Publishing houses: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Palmarium Academic Publishing, Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, Verlag Classic Edition, EUE Editions Universitaires Européennes, Doyen Verlag, Fromm Verlag, Saarbrücker Verlag für Rechtswissenschaften
Service industries: International Book Market Service Ltd.
The company publishes theses, research notes, and dissertations through its e-commerce bookstores.[1] Its publishing methods have been questioned for the soliciting of manuscripts from individuals, and for providing authors with the appearance of a peer-reviewed publishing history. OmniScriptum is designated as non-academic by the Norwegian Scientific Index,[3] and its subsidiary Lambert Academic Publishing has been described as a predatoryvanity press which does "not apply the basic standards of academic publishing such as peer-review, editorial or proof-reading processes."[4]
The company also offers print-to order publishing for fiction authors. It previously specialized in publishing and selling Wikipedia articles, but has stated that the practice of publishing Wikipedia content ended in 2013.[5]
History
The first publishing house of the group was founded in Düsseldorf in 2002 by Wolfgang Philipp Müller, and transferred to Saarbrücken in August 2005.[2] The Mauritian office was established in April 2007 and was managed from 2008 up until May 2011 by David Benoit Novel,[6][7] followed by Reezwan Ghanty.[8]
Omniscriptum specializes in German, Russian, Spanish,[13]French, and English dissertations, theses, and research projects.[14][15] Its business model involves a team of acquisitions editors, who search the Internet for academic authors and invite them by unsolicited e-mail for their manuscripts.[16][17][18] The editorial team sends emails to people who have written a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation and whose college library has a web-accessible catalog.[19]
Various branches of the company, including Alphascript Publishing (created in April 2009),[22]Betascript Publishing (created in January 2010), Fastbook Publishing (created in July 2009),[23] and Doyen Verlag, have published books consisting of compilations of Wikipedia articles.[24] These books are widespread and have been purchased or acquired by various libraries and academic institutions in at least Europe[25][26] and Asia; many copies can be found at the National Taiwan University.
History of Ghana: a collection of Wikipedia articles published as a book
The titles were published as edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster who are also listed as authors. As of 21 December 2011[update], 180,818 titles were listed on the OMS bookshop.[27] Betascript lists Lambert M. Surhone [de], Miriam T. Timpledon, Susan F. Marseken, Mariam T. Tennoe, and Susan F. Henssonow as editors, giving an additional 356,765 titles as of 21 December 2011[update].[28]
Regarding its publishing strategies, Alphascript asserted that: "There is hardly another platform for quick and better processing of information than Wikipedia" for customers "who want to be informed on a specific subject" in book form, though they can "have online everything free of charge".[29][30][31]
According to the company, the last compilation of Wikipedia articles was published in 2013. The company has stated that it stopped the practice of publishing Wikipedia content in order to focus on "original academic (and) special interest authors."[5]
Business practices
Omniscriptum's business practices have been questioned for profiting by the sale of unacclaimed works and for insufficiently disclosing that content is available elsewhere. In November 2009 an article in the Swiss newspaper Berner Zeitung described Omniscriptum's practices as questionable. The paper faulted Omniscriptum for not disclosing that the books it was publishing were academic dissertations, for publishing works that received a passing grade, and for charging high prices.[33] American writer Victoria Strauss characterized OMS as "an academic author mill",[34][35][36] while Pagan Kennedy notes that OMS's practices are comparable to a form of kudzu weed proliferation in book publishing.[37]
In January 2011 German professor Debora Weber-Wulff, in Copy, Shake, and Paste (a blog about plagiarism and scientific misconduct), referred to OMS as a spam publisher, which has been further confirmed in a blog post at Guide2Research.[38]
^"Fromm Verlag: Impressum". Frommverlag.de (in German). Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften (VDM Publishing). Archived from the original on 27 August 2010. Retrieved 27 August 2010.
^"Doyen Verlag - Impressum". Doyen-verlag.de (in German). Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften (VDM Publishing). Archived from the original on 22 September 2010. Retrieved 22 September 2010.
^"Palmarium Academic Publishing -Главная". palmarium-publishing.ru (in Russian). Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften (VDM Publishing). Archived from the original on 18 August 2016. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
^"VDM Publishing House Ltd.: Imprint". vdm-publishing-house.com. Beau-Bassin, Mauritius: International Book Market Service Ltd. 2011. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2011. VDM Publishing House Ltd. has been renamed and is now International Book Market Service Ltd.
