Thursday, September 15, 2011

German Libraries Avoiding Fake Publishers

This blog has reported a number of times on what I term fake or write-only publishers (1 - 2 - 3). I am happy to report that German university libraries are fighting back - they are trying to avoid purchasing expensive rubbish.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that after some libraries realized that they were purchasing printed copies of material from the Wikipeida or dodgy bachelor's theses at outrageous prices, they have begun only purchasing the books - often badly produced print-on-demand volumes - with the possibility of returning the book. And they are keeping lists of the subpublishers that are springing up to disguise who is really behind the publishers. If a book is to be ordered from such a publisher, the librarians are asking back if the person ordering the book is aware of the common practices of these publishers.

There is a long list of publishers that engage in practices like this:
  • Verlag VDM (Verlag Dr. Müller),  Saarbrücken
    • Alphascript Publishing 
    • Betascript Publishing
    • Doyen Verlag
    • Verlag Classic Edition
    • Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften
    • Lambert Academic Publishing
  • (General)Books LLC
  • Bucher LLC
  • GRIN-Verlag
There are a lot of good sources online about these publishers (these are mostly in German):

General:
VDM and their imprints:

(General) Books LLC and Bucher LLC
 Hopefully, more and more libraries will realize that these are not legitimate publishers, and quit ordering books from them.

Thanks to C.W. for the linklist!

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