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Publishing One’s Dissertation with a Lesser-Known Publisher?

Brian Leiter

A junior faculty member writes:

I just received an email from VDM Verlag asking to publish my dissertation "in the form of a printed book."  I was wondering if you knew this publishing company, and whether you think doing something like this is a good idea for junior faculty.  I wasn’t planning on publishing the dissertation, I’m on to other projects, but part of me thinks that it can’t hurt (although maybe it could for tenure?)  I googled the company and it SEEMS like a legitimate organization, or at least not a blatant scam.  They have a large number of books on Amazon.com etc.  On the other hand, it is a form letter and I received identical emails at my old email adress and my new one.
Anyhow, I thought you might want to post this for discussion on your site since I’m sure many of your readers have received similar solications.  If it is a blatant scam, then it couldn’t hurt to warn people about it either I suppose.
I’ve heard of VDM Verlag, I think, but know next to nothing about it.  I am inclined to think if one’s dissertation is worth publishing, it is with revisions and one should aspire to place it with the best publisher possible.  But comments are open, and I invite thoughts from readers on the general question about publishing dissertation, as well as from readers knowledgeable about Verlag.

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15 responses to “Publishing One’s Dissertation with a Lesser-Known Publisher?”

  1. Alex Leibowitz

    I'm pretty sure this is a scam. I received a similar invitation regarding my college thesis; I've heard similar stories from friends. I think there may be a fee and the result is poor.

    Reply
  2. Corey Dyck

    Of course we've all heard of 'Verlag', since it just means "publishing-house". I take it that VDM Verlag is not widely known, and sounds to me like one of the many small, academic publishers in Germany devoted to publishing dissertations (like Mentis Verlag, etc.). I wouldn't worry about its legitimacy, but if your dissertation is a project you are no longer interested in, you might have better things to do with your time than time-consuming manuscript revisions.

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  3. j.s.

    "Verlag" is just the standard German term for a publishing company. VDM (Verlag Dr. Mueller) isn't a publisher that I've seen — even in Germany — for analytic philosophy. My take is that the dominant academic publisher in Germany is Suhrkamp Verlag, but I'd imagine it's as hard to get a contract with them as it is to get a contract with a solid academic press in the States or the UK. Two of the specialist publishers that often publish work in analytic philosophy are Ferdinand Schoening and Mentis. For prospective Anglo-American authors, it might be interesting to note that Mentis at least sometimes publishes work in English.

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  4. Kevin Parson

    Scam or no scam, a more general issue is what to do with one's dissertation: farm out revised chapters to journals (to be bundled together much later as a book, or not) or try to go, via substantial revisions, straight to book form. It seems that the former is the more standard and accepted route in philosophy. (We can all name well-known dissertations that bypassed the journal article phase and went straight to book, I know.) I'm not sure why this is; perhaps it's that going straight to book is seen as an illegitimate shortcut (a failure to pay one's dues), perhaps it's that the work ends up being much better if it goes through the (I think) more rigorous journal article peer-review process. I suspect the latter. At the end of the day–a cluster of journal articles or a book–what matters is the quality of the work. I think the relationship between the quality of a piece of work and its publisher (journal or university press) is a very complicated matter (the prestige of a publisher [journal or university press] imperfectly tracks quality), but at the level of appearances, at least, it is probably not worth going with a publisher that one has to Google to find out about; more generally, as BL rightly notes, it's always best to try to place one's work in the best place.

    Reply
  5. t.s.

    Commenting from Germany. VDM is not really a scam, it is rather a print-on-demand publisher with bazillions of titles. Since they print your book only once it is ordered by someone, it does not cost them anything to "publish" books (in fact, you have to do basically all preparations yourself). Because they make no investment, they will just accept any manuscript. Your book will be in the company of thousands of self-help books and similar stuff.

    I know a number of people who have published with VDM and there is nothing especially sinister about it. It's just the equivalent of publishing a paper in a journal without refereeing with all the advantages and disadvantages. In any case, VDM is not an academic press.

    Reply
  6. another junior faculty member

    I published my dissertation with VDM Verlag, for much the same reasons the junior faculty member cites (no plans to publish it otherwise, etc). They are not a scam. Nor do they charge you for the publication. Nor is the process time-consuming or troublesome. You do some minor formatting, and design your cover on their website. Then you send them the dissertation as a PDF, and they make that available as a print-on-demand book. You get several free copies.

    They also allow you to retain the right to publish parts of the work in other form. So if you ever do decide to mine it for an article or two, they won't have a problem. (Of course, the journal you want to publish with might.)

    Reply
  7. Tim O'Keefe

    Generally speaking, whether or not this particular offer is a scam, I think it's usually a bad idea to publish one's dissertation as is. Most dissertations need peer review and extensive revision to be transformed into decent books.

    Reply
  8. John S. Wilkins

    I was once asked to review a PhD published like this from Holland. It appears that it is often common practice in Europe to do this with PhDs, and to an extent they are treated as ordinary books, in an attempt to establish the candidate's reputation. It was very odd to an Australian, but I went along with it.

    Reply
  9. Christopher Gauker

    Most dissertations written at Ohio institutions are supposed to be available to everyone in the world for free. Authors can request a delay, in case this form of publication would affect patent applications or prevent publication in other outlets. You can get them at http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd. Perhaps your own institution will be part of such a network before too long.

    Reply
  10. Christopher Morris

    No, these things are not scams. But there is little profit to publishing one dissertation this way. (One exception: if one is leaving the academy and entering a profession where a book — which few people will read — would be useful, then one of these presses would be fine.)

    Young philosophers might not know that the best publishers are not interested in publishing dissertations (unless the author is a young super-star). Why? Simple: the sales are awful as every competent librarian can spot a lightly revised dissertation and won't order the book (at least half the sales of a typical monograph in philosophy). Dissertations are already available to the public in one form or another; so there's usually little reason to make them available in another form. So there's little point in sending one's dissertation around to good publishers a short time after graduating. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.

    Reply
  11. doris

    Regards turning one's diss. into to articles or books (mostly with regards Kevin's comments):

    1. Note that many administrations seem to favor books when considering the promotion of humanists. I realize departments may pitch the "philosophy is a paper discipline" line, and this does seem to work at some places. But it may also invite unwelcome comparisons with scientists, who typically have much higher output.

    2. It is often said that the Journal review process is more rigorous. This may be true, at least at those Journals which have legitimate review processes. But given the process, getting out a comparable number of pages in papers will likely take longer than it would in a book. Something to think about, in the event you are under time pressure. Also consider what might politely be called the "vagaries" of the review process; you will likely have more exposure to them if you go the paper route.

    3. If you do publish your dissertation (or descendant thereof) by all means use the best academic press you can get. Evaluators may give little weight to material from venues known for publishing "lightly edited" dissertations on the not implausible grounds that if the material met the standard of a significant academic monograph, it would have appeared elsewhere.

    4. I have no evidence, one way or the other, regarding which route is more "standard and accepted" in philosophy as a whole. It seems to me that this varies by institution, and you should consult closely with your senior colleagues.

    –doris

    Reply
  12. Rob Rupert

    Regarding Doris's comment 1., I think administrations and departments should keep the 1/n rule firmly in mind — where n = the number of authors of an article and 1/n = the amount of credit awarded to each author for that article. The idea here is that whatever amount of good-making "umph" an article has — amount of time spent on research, number of creative thoughts, whatever — responsibility for the output is divided equally among the authors (unless the authors have said on the record that credit should be divided otherwise); the alternative would seem to be to assume an amazing (and seemingly wasteful) kind of intellectual overdetermination. Assuming this 1/n guideline, philosophy, as an article oriented discipline, stacks up reasonably well against the sciences, so far as I can tell; perhaps the comparison is even more favorable for philosophers if the number of pages is also taken into account.

    Reply
  13. Eric Schliesser

    This is a follow up to John Wilkins' comment. In mainland Europe it is very common to publish one's dissertation as a book (often with a press 'allied' with the university). Such books are often sent to local and international colleagues. Local folks are often mystified that I cannot point to a similar book (or return the favor). I spent five years as an employed philosopher and don't recall ever receiving a copy of somebody's dissertation. In my three years in Europe I have "collected" about twenty thus far. But all of this is rapidly changing due to two facts: first, under the new bureaucratic rules (adapted by varying speeds all over Europe) peer-reviewed journal articles are more valuable means toward research grants and a position; second, the period for obtaining a PhD is being shortened; there is little time to produce a polished manuscript.

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  14. jge

    Commenting from Germany and as a librarian working for the University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

    I would advise everyone interested in getting read to publish online on an open access server. This would also boost your being cited, because what is findable will be read and cited. Important is to have an persistent URL. In Germany University libraries offer the service to publish dissertations of absolvents in electronical form (best as pdf-a) and they help interested people getting the formatting right. They provide the server and the persistent web adress (in Germany usually an URN). And they provide the cataloguing: that means your dissertation will be found by people using the usual tools for finding scholarly works.

    If you don't know any such server visit the austrian "Sammelpunkt". Or upload your dissertation to the new philpapers.org.

    VDM is well known in Germany for printing anything. So you wouldn't want to publish in that neighbourhood. (Libraries will not buy their publications.) It's true they don't charge anything for their service. But they take ridiculously high prices for their "scholarly" publications, preventing interested non library people to buy them. And they offer you money from the proceeds, but if your share is below 50,- € per month you get book vouchers from them (look at the offered conditions!). Your share will be always below this because it means they must sell more than 4-5 ex. of your book per month which they will never do. They make no advertisement whatsoever.

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  15. Alan Childress

    Some of my PhD students have published their dissertations with VDM and it is not a scam; it serves certain needs, I just would not try to make too much of it with a tenure committee, etc.; seems fine, to me, as long as you are actually proud of the work.

    I am publishing law-related dissertations as ebooks for sale on Amazon and iBooks, as I posted about on our blog at http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2010/05/publish-your-dissertation-as-a-digital-book-or-ebook-on-amazon-and-ibooks-legal-ethics-law-legal-his.html , so another way to go is to just publish digitally. This is not exclusive of turning parts into articles or publishing in paper form elsewhere, and the author can submit for more traditional publication and withdraw. Meanwhile they can be read on apps for PC, Mac, iPad, Kindle, etc. and easily found through searches on Google and Amazon. Again I would not play this for more than it is to a provost, but it is an alternative. Plus there are going to be some great but narrow theses that would never get a traditional book contract — their marketing dept cannot justify it — but still should be accessed by others, like the student topics in the movie PCU. I mean, even A Confederacy of Dunces could not get published till the author died.

    Also I bring back classics that are out of print or reverted, like the law-philosophy book Discretion to Disobey, by Mortimer and Sanford Kadish, on civil disobedience and rule departures. It is linked in that post above. –ALAN

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