The Bottom Feeders in Academic Publishing

This morning I received the following email:

Over the years I have regularly received spam like this from pseudo-academic publishing mills. Back in 2010 my friend Stefano Piva received an email much like this to publish his DMin dissertation. Stef accepted the invitation and was appalled at the result. You can read his review and my supporting review at Amazon.

The group that emailed me this morning and which published Stef’s dissertation is VDM. They are the worst offender in this neighborhood of bottom feeders. Journalist Joseph Stromberg sold his thesis to VDM and the fascinating result is chronicled in his article “I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm.” The stats Stromberg recounts are staggering: dozens of imprints and up to 50,000 separate titles published every month (!?!!??). Incredibly, many of their “books” are simply repackaged content pilfered from Wikipedia and sold for up to $100 a book.

But what most bothers me is the way this despicable company preys on thousands of young academics who are looking for a way into the academy through quick publication.