[WikiEN-l] JSTOR "Early Journal Content" access

[Sarah]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 09:25, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 2:18 PM, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've never understood how academic publishers view these issues. I
>> have friends who had their PhDs published by their university presses
>> -- at universities financed by taxpayers -- and the prices seemed
>> self-defeating -- £70 sterling for a relatively short book on a
>> minority issue. The publishers' argument is that it's a short print
>> run, so the price per unit has to be high, but the reason they can
>> only print a small number is they've determined in advance that no one
>> can afford to buy it.
>>
>> So it turns into almost vanity publishing, where the only people who
>> buy the books are extended family and friends, and the occasional
>> library if you're lucky. In the meantime, the rest of the world is
>> effectively locked out of this knowledge. It's an odd mindset for
>> educators to have.
>
> I have bought expensive academic books in the past, but never actual
> published PhD theses. I would expect someone to rewrite, extend and
> expand on their PhD thesis to make it suitable for a wider readership
> before publishing it and expecting people to buy it. Many of the books
> I've bought that have been expensive academic ones state that they are
> based on, or are an extension of the author(s) PhD work or other
> thesis work. I was also under the impression that PhD theses are
> printed and bound to go into a library, not really for sale, so I'm
> not sure what point is being made here. A PhD thesis and a book are
> different things.

Hi, sorry, I meant they had turned the PhD thesis into a book, not
that they simply published the thesis itself.

Sarah