From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 11:04:12 -0500

I posted this comment to the story in the Chronicle, which is relevant here:

> The C&RL study asked the wrong question. Instead of asking whether university presses would ever consider books based on ETDs, the question should have been whether that fact enters significantly into the final decision to publish or not because there is a perception or real evidence that such books have lower sales than those of other books. The study does acknowledge that this concern really exists. Toward the end it is admitted: "It was unexpected to receive several comments by university press directors that imply causation between library collecting policies and university press ETD policies. It is unclear if these comments represent a minority view or are shared by a larger group. This is an area for future study."

So, the really important question was not addressed by this study.
Moreover, unless the press director is an acquiring editor, asking the
director may not have been the wisest approach. Acquiring editors may
be acting on the perceived lower sales potential of dissertations
without directors even knowing that this is happening at their own
press.  Of course, this concern is not really relevant at all to
journal editors: sales of journals to libraries are certainly not
affected by whether or not they contain some articles drawn from
dissertations.  A question that should have been asked of press
directors is whether their presses have conducted any systematic
comparison of sales of books based on dissertations with those of
books not so derived.  I suspect there are very few such studies that
have actually been carried out. It would be useful to have such
studies done, so that we know what impact, if any, the origin of a
book has on its sales potential. if a difference does show up, then
the further question still remains to explain why this difference
exists. Some librarians have argued that it is not so much that
dissertation-based books are discriminated against as that librarians
believe such books are generally more highly specialized than books
not based on dissertations. That is another empirical question that
could be usefully studied.

Sandy Thatcher

P.S. I would further point out, what the study itself implicitly
acknowledged, that it would make no sense for any press to have a rule
flatly rejecting all books based on dissertations. One example cited
in the study is an editor talking about books in Civil War history
that have an audience well beyond academe. The sales potential of such
titles would make the library portion of the sale so relatively
insignificant that no editor is going to be worried about losing a few
library sales for a book in this field, if it happens to derive from a
dissertation. So, again, the wrong question was asked. And the waters
were muddied by lumping books and journals together in the study: the
reasons for not accepting articles for journals are quite different
from the reasons for not accepting books.


> [MODERATOR's NOTE:  Thanks to Chuck for this. In Rick Anderson's new
> posting on Scholarly Kitchen, he asks the question:  "How do we know
> that 'an increasing number of university presses are reluctant to
> offer a publishing contract to newly minted PhDs whose dissertations
> have been freely available via online sources'? I can understand the
> reasoning that might lead to this stance, but is there actual evidence
> to indicate that it is, in fact, an increasingly widespread one among
> publishers?"   Rick, the Conclusion of the article below answers that
> question.. the number of reluctant publishers has definitely increased
> in the last decade; the authors' recommendation is, therefore, at odds
> with their data?]
>
>
> From: "Charles E. Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 11:30:24 +0000
>
> I sent this to Jim O'Donnell last evening, he encouraged me to send it
> to the list as well
>
> -Chuck Jones-
>
> Marisa L. Ramirez, Joan T. Dalton, Gail McMillan, Max Read, and Nancy
> H. Seamans, "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations
> Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and
> Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers." Coll.
> res. libr. July 2013 74:368-380
>
> http://crl.acrl.org/content/74/4/368.full.pdf+html