From: Danny Kingsley <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:08:31 +0000 Hi - following on from this thread: "I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm - A trip through the shadowy, surreal world of an academic book mill" By Joseph Stromberg http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/03/lap_lambert_academic_publishing_my_trip_to_a_print_content_farm.html A couple of excerpts from a first-hand account of the Lambert experience. Danny ******* If you’re an academic (or were once an aspiring academic), you may have once received an email just like the one I got at 6:10 on a sunny morning last August. “As stated by the Washington University in St. Louis’s electronic repository, you authored the work entitled ‘Lands of the Lakota Policy Culture and Land Use on the Pine Ridge Reservation’ in the framework of your postgraduate degree,” Karen Holmes, an acquisition editor at LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, told me. She added that she worked for a “top international publishing group” and was interested in publishing my work as a book. ......... I flipped through the softcover book, reading the words I’d written four years ago, during my senior year of college, never thinking that they’d be reproduced on cheap paper and owned by a multinational publishing conglomerate. They looked exactly as they had in the original PDF of my thesis, just shrunken down onto A4-size paper and surrounded by page numbers and a title page printed in a different font. My thesis had been transformed into a mass-produced commodity. Then, as I paged through the book, I remembered something funny I’d done when reformatting the text for submission. For kicks, I’d buried an errant phrase deep in the middle, partly to see if LAP Lambert’s editors ever actually read the thing. When I got to Page 86, I was gratified to find that they hadn’t noticed it. Right there on the middle of the page, amid talk of Oglala Lakota politics and tribal sovereignty was my insertion. “Is any proofreader actually reading this book before it gets printed?” I’d asked. “Didn’t think so.” -----Original Message----- From: Danny Kingsley <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 01:50:02 +0000 Hello all, Here are a couple of webpages in Australia which warn about the problems with publishing with this group of publishers: http://www.acu.edu.au/research/support_for_researchers/research_achievements/herdc/important_information_about_vdm_publishing http://www.research.swinburne.edu.au/researchers/resources/lap-publishing/ Generally we advise people not to publish with them - our advice tends to be make their thesis open access in their institutional repository - this gives them exposure and there are no impediments to future publishing with a reputable publisher (whereas publishing with these guys prevents any further publication). We do occasionally have requests to subsequently take open theses down from publishers - which is fine. Danny -----Original Message----- From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 16:03:37 -0400 From a librarian I don't know otherwise. Jim O'Donnell ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 3:44 PM Subject: RE: A questionable publishing model To: [log in to unmask] Dear Professor O'Donnell, This year I've received at least one query a month regarding Lambert and VDM subsidiaries. We advise graduate students to think carefully about whether publishing with Lambert would benefit their career, and its reputation in their subject field. What we don't say outright is that we consider Lambert a predatory publisher. In my personal opinion, a vanity press would be better, because at least they would let the author keep the copyright. Publishing with Lambert prevents an academic from publishing that work in a more reputable venue. Best, -----Original Message----- From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 19:11:09 -0400 Seen today: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/03/lap_lambert_academic_publishing_my_trip_to_a_print_content_farm.single.html This is a not-quite-vanity press -- they will in fact "publish" your book without asking you for money; then they will ask you for money, encouraging you to buy an appreciable number of copies of your book. The book may be virtually any master's or even baccalaureate thesis they can find evidence of on the web anywhere. By this model they "publish" tens of thousands of books. What's interesting is that there's clearly a need being met and clearly a business model at work here. Few serious readers of this piece will make excuses for the model, but the company will continue to find those tens of thousands of authors, who will find value in even this sketchiest of deals. Jim O'Donnell Georgetown