On the #enshitification of #academic#publishing. Where scientists burn the candle at both ends, paying to read and publish their work, in what is the ultimate grift.
Here's the problem... we often say we want to move away from glam publishing. But how many of those retraction were in the top journals, and how many in Hindawi, MDPI and Frontiers? For me, the papers I trust enough to bother to read are in the journals I trust. Not quite the Natures or the sciences, but the trusted disciplinary journals. Th we genome biologies and molecular cells. But this feeds journal based judgements.
Dean Street Press is a great independent publisher who are ‘ devoted to producing, uncovering, and revitalizing good books’. Their authors include Stella Gibbons, Brian Flynn and D E Stevenson. This month it’s Dean Street December and I fancy reading a new author to me, Patricia Wentworth, who wrote mystery novels in the mid 20th century. I’ve been having fun looking through their website this morning trying to decide which one to read first #bookstodon#publishing@bookstodon https://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/pages/author_page/33
Boundary Road by Ami Rao is going straight on my TBR list - a book set on a London bus, with all the possible drama that will likely involve and the glimpses of life outside the window - looks like it’ll be a Kindle read for me as it’s from a very small publisher called Everything with Words #bookstodon#blind#publishing@bookstodon https://www.everythingwithwords.com/books/boundary-road/
@sarahmatthews@bookstodon Did you ever read 253, a novel by Geoff Matthews, which, IIRC, started as a blog, telling the stories of all the passengers on a Tube train? One of the entries was for a pigeon that had jumped on the train, I seem to remember.
Have seen some talk about people boycotting the Big 5 publishers. Because they own so much, I personally don't know how possible that is. But there's a good article out about some indie publishers which may help - https://bookriot.com/best-indie-publishing-companies/
@awenspark@bookstodon yeah, I personally think an author strike is what's needed. But publishing is such a global business, without a single global union, that's hard to arrange.
New study: "Our results show that Chinese PhD student significant pressures to publish in order to obtain their degree, with papers indexed in the Science Citation Index [#SCI] often a mandatory requirement for students to obtain their degree. Moreover, it is found that first authorship is also mandatory." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04854-8
@petersuber@academicchatter my doctoral program here in Toronto had a explicit expectation to publish as a major component of getting the degree and it seems to me that this is fairly common at least across STEM PhDs?
@romancelandia
Found via @tuphlos on twitter, this piece has some blood pressure-raising bits; the most important is the assumption that changing the covers of genre romances of different heat levels/sexual content, changes the actual content.
"oh, these books that are no longer coded erotic romance are actually good stories/writing/characters, but I couldn't have known unless they had acceptable covers" is a thing said there.
whenever people talk about having "no politics or religion" in their "entertainment", I think of how fucking intellectually lazy they have to be not to come up with a better fig leaf for they complicity.
These people basically say, "if you read these and like them, you deserve violence, so we'll protect your from yourself y controlling your every fucking breath"
"Scammers have sent messages posing as Hachette Book Group (HBG) representatives to trick people into believing they are interviewing and hiring job candidates or contracting freelance work on HBG’s behalf. These emails, which sometimes use HBG’s logo or include fake employment letters, are often sent from email addresses that closely resemble HBG’s."
"Scammers purporting to be literary agents have contacted authors to make fraudulent contract offers under HBG’s name. They often promise a large advance, falsely claim that HBG has expressed interest in publishing the author’s manuscript, pretend to be working with HBG editors or other employees, and create fake publishing agreements or letters of interest they claim to be negotiating with HBG."
My gripe with audiobooks on Spotify is that I'm already paying for premium, I refuse to spend more money on buying books when I'm already paying to subscribe.
At least with Audible you get a credit for a free book a month as part of your subscription.
downside of masto's particular set of affordances is I can't figure out who posted this, and who boosted it into my timeline. But thank you both!!
"Lester del Rey... intuited that what millions wanted from a publishing industry urgently optimizing to keep up with capitalism was to escape the modern age into a world where capitalism and industry had never happened. There is magic in that. At least I thought so, as a kid. But there’s also, in del Rey’s vision, a formulaic—let’s face it, industrial, rationalized—conception of culture and a pernicious nostalgia that courts sexism and white supremacy. Today, fantasy is, along with romance, our wildest, most flourishing genre. It might not be this way were it not for Lester del Rey, even if his legacy now is as the wizard so many writers and readers choose to battle against."
@morgandawn@Rhube@msatris@KristinaWKelly@bookstodon@bennett I had Dragonsong added to the Provincial Approved reading list many years ago.I loveded how it dealt with child abuse, individual choice and following your dream.
As a teacher I loved how it really used foreshadowing for almost every event in the book.
Sent one of my student's visual interpretation of Menolly to McCaffrey and she wrote back with a lovely letter and a photo of herself and the real life Menolly.
AI is a problem for editors and authors – and it's serious.
There is a dark side to this technology, with major long-term consequences for authorship and editorial work that we're only just beginning to discover – not least copyright theft.
IIRC the difference between Bing's integrated AI and others is that it cites actual sources from the search engine, so it's less prone to inaccuracy/hallucination?
Is there currently any facility within search engines to opt out or deactivate AI, or is it built-in as standard, requiring consent to use it?
And does it train itself from searches? Happy for more info!
"By purporting to restrict an author’s abilities to #reuse their own work, “these [#publishing] agreements essentially turn faculty #authors into #readers…,” the Academic Senate chair concludes. The team that leads negotiations with scholarly #publishers…is now taking up the charge, making author #rights the next frontier in advocating for the UC research community."
@sarahmatthews@PlanetMillie@losttourist@bookstodon I reported it to them and got the usual we'll look into it at some point response. If it was black text on a black background or something it'd be fixed right away I'm sure.