May
5, 2008
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Society
for Scholarly Publishing to hold annual meeting May 28-30
The Society
for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) will be holding its 30th Annual
Meeting, "Empires of the Mind: Inventing the Future of Scholarly
Publishing", May 28-30 in Boston. The SSP Annual Meeting
is an informative three-day event providing educational and networking
opportunities for publishers, editors, librarians, scholars, printers,
agents, wholesalers, booksellers, and other participants.A pre-meeting
seminar, "Digital Preservation", will be held Wednesday, May 28
from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.. The seminar will give an update on developments
in digital preservation from the perspectives of all the major
stakeholders: publishers, librarians and e-archiving vendors.
The seminar will provide an opportunity for attendees to learn
what is happening in the area of digital preservation for both
current and backfile content. For more information, visit the
SSP website: Click
here
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Scholarly
publishing on the world wide web
"Working Papers",
a graduate student publication of the University of Pennsylvania
Department of Romance Languages, has a Q&A roundtable discussion
entitled "Wikidemia? Scholarly Publishing on the World Wide Web"
on its website.
The Roundtable explores such questions as is online publishing a
relevant vehicle for academic writing?; How will it affect the way
we read, write and pursue our professional interests?; Will current
publishing practices become obsolete, and if so, when can we expect
to read the last words of offline print culture? Read more: Click
here
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Publishers
file suit against Georgia State University for copyright infringement
A group of
publishers filed suit in federal court in April to stop widespread
copyright infringement at Georgia State University (GSU). The
complaint, filed by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University
Press and SAGE Publications and supported by the Association of
American Publishers (AAP), charges that GSU officials are violating
the law by systematically enabling professors to provide students
with digital copies of copyrighted course readings published by
the plaintiffs and numerous other publishers without those publishers'
authorization. The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief to bring an
end to such practices, but does not seek monetary damages.
The lawsuit
asserts "pervasive, flagrant, and ongoing" unauthorized distribution
of copyrighted materials, despite attempts to reach an amicable
and mutually acceptable solution without the need for litigation.
GSU distributes the unauthorized materials through its electronic
course reserves service, its Blackboard/WebCT Vista electronic
course management system, and its departmental web pages and hyperlinked
online syllabi available on websites and computer servers controlled
by GSU. U.S. copyright law applies to digital course offerings
as it does to paper offerings, and does not distinguish between
different methods of distribution.
While many
U.S. colleges and universities work with university presses and
other publishers to ensure their uses of published materials are
in accordance with U.S. copyright law, the lawsuit states that
GSU has flatly rebuffed efforts to reach similar agreements.
"University
presses are integral to the academic environment, providing scholarly
publications that fit the needs of students and professors and
serving as a launch pad from which academic ideas influence debate
in the public sphere," said Niko Pfund, vice-president of Oxford
University Press. "Without copyright protections, it would be
impossible for us to meet these needs and provide this service."
"Publishers
must protect their interests and those of their authors when they
believe that this spirit of cooperation--and the law itself--is
being willfully and blatantly violated," said Pfund. "We take
this action in sorrow, not in anger, as we consider universities,
librarians, scholars, and presses to exist in the same, mutually
supportive ecosystem, and believe librarians especially to be
among our most important publishing partners."
"Of all places,
we would expect universities to respect laws protecting intellectual
property and to instill their students with such respect," said
Frank Smith of Cambridge University Press. "One of the key values
underpinning teaching and research in colleges and universities
is the responsibility to credit academic work to its creator;
and any attempt to take credit for work that is not your own is
widely viewed as unacceptable. We think the majority of faculty
would recognize that the same principles apply in respecting copyright
law and the work of fellow authors and that these principles apply
in the digital world, just as in the print world."
"Respect
for copyright law is integral to the higher education process,"
said Patricia Schroeder, AAP president and CEO. "It provides the
basis for publishing operations of university presses and scholarly
societies, and makes possible the contributions of innumerable
other authors and publishers to the educational process. Georgia
State University's disregard for basic copyright protections undermines
this very premise."
"AAP members
and the publishing industry recognize the advantages of making
course content available electronically for students, and offer
licensing and permissions processes designed to allow such uses
on a cost-effective basis," continued Schroeder. "We are simply
asking Georgia State University to take the necessary measures
to respect the law."
A copy of
the complaint may be found on AAP's website, http://www.publishers.org.
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Florida
'Textbook Affordability Bill' includes language regarding comp
copy sales
Due in part
to the efforts of TAA and its members, Florida's HB603 "Textbook
Affordability Bill" has been amended by Representative Anitere
Flores to include language regarding the sale of complimentary
copies.
The bill
was amended to include the following: "These materials may
not be sold for any type of compensation if they are specifically
marked as free samples not for resale."
"While this
means that comp copies that are not specifically marked as 'free
samples not for resale' can still be sold, on the whole, our effort
to modify Florida's comp copy law was a reasonable success," said
TAA Executive Director Richard Hull. "Now it is up to publishers
to make sure comp copies are appropriately marked."
For more information
on the bill and TAA member efforts: Click
here
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Amazon
announces all POD books sold on site must use own POD house
As of April
1, online book seller Amazon is requiring small publishers to
sign a contract agreeing to print all print-on-demand (POD) books
sold on Amazon's site by Amazon's own POD house, BookSurge.
The American
Society of Journalists and Authors, the nation's trade association
for freelance nonfiction writers, said in an April 4 press release
that it is "disgusted" with Amazon's announcement.
"At first,
Amazon representatives denied they were threatening small booksellers
with having the 'buy it' buttons for their books turned off if
they didn't sign on the dotted line," said ASJA. "Later this week,
Amazon admitted the move, as reported in Writer's Weekly
and The Wall Street Journal. The contract being offered
to print-on-demand publishers, which ASJA officers have seen,
also includes a confidentiality clause forbidding disclosure of
not just specific contract terms, as is typical, but any discussion
at all. Thus, small publishers who have signed the contract may
not say so, much less reveal the pressure they were under."
In addition
to the POD requirement, said the ASJA, Amazon is punishing publishers
who sell their books at a discount from cover price directly on
their publisher websites by taking that discounted price as the
book's "cover price" and then applying their own discounts accordingly.
"We applauded
when Jeff Bezos and Amazon gave small publishers and even writers
who self-published a way to get their books before the public,"
observed ASJA President Russell Wild. "With these grabby, strong-arm
tactics, Amazon negates all that -- and the years of goodwill
it has built up with writers, who ultimately will bear the brunt
of any price increases in the printing of independently published
books."
ASJA joins
PMA, the independent book publishers association, which also has
spoken out against Amazon's move to forcibly get business for
its own BookSurge subsidiary. ASJA said it also will urge
the Washington state attorney general's office to investigate
whether Amazon's move constitutes restraint of trade or otherwise
violates anti-trust laws.
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Center
for Inquiry raises concerns over errors in civics textbook
The Center
for Inquiry (CFI), an international think tank promoting science
and secularism, released a 25-page report today detailing what
it calls "egregious errors" sufficient enough to warrant "immediate
correction," in a widely used civics textbook found in many secondary
schools around the country, including advanced placement courses.
CFI believes
that the textbook American Government: Institutions and Policies,
10th edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) contains
inaccurate and misleading statements, in particular in its analysis
of global warming and certain constitutional law issues. In response,
CFI's legal experts have analyzed the textbook and prepared a
critique that sets forth recommended changes.
Derek Araujo,
a lawyer and executive director for CFI's New York office, spearheaded
the textbook review project. Araujo stated that he was "surprised
and dismayed that a textbook used in advanced placement courses
would contain clearly erroneous statements about significant issues,
such as global warming and school prayer." Araujo recruited leading
scientists, including Stuart D. Jordan from NASA, to provide their
assessment of the book's treatment of global warming.
CFI's critique
focuses on six areas: the science of global warming; the legality
of school prayer; the significance of the Supreme Court's decision
in Lawrence v. Texas; the alleged influence of the religious concept
of "original sin" on the structure of the Constitution; the meaning
of the Establishment Clause; and the significance of the Supreme
Court's decision not to hear a case (what lawyers refer to as
the denial of a writ of certiorari).
Ronald A.
Lindsay, CFI's general counsel, characterized the errors as "significant
and inexcusable. For a civics textbook to state—as this book
does—that the Supreme Court will not allow students to pray
in schools betrays either a serious misunderstanding of the law
or a willingness to have the textbook serve as a propaganda vehicle
for the Religious Right."
CFI maintains
that it is very important for civics students to obtain accurate
information about our Constitution, our legal system and public
policy issues, and that instructional material should be objective
and free of ideological bias.
The textbook
critique was researched and written by Araujo, Lindsay, and Jordan.
A downloadable PDF copy of the full report is available online:
Click
here
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Quizlet
makes learning vocabulary words easy
Point your
students to Quizlet for an easy way to learn vocabulary words.
They enter a vocabulary list of any words or data, and Quizlet
gives them a specialized learning mode, flashcards, randomly generated
tests, and collaboration tools for classmates. It's free to sign
up: http://quizlet.com
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Indiana
University, Bloomington Libraries publish first e-journal
|
Patricia
Steele
Jason
Baird Jackson
|
Through a
partnership that marks a turning point in scholarly publishing
at Indiana University, Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries
Patricia Steele announced on February 21 the publication of Museum
Anthropology Review, the first faculty-generated electronic
journal supported by the IU Bloomington Libraries.
Edited by
Jason Baird Jackson, associate professor in IU's Department of
Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Museum Anthropology Review
showcases a new model for Bloomington faculty to disseminate their
scholarly work.
With this
pilot test, the IU Bloomington libraries are poised to support
the electronic publication of journals, offering faculty editors
a low-cost solution to the administrative and publishing functions
of managing them. This expands the scope of IUScholarWorks, a
set of services to make the work of IU scholars freely available,
maximizing exposure and visibility of publications by making articles
accessible to search services such as Google Scholar.
"Libraries
nationwide are interested in supporting faculty who can realize
the benefits of publishing open-access journals," Steele said.
"At IU, we're especially pleased to help advance one of the university's
top disciplines. And by partnering locally, we're disseminating
scholarship that will help researchers worldwide."
Steele said
that universities, and particularly libraries, have been squeezed
in recent years by a system in which the cost of acquiring journals
from commercial publishers has grown increasingly more expensive.
Double-digit
price increases forced upon library subscribers over the past
decade have allowed commercial publishers to steadily grow their
profits at the expense of university budgets. The library community
contends that one approach to control runaway costs is to minimize
the dependence on subscription-based models by publishing and
promoting the use of freely available, or open access, journals.
Jackson founded
Museum Anthropology Review on the basis of his experiences
as editor of an established closed-access journal in his field
-- the similarly titled and focused Museum Anthropology.
Unlike Museum Anthropology Review, this more established
journal is published by the American Anthropological Association
in a partnership with the for-profit publisher Wiley-Blackwell.
"The costs
associated with publishing in the traditional mode are astronomical,"
Jackson said. "Publication of a single research article in Museum
Anthropology can cost thousands of dollars and, when published,
the results will then be available to a small proportion of people
worldwide."
Jackson said
that making scholarly work more easily and affordably accessible
is especially important in fields like folklore and anthropology
that are rooted in the study of local cultures worldwide.
"If, for
instance, a scholar spends months documenting the work of an elderly
woodcarver living in a small American town and then writes about
what she learned in a peer-reviewed research article, I have an
obligation as her editor to make it as easy as possible for the
schoolchildren of that town -- or the artist's grandchildren --
to gain access to her writing. Open access repositories and journals,
in their varied forms, help make this possible."
Begun in
February 2007 as a pilot project using weblog software, Museum
Anthropology Review published 64 contributions from scholars
worldwide. The works were consulted more than 20,000 times, Jackson
said, and for many of the books that were reviewed in the journal,
the assessments published in Museum Anthropology Review
are the most highly ranked pages in standard Web searches.
"Everyone
involved with the effort has been thrilled with the results,"
Jackson said, "and I am happy to be continuing the project in
a more durable and robust way through our partnership with the
IUB Libraries."
IUScholarWorks
is a set of services supported by the IU Libraries and the Digital
Library Program, a collaborative effort of the IU Libraries and
University Information Technology Services. For more information,
go to scholarworks.iu.edu
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Harvard
jumps into open access arena
A Feb. 13
article in Inside Higher Ed announces a new open access plan by
Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The department
will be posting its faculty's finished academic papers online
free, unless they choose to opt out of the plan. Read the entire
article: Click
here
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On-the-job
training
Four colleagues
share their experiences as first-time faculty members in the department
of teaching and learning at Northern Illinois University's College
of Education, in the Jan. 29 online issue of "The Chronicle
of Higher Education": Click
here
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'Ghettoized
Poli Sci Textbooks'
A study by
the American Political Science Association's Standing Committee
on the Status of Blacks in the Profession, found a relative absence
of black people in 27 introductory textbooks published or in circulation
from 2004-2007. Read an article about the study, "Ghettoized Poli
Sci Textbooks", on Inside Higher Ed: Click
here
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Register
for upcoming Academic Writing Club
The Academic
Ladder will be holding its next Academic Writing Club Feb. 11 to
March 9. Early registration (before 9 a.m. ET on Friday, Feb. 8)
is $50. After Feb. 8, registration is $60. Register at http://academicwritingclub.com
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The truth
behind the 'authors' of K-12 textbooks
Read this
expose of the politics of educational publishing, "The Muddle
Machine: Confessions of a Textbook Editor", written by Tamin
Ansary, a former editor at a major publisher of elementary and
high school textbooks, on the edutopia website: http://www.edutopia.org/muddle-machine
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Cornell
professor awarded Best Paper Prize
Yaniv Grinstein,
assistant professor at the Johnson School at Cornell University,
was awarded the Best Paper Prize for the most significant paper
published in the Journal of Financial Intermediation in
2006 for his paper, "The Disciplinary Role of Debt and Equity
Contracts: Theory and Tests."
The article
studies how debt and equity should be designed to align managerial
incentives. Both debt and equity have features that create incentives
for management to work hard. Debt holders' right to cease assets
if they do not get their money back and equity holders' right
to replace the manager if they do not get a reasonable return
creates very powerful incentives.
"What's interesting
about debt and equity is that their terms can be changed to create
more powerful or less powerful incentives," comments Grinstein.
"A debt contract with lenient terms and longer maturity does not
provide as powerful incentives as a debt contract with stricter
terms and shorter maturity. Similarly, a large number of equity
holders who each hold only a small stake in the firm will have
less power to replace the CEO than few strong equity holders with
a large stake."
The model
shows that, to provide the right incentives, both debt and equity
are necessary in the capital structure, but that firms should
choose either to provide incentives with strict debt terms or
with strong equity holders. Having both strict terms and strong
equity holders at once is suboptimal because it distorts incentives
to discipline. The model has additional predictions on the determinants
of the choice between strict debt terms and strong shareholders
and the effect of other alignment mechanisms (such as managerial
equity holdings or compensation contracts) on the results. The
paper finds supportive evidence for the model's predictions in
a sample of leveraged buyout transactions.
The Journal
of Financial Intermediation editors cast votes to select the
Best Paper Prize from all papers published in the journal during
the year. The prize includes a $2,500 check, which will be presented
to Grinstein during the Financial Intermediation Research Society
conference in June.
Grinstein's
research and teaching interests are in corporate finance and corporate
governance. His current research focuses on the effect of
governance regulations on firm policies, optimal executive compensation
arrangements, and the determinants of board structure. Between
2006 and 2007, he worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission, continuing
his research efforts in these areas.
He has published
in several journals in the areas of corporate governance, capital
structure, and dividend policy, including the Journal of Finance,
the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Financial
Intermediation and others. His research has been widely cited
in major newspapers such as The Economist, Financial Times,
Newsweek, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Forbes magazine,
Time magazine, Washington Post, as well as in Congressional
hearings on the new governance rules. He is the recipient of the
Best Paper in Corporate Finance Award from the Southwestern Finance
Association in 2005, and of the Clifford H. Whitcomb faculty fellowship
in 2004-2005.
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Textbook
authors allege Pearson Education manipulates royalty accounting
Courtland
L. Bovee and John V. Thill, authors of Excellence in Business
Communication and Business Communication Today, filed
suit on January 7, 2008 against Pearson Education, Inc. and its
subsidiary Prentice Hall in the United States District Court,
Southern District of New York alleging that the company has systematically
breached its contracts with the authors and acted in bad faith
in order to minimize the royalties it pays them.
Download
PDF of the complaint against Pearson Education by Courtland Bovee
and John Thill
"Ever since
Pearson Education became the corporate parent of Prentice Hall,
we have noticed changes in the way in which our royalties are
paid," said John Thill. The suit alleges that there is a pattern
of misstating and miscategorizing sales so that Pearson can maximize
its own profits at the expense of its authors.
The lawsuit
alleges, among other things, that despite specific contract provisions
related to sales by Pearson Education subsidiaries, the defendants
purport to license Bovee and Thill's works to its foreign subsidiary
companies for sale in foreign markets in order to pay royalties
based upon on a much lower license fee rather than upon the volume
of sales.
The suit
also alleges that Pearson engages in the systematic discounting
of Bovee & Thill LLC works. Rather than calculating royalties
on the "single copy price" of plaintiff's textbooks, Pearson Education
arbitrarily sets an unreasonably high "list price" for plaintiff's
books in order to take advantage of contractual royalty provisions
related to "high discount sales." Finally, Bovee & Thill take
issue with Pearson Education's treatment of "custom published"
editions of their work. Resembling allegations that have been
made by other authors against Pearson and other publishers, Bovee
& Thill's lawsuit alleges that Pearson Education reduced its
royalty payments by categorizing custom published works as "abridgements,"
in order to apply a lower royalty rate to their sale. Said Thill:
"Everyone knows that custom published works are not 'abridgments.'"
The suit alleges that Pearson Education ignores such accepted
industry definitions so that they can retain more profits for
themselves. "In our case, this practice results in the reduction
of our royalties by about one third," he said. Bijan Amini of
Storch Amini & Munves, the firm representing Bovee and Thill,
said: "Adding insult to injury, Pearson Education has consistently
refused our clients adequate access to their books and records.
While the lawsuit currently alleges a breach of contract, Pearson's
secrecy raises a distinct possibility that there is more lurking
in their books than meets the eye. We look forward to helping
our clients uncover any and all wrongdoing and to obtaining their
bargained-for earnings."
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