Publishing SIG
CONFLICT OF INTEREST SURVEY
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Publishing SIG CONFLICT OF INTEREST SURVEY |
Question: Do any of you have authors who publish publications with a commercial publishing house and then ask your distribution centers to either buy their publications from the publisher or promote and refer sales to the commercial publisher?
In Colorado, our Academic Faculty and Admin. Professional manual states, "Works created by Members without University resources are the property of the Members (author) and the University will not administer, finance, or provide other support as to these works." At the moment, we and our legal counsel, interpret this to include sales and promotion.
Thanks, Debby Weitzel, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension
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Sue Keller, Alask Sea Grant, University of Alaska at Fairbanks. We do sell publications published by outside agencies and companies. We do this (1) if we really like the product, and/or (2) believe that distributing it will help us fulfill our mandate to educate the public about wise use of marine resources, (3) it is authored by one of our talented extension agents, (4) it has photographs taken by our staff members, (5) it is a perfect companion to one of our products, (6) we get a very good price on it, (7) our clients are clamoring for such a product.
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Barbara Hartsinger, South Dakota State. SDSU doesn't (sell) either.
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Judy Winn, Texas A & M University. I'm sure we'd never consider promoting a product produced by an outside, commercial entity. We'd certainly never stock and sell such an item. But the fact is, Texas Extension wouldn't promote/sell this book (book in question at Colorado), even though it was published by the Texas A&M University Press. Actually, the TAMU Press has in the past promoted a few selected Texas Agricultural Experiment Station research publications, but not the other way around.
Most university presses collaborate with others so they'll have larger catalogs. If Colorado has a university press, you might suggest that the author collaborate with A&M Press (publisher of book in question) to promote the book in their catalog.
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Ivar Nelson, Publications Supervisor, College of Agriculture, University of Idaho. I think we are moving to include in our inventory and catalog not only from other CES and agency publishing groups but also from any source, including commercial, that is publishing something our Extension people want to use and sell. If this is a national trend, it could mean less publishing by each state and more distribution of other's material.
We would have no problem with someone from the college suggesting to us to distribute or sell a book or publication which they have produced with someone else.
I think another trend we will see soon is for college publication units to provide royalties to some of their authors. As the university community explicitly allows its faculty to make money on the side from all types of activities, their doing it from royalties from us might not be any different. It will depend on what the definition of their work for the university is, and if that is differentiated from their authorship.
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Kathy Reiser, University of Illinois. One of our hort people co-authored Perennials for the Landscape book and was recently asked if we'd carry it in our distribution center.
No final decision has been made, but I'm leaning against carrying it. (The decision is partly, but not entirely, mine to make.) It's a lovely book and I'm sure it's as research-based and "programmatically sound" as any U of I Extension publication we do carry. And yes, we do charge for our publications on a cost-recovery basis. At the same time, I'm concerned that selling a commercially produced book would set a dangerous precedent.
I should note that our warehouse handles two distinct types of materials: the usual kind (Extension pubs and research bulletins), which our Ag Communications shop owns ... and "personal stock," which is owned by individual faculty members.
Here's how "personal stock" works in Illinois: The faculty members own the (usually self-published) materials, and we simply warehouse and distribute them in exchange for a handling fee that covers the cost of moving/maintaining/tracking the inventory, operating an 800 order line, and so on; any sales proceeds from personal stock items go into the faculty member's university account. Some personal stock materials are available to the public, and some are available only to people authorized by the faculty member. Of course, we do limit personal stock to materials that relate to our mission as a land-grant and their mission as faculty members. So far, nobody's asked us to carry anything that doesn't qualify.
I don't think any of our current personal stock titles were published commercially ... but if we did go ahead and start offering the perennials book, it would be as personal stock. And the proceeds would have to go into a university account ... which means the arrangement would have to pass muster with the accounting and auditing folks. I can't imagine that they'd accept an arrangement whereby the author or commercial publisher got royalties.
What I'd like to do is let the Illinois Union Bookstore know we've been getting requests for the book ... and begin referring callers there. IUB is a quasi-commercial bookstore run by the student union ... but somehow it's in-house commercial and thus seems more acceptable! I would definitely draw the line at actively promoting the commercial book through Extension catalogs and flyers and such. Referring incoming calls is one thing, but expending university resources to advertise a commercial pub is quite another!
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Jane Brown, Coordinator, Educational Media, Purdue University. Our distribution center is supported by the departments and those charges are based on the volume that a department uses the distribution center, i.e., if XXX Dept represents 23% of the volume distributed out of the center, then XXX dept pays for 23% of the operating cost. So, for that reason, if the item has a trackable number for the database, then it can be distributed out of the center as long as XXX department has no objection to paying the "freight" for that individual.
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Kurt Brown, Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin. At the Land Tenure Center, we have our own, non-profit publication series. Some of our authors also publish with commercial publishers (university presses usually). Once we were asked if we would promote or buy a quantity of the publications and we declined. We have, however, promoted and bought some titles when it was in our interest to do so, in other words, when the author/editor was one of our staff. So, I'd guess you'd say our policy is to be self-serving.
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Evie Engel Liss, Extension & Station Communications, Oregon State University. Oregon's Extension publications are produced in support of existing educational programs. In one or two cases, we have stocked items only after they underwent our standard publishing review process and were given an Oregon publications number/identification.
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