every human in the world to read about, then chances are it wasn't worth writing about anyways.

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