Comments on: What Happens When We Misplace the Credentialing Keys? http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/11/30/what-happens-when-we-misplace-the-credentialing-keys/ What's Hot & What's Cooking in Scholarly Publishing - from the Society for Scholarly Publishing Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:25:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Kent Anderson http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/11/30/what-happens-when-we-misplace-the-credentialing-keys/#comment-5806 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:39:33 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=7011#comment-5806 Mike,

I agree with your take on this, and want to add two perspectives:

1. Publishers are extending brands with some abandon these days, especially into 2.0 properties (blogs, Twitter, Facebook). Where peer-review begins and ends, what is editorially sanctioned, etc., can become confusing.

2. Consumers can be confused by journal-esque branding, which can be a problem in medical publishing. Put “Journal of” in front of something, and it has greater credibility to the general public. This is a boundary we should also take into account with our brands.

]]> By: Michael Clarke http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/11/30/what-happens-when-we-misplace-the-credentialing-keys/#comment-5800 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:45:10 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=7011#comment-5800 I fail to see how an expansion of the fair use provision in the copyright law might lead to “increased incentives to create faddish, ephemeral, and otherwise transitory works.” Ninety percent of what the consumer publishing industry already produces (and has always produced, since at least the late 18th century) is faddish, ephemeral, and otherwise transitory. Moreover, the vast majority of the declining portion of the population that still read books are only vaguely aware of publisher branding (Harlequin, for their market niche, is the exception). Next time you are out for dinner, ask people what they are reading. Then ask them who published it. Ask who their favorite author is. Then ask who that author’s publisher is. No one outside the industry knows or cares.

This total lack of brand recognition is one reason why self-publishers are able to disrupt the market. A person might hear about a book from a friend (perhaps via a Facebook app), from an Amazon “you might also like” feature, or any number of other places. A self-published book looks no different from a book published by a traditional publisher. As no one looks to see who publishes a book, an “FSG” imprint is for all intents and purposes no more valuable than “MOB” (“My Own Brand”).

Professional and scholarly publishing, however, is a different story. Brand does matter in PSP and consumers of PSP content are aware of publisher branding. And yes, that brand recognition is, in part, driven by credentialing. Those PSP publishers that effectively abrogate credentialing by publishing just about anything they are sent (including, as has been well documented in the Scholarly Kitchen, nonsense articles generated by computers) do so at their own peril. Even more circumspect publishers who engage in volume author-pays publishing with the aim of facilitating post-publication review (effectively, post-publication credentialing) are playing a dangerous game and may end up shifting the locus of brand value to post-publication review services and thus putting themselves in the same leaking boat as consumer publishers.

]]>