Sunday, May 22, 2011

Invited to Publish a Chapter in an In-Tech Book

Open Access chapters in books with pay to publish fees seems to be a new trend. I got an invite to contribute a chapter to a book published by In-Tech. The publication fee is Euro 590. The book is available for free online but a hardcopy is mailed to each author. What I found to be even weirder is this statement:

"To preserve the integrity of the review process the identity of the editor will be disclosed upon final chapter submission."

In most cases chapters in edited volumes get very few citations except in some cases of respected handbooks and the like (at least in economics). So there is no reason why I would do this, rather than send my paper to some low-end journal. But if this (open access) was done by a reputable press maybe book chapters would get more citations in future?

Visit these blogs for more info on In-Tech.

6 comments:

  1. Hi

    Last year I was also invited to submit a chapter for an Inetch book on climate; my 3-page Abstract was duly accepted, showing it would be non-warmist, and then the chapter itself was rejected by the book editor, one Juan Blanco, truly a devoted warmist. Saved me the 590 Euro - but on or about same day the chapter was accepted by the ESA for its ACE2011. So no worries, but I was intrigued by your examination of soi-disant Intech.

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    1. Hi Tim,

      I was intrigued and I just read your paper from your website. It is well written, but I am sorry to say it shows a poor use and understanding of statistics and plant physiology. Maybe that's why it was rejected in a science book but accepted in an economic conference... what do the folks from ESA know about plant physiology, anyway?

      Best regards

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  2. If I wasn't clear, it appears that it really isn't worth anyone paying a fee to be published by In-Tech. You might as well just put the paper on the web yourself.

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  3. Agreed, and done (www.timcurtin.com) - I confess to having been flattered at the initial invitation and did not research Intech as I should have.

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  4. I received and invite to submit a book chapter to Education in a Technological World: Communicating Current and Emerging
    Research and Technological Efforts by formatex. They too have a fee that you have to pay if your chapter is to be published. I also found this odd as many colleagues scoff at journals that ask the author to pay. Should I pass this over?

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  5. Whether it is worth paying fees to be published in open access journals and now books depends entirely on the perceived quality of the editors and refereeing process that puts the "stamp of approval" on your work and probably also helps improve it. Without that, you might as well just put it up in on your own website, self publish it through Amazon etc. For example in economics anyone can put a paper on their own website and then get it added to the RePEc database by submitting it to MPRA. So this could be worth doing if you know and respect the editors, know they have some quality control in place, and think your colleagues would be likely to read and cite the product. Otherwise, it's not worth it.

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