{"id":6494,"date":"2013-02-08T06:12:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T11:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=6494"},"modified":"2013-02-08T06:13:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T11:13:50","slug":"publishers-from-sublime-to-ridiculous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/02\/08\/publishers-from-sublime-to-ridiculous\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers: from sublime to ridiculous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian Leiter is sharing the results of a survey<\/a> on his blog to see which academic publishers are considered “best” in his field of philosophy. I find surveys like this useful — at least when carried out somewhat scientifically and systematically (which Leiter’s isn’t and doesn’t claim to be) — and I think these particular results are not too different from what an equivalent survey in other humanities fields might find.<\/p>\n

They are skewed, however, by the fact that bigger publishers are better known and more widely used than smaller publishers, so they are likely to get more votes. As one commenter puts it,<\/p>\n

My worry with these results is that it validates big presses as, necessarily, against good ones. Wiley-Blackwell barely even publishes academic monographs; their reputation is largely based on textbooks, handbooks, etc. And to say that’s better than UChicago–historically, one of the top philosophy presses–strikes me as, well, ridiculous. Oxford has the biggest philosophy catalogue in the world, but I think its polling is distorted by its size. To put it another way, the “average quality” of some of the smaller presses–including Harvard, Princeton, and Chicago–is, I’d submit, almost certainly higher than that of Oxford (and certainly of Cambridge), but the larger presses have greater visibility.<\/p>\n

Many academic publishers didn’t even appear on the list.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Inside Higher Ed<\/a> and Brian Leiter<\/a> are both reporting<\/a> about Edwin Mellen Press’s campaign to stifle criticism of itself. (Mellen ranked lowest on Leiter’s list.) Apparently, a librarian at McMaster University has taken down his blog post that expressed criticism of the press because Mellen filed multi-million dollar lawsuits against both him and his university.<\/p>\n

If that doesn’t kill their already lousy reputation — and we should spread the news to ensure that it does — then I’m not sure what can.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Leiter is sharing the results of a survey on his blog to see which academic publishers are considered “best” in his field of philosophy. I find surveys like this useful — at least when carried out somewhat scientifically and systematically (which Leiter’s isn’t and doesn’t claim to be) — and I think these particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[203],"tags":[25106,49506],"class_list":["post-6494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","tag-academic-publishing","tag-publishers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1GK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13004,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/09\/28\/steal-this-book\/","url_meta":{"origin":6494,"position":0},"title":"Steal this book","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 28, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Wiley's sudden withdrawal of over 1,300 textbooks from the ProQuest Academic Complete database, which many universities subscribe to, in the days before or (in my university's case) just after the beginning of the fall semester, seems unconscionable to me. It is consistent with the predatory behavior some other academic publishers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/09\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-28-at-10.35.12-AM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/09\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-28-at-10.35.12-AM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/09\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-28-at-10.35.12-AM.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/09\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-28-at-10.35.12-AM.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/09\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-28-at-10.35.12-AM.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1193,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/08\/knowledge-wants-to-be-free-doesnt-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":6494,"position":1},"title":"knowledge wants to be free (doesn’t it?)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Publishers are starting to catch up to AAAARG.org, the rapidly growing file-sharing megalibrary for cultural theory and philosophy books, which currently makes available PDF files of hundreds of books that I would love to have but couldn't realistically afford to buy. [. . .] As with media, music, and everything\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4907,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/07\/08\/the-dharma-of-file-sharing\/","url_meta":{"origin":6494,"position":2},"title":"The dharma of file sharing","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The same issues I have blogged about in relation to academic file sharing site aaaaarg.org have been (predictably) arising elsewhere, including most recently -- and a little less predictably -- in the world of online Buddhism. This particular discussion got started by an announcement at Buddha Torrents that they have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6422,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/01\/16\/the-state-of-academic-publishing-rip-aaron-swartz\/","url_meta":{"origin":6494,"position":3},"title":"The state of academic publishing (RIP, Aaron Swartz)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days after Aaron Swartz's suicide -- in part triggered by the prospect of a 35-year prison sentence for making a big stash of scholarly journal articles available to the public for free (!) -- it is appropriate to think about what is wrong with the state of academic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/11\/Aaron-Swartz-Doc.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/11\/Aaron-Swartz-Doc.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/11\/Aaron-Swartz-Doc.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3043,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/22\/beyond-blogs-to-where\/","url_meta":{"origin":6494,"position":4},"title":"Beyond blogs… to where?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Ian Bogost throws out a challenge to us (bloggers) all: How should blogs evolve? What kinds of media do we want for our thinking, writing, debating, communicating? In other words, rather than celebrating what blogs allow us to do, or lament the knee-jerk negativity they still elicit in some (notably,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8637,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/03\/19\/what-we-ask-students-to-read\/","url_meta":{"origin":6494,"position":5},"title":"What we ask students to read…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Both\u00a0Open Culture\u00a0and The New York Times have reported on the Open Syllabus Project, which has tallied over\u00a0a million college course syllabi to determine the 10,000 or so most commonly assigned texts. The project also provides a\u00a0cluster map\u00a0of these texts, which is probably less interesting (and more confusing) in its large\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6494"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6500,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6494\/revisions\/6500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}