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Subsidy ("Vanity") Publishing Among American College and University Faculty

The problem of this study was subsidy ("vanity") publishing among college and university faculty. The purpose of the study was to estimate the extent to which postsecondary faculty use subsidy presses for the publication of their scholarly writings and the professional reasons for which academicians choose these presses to publish their works, viz., tenure, promotion, or salary increase. An additional purpose was to compare the subsidy publication experiences of faculty according to the types of institutions which employ them.
The study involved 11 national subsidy publishers and 1,124 subsidy-published authors throughout the United States. Subsidy-published authors were identified occupationally as faculty by their appearance in the 1990 edition of The National Faculty Directory. The subjects in this study consisted of (a) faculty members listed in The National Faculty Directory. 1990 who are (b) known to have used subsidy presses for publishing their writings. A major finding of the study was that the proportion of vanity-published authors who are college and university faculty was small.
Twenty-seven percent of the faculty whose books had been published by subsidy presses indicated that they had written and published in order to earn salary increases. Another 23% indicated that they had their books published to obtain promotions. Seventeen percent had their books published for the purpose of gaining tenure. Finally, one-third of the faculty surveyed identified miscellaneous other reasons for publishing their books through subsidy presses.
More than two-thirds of the faculty who had used vanity presses (69%) claimed that their subsidy-published books had been effective in helping them achieve their purposes for publishing. Thirty percent judged their subsidy-produced books as ineffective. The majority of the subsidy-published faculty in the study were employed either by research universities or community/junior colleges. Only 26% of those surveyed indicated that they would choose a subsidy publisher if they had it to do again.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc330809
Date05 1900
CreatorsAlahmad, Husam I. (Husam Ibrahim)
ContributorsLumsden, D. Barry, Bigler, William, Smith, Howard Wellington, Witter, William D.
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatvii, 93 leaves, Text
RightsPublic, Alahmad, Husam I. (Husam Ibrahim), Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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