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Publish or perish - why not both?

<2022-03-20>

By day I am a librarian at a mid-size university, with a specialization in information technology. Truth be told my job description looks more like that of a departmental IT manager than what the "librarian" designation might suggest.

But because I am a librarian, there is some expectation that I will conduct research, though that expectation is quite modest when compared to my faculty colleagues. I am not eligible for tenure, so no one really cares where I publish, or whether my research is all that ground-breaking. (These days, my research centres around the recovery and restoration of early Canadian videotex art.)

In terms of my career, the publishing stakes are so low that often I don't bother to publish in peer-reviewed journals, particularly if what I'm publishing is just a throwaway technical paper or something. Instead, I just post the paper on the web and call it a day.

Which is why, when I received a request to re-publish one of my self-published papers from some European publisher I'd never heard of, I gave it scarcely a moment's thought before deleting it. And that would have been the end of it, except that they sent a follow-up email:

From: Name Redacted [mailto: redacted@lap-publishing.com]

Sent: March-27-21 12:11 AM

To: JDD <jdd@[]university.ca>

Subject: Inquiry regarding Mr. JDD's work at the University of []

Dear Mr. JDD,

I wanted to confirm if you received my previous email about the free-of-charge publishing of your work "Random thoughts about an ancient and fully obsolete graphics encoding protocol"

Just in case you need additional information to decide, here is an overview of what we do and who our authors are -

http://brochure.domainthatnolongerworks.com/brochure

Please give me a short feedback if you are interested in getting your work published. We would surely be sad to see your work's full potential go un-explored, and you would give us a hard time finding something similar in your field of research, so please take a moment to consider before blindly saying no.

Thank you in advance!

Name Redacted

LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing

is managed by:

OmniScriptum AraPers GmbH

Bahnhofstra?e 28, D-66111 Saarbr?cken, Germany

"Blindly saying no?" "Sad to see my work's full potential go un-explored?" Really? I felt that in itself merited at least a moment's consideration. Adopting my most insufferably pedantic tone, I composed the following reply:

From: JDD<jdd@[]university.ca>

Date: March 27, 2021 at 10:37:00 AM PDT

To: Name Redacted <redacted@lap-publishing.com>

Subject: RE: Inquiry regarding Mr. JDD's work at the University of []

Hello Name Redacted,

As there is already far too much sadness in the world, I am pleased to inform you that my paper's unexplored potential need not occasion more of it. You see, that particular work has been published under a Creative Commons license. Everyone is free to copy and redistribute the work as long as the terms of the license are respected. You are therefore free to unleash the full potential of my work by re-publishing it if you wish. You do not require additional permission from me.

The terms of the license are here:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/

However, please be aware I am not interested in making my work available under alternative licensing terms (eg. commercial ones). For two reasons:

1. I believe that academic work funded by the public sector should be freely accessible to all.

2. Even absent that belief, I would estimate that particular work has a worldwide audience of approximately a dozen people. All of them have already downloaded it, so it has no commercial potential.

Thank you for your interest in my work.

Sincerely,

JDD

Oddly (or not), I have not heard from them since. I do not believe they ever re-published my paper, so I guess they have chosen to live with sadness. For myself ... well, regrets I have a few, but this ain't one of them [1,2]. That said, this exchange did get me thinking more about the scholarly publishing industry, self/vanity publishing, and open access. I plan to write more about those things in future installments of this gemlog.

Links

[1] I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm

[2] Why You Shouldn't Publish with Lap Lambert, German Publishing House

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Publish or perish - why not both? was published on 2022-03-20