I was offered to write a chapter in a book. Is it worth to publish them ?
In 2015 Thomson Reuters started indexing their's books.
I published with InTech in 2011 (chapter in Femtosecond-Scale Optics), and there will be another chapter in 2018 (in Accelerator Physics). In the interval, I was offered to write a couple of chapter proposals to which I committed, but had to drop off on account of busy schedule. I do regret not completing the job on the chapter in High Energy and Short Laser Pulses (2016), as it happens to be an excellent collection of short tutorials, reviews and primers on the current state of field from actually working researchers of solid reputation. I've been in my field for 20+ years. My record and credentials are on my RG page.
Here are a few thoughts and observations:
In these years, the InTech publishers did a good job on earning recognition, despite a crappy attitude of many. Some editors have very significant record and high reputation; some are nonentities seeking for an editorial record for their CV. The level of chapter proposals is not always even, but so is the level of articles in peer-reviewed press. Scientifically, they put together quite solid book projects (again, I am a laser-plasma physicist; maybe their physiology books are nonsense; and I would definitely not publish in their journals.) I do not know what kind of publicity you are looking for in pedagogy, medicine etc; everyone looks forward to collect +10k citations, I guess. Yet, in the areas of high field physics, computational electromagnetics, advanced accelerator concepts, ultrafast optics, an opportunity of putting together a comprehensive summary of your work or your views on the state of art in the field, the way YOU want it (rather than the way forced upon you by the referees), and making it open access, even with a modestly recognized publishing house, is invaluable. (All my chapters are essentially primers on the field.) I emphasize that a book chapter and a technical research paper are entirely different animals. I assume, you are all looking forward to writing a book some day - natural ambition. So start small - write a chapter at first. As regards invitation for a book project (or even a chapter) with Springer, Elgar, Kluwer, etc - good luck. If you cultivate relations with their editors, or happen to get a high post in research administration, you may get an invitation (may take quite a few years, though). And, to reach high in the research administration, you often MUST have book chapters in your record. From my experience, InTech chapter does not do you a discredit.
Publication process does not require a lot of commitment. First, you submit a chapter proposal (title, authors, a few words of description - a few hours work). Then, if they decide to go forward with the book (meaning they've got 20+ proposals) they circulate the list of contributors, with topics and abstracts. And, if you do not like the personalities, the contents of proposals, or the editor, you may drop out at any moment.That's a matter of your good judgement, they are not pressuring you. On the downside, they have just bumped up the fee to 1200 Euro - for my last one, a week ago, I have just paid 890 (about 50% of the New Journal of Physics fee). This is greed. This is not right, 1200 approaches the fees of regular high-tier journals. Because of that, I will probably not collaborate with them any more; but that is merely a financial reason. They have also switched to submission of MS Word files (they used to have an excellent LaTeX style and template), which diverts me even more than their greed.
I usually consult Beall's list and criteria to determine such things.
the list: https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
the criteria: https://scholarlyoa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/criteria-2015.pdf
Intechopen was on the list in 2012 but is not on the current list.
Is there an academic editor for the book?
Thank You for answer. The editor of this book will be Seyyed-Abed Hosseini
(Faculty Member and Lecturer at Islamic Azad University)
Hi Marcin,
Thomson Reuters has consolidated its credibility through its database book citation index as in the link below which was provided at researchgate. Hence, there is worth in the publication .
https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwokinfo.com%2Fproducts_tools%2Fmultidisciplinary%2Fbookcitationindex%2F
Thank You for answers. Hennrike I have found "Intech" on the "Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers" (InTech Open Access Publisher – Mirror site). Maybe it isn't a good idea to cooperate with them. But I don't know why Thomson Reuters index their books if the scientific value is low ?
https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
Hmm, I searched for Intechopen in Thomson Reuter's book list, and found only Intech Europe (3 titles in total) but no Intech open / Intechopen.
If you have solid work, then I would go with one of the usual publishers, Springer, Elgar, Kluwer, etc depending on your field of research.
Good luck getting your work published.
Henrike could You recommend someone in neurocarciology field ? Maybe a journal ?
It is not my field, but it is useful to consult the google scholars metrics for journals in different topical areas. In cardiology and neurology are both subcategories in the medical sciences:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=med_cardiology
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=med_neurology
/h
I published with InTech in 2011 (chapter in Femtosecond-Scale Optics), and there will be another chapter in 2018 (in Accelerator Physics). In the interval, I was offered to write a couple of chapter proposals to which I committed, but had to drop off on account of busy schedule. I do regret not completing the job on the chapter in High Energy and Short Laser Pulses (2016), as it happens to be an excellent collection of short tutorials, reviews and primers on the current state of field from actually working researchers of solid reputation. I've been in my field for 20+ years. My record and credentials are on my RG page.
Here are a few thoughts and observations:
In these years, the InTech publishers did a good job on earning recognition, despite a crappy attitude of many. Some editors have very significant record and high reputation; some are nonentities seeking for an editorial record for their CV. The level of chapter proposals is not always even, but so is the level of articles in peer-reviewed press. Scientifically, they put together quite solid book projects (again, I am a laser-plasma physicist; maybe their physiology books are nonsense; and I would definitely not publish in their journals.) I do not know what kind of publicity you are looking for in pedagogy, medicine etc; everyone looks forward to collect +10k citations, I guess. Yet, in the areas of high field physics, computational electromagnetics, advanced accelerator concepts, ultrafast optics, an opportunity of putting together a comprehensive summary of your work or your views on the state of art in the field, the way YOU want it (rather than the way forced upon you by the referees), and making it open access, even with a modestly recognized publishing house, is invaluable. (All my chapters are essentially primers on the field.) I emphasize that a book chapter and a technical research paper are entirely different animals. I assume, you are all looking forward to writing a book some day - natural ambition. So start small - write a chapter at first. As regards invitation for a book project (or even a chapter) with Springer, Elgar, Kluwer, etc - good luck. If you cultivate relations with their editors, or happen to get a high post in research administration, you may get an invitation (may take quite a few years, though). And, to reach high in the research administration, you often MUST have book chapters in your record. From my experience, InTech chapter does not do you a discredit.
Publication process does not require a lot of commitment. First, you submit a chapter proposal (title, authors, a few words of description - a few hours work). Then, if they decide to go forward with the book (meaning they've got 20+ proposals) they circulate the list of contributors, with topics and abstracts. And, if you do not like the personalities, the contents of proposals, or the editor, you may drop out at any moment.That's a matter of your good judgement, they are not pressuring you. On the downside, they have just bumped up the fee to 1200 Euro - for my last one, a week ago, I have just paid 890 (about 50% of the New Journal of Physics fee). This is greed. This is not right, 1200 approaches the fees of regular high-tier journals. Because of that, I will probably not collaborate with them any more; but that is merely a financial reason. They have also switched to submission of MS Word files (they used to have an excellent LaTeX style and template), which diverts me even more than their greed.
Well, things seem to have changed since this question was asked and a few comment are required:
InTech Open seems to have done a reasonable work until 2012, because a number of book chapters from that time had some impact and the webpage was not so misleading.
Currently, there are a number of doggy facts in the website:
A) They claim to be the "World’s largest Science, Technology & Medicine Open Access book publisher". This statement is hard to support because "largest" requires a metric and it is not clear what is their metric.
B) InTechOpen runs a number of Journals, but only two of them "INT J ADV ROBOT SYST" and Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology were indexed in SCR by Thomson-Reuters (currently by clarivate-analytics). Their impact index was below 1 and in 2016 both journals were acquired by SAGE journals. These continue to be published and their current impact index is still below 1.
C) The editorial has only 29 books adding up to 70 records in PuBMed BookShelf out of the 3391 books with 47305 chapters they register published on 13/april/2018, a miserable 0.86 % as books and 0.15% by chapter.
D) The advertise +57,400 citations in the Web of Science database and Even is the number is correct that amounts 1.2 citations per chapter. But because the verification of the data would take too long, I relied on their own sampling. Taking the data as given in their webpage, their most cited book chapters have:
-1004 citations in WofSci and 1584 in google scholar, for an average of 50.2 and 79.2, respectively. Taking this as representative sample of 20 out of 433 books allegedly referenced by the SCI, and using the same average we cannot justify more than 22000 citations. There is no data on individual chapters, so we cannot doble-check the calculation.
E) The current Book Processing Charge is 1200 € for such a low impact, sound too much. Frontiers, PLoS and BMC are just as expensive but their journals have and overwhelmingly higher impact and recognition.
Yes The produce the books, and these are online, but the price/quality ratio is too high!
In my view the editorial in gradually moving from a modest publisher with acceptable practices into a predatory publisher. It can make it to the Beall's list again sooner of later.
Best Wishes,
Rogelio
I am not particularly partial to InTech. I consider it merely a platform to publish, from time to time, primers on my rapidly developing field, in a company of well respected peers (some known to me personally). In response to the comments above:
A. This is just a self-praise. If you don't praise yourself, who else would? I am also not ready to name any other open-access book publisher on this scale.
B. I said, I would not publish in their journals. I do not have enough material to publish in every journal run by every publisher. On a bright side (or dark, depending in which side of the spectrum you are) - by comparison with Elsevier and Institute of Physics, who take under their umbrella any yellow sheet from any developing country (thus affording to these sheets to be indexed in WoS automatically), InTech are an example of modesty.
C, D. Professor Rodriguez-Sotres is preoccupied with statistics. This is what university professors do - count citations; helps with the tenure. It would likely make sense to note again that the number of citations has little to do with the merit of the text or the place where it is published. And, as I said before, citations are not all. To get citations, you write articles full of technicalities, not book chapters. Book chapter in a monograph is for education, for a brief yet meaningful summary. One may assume that a text in Reviews of Modern Physics serves the same purpose - good luck getting an invitation (and then winning over the referees.) Regarding inclusion of InTech books in WoS BKCI - a few hundreds are included there already. That there are not as many as one would wish is explicable. WoS has no science experts, it is a purely bibliographical automated service, using robots to collect citations (working very imperfectly). That obscure Indian, Chinese, and Russian journals, through their association with IoP, Elsevier, Springer, are listed in WoS, and InTech books that I use in my research and instruction are not, tells more about WoS than about InTech. On a bright side: As an alternative to InTech (where your book may easily be lost among multitudes), one may draw a proposal to the Institute of Physics, for a short electronic book. This is free of charge and probably will bring some royalties. (Competition is tight, though.)
E. I do not appreciate the increase in fees. Yet it is likely inevitable, in view of price fixing among publishers providing open access. In early 2010's, the difference between OA fees charged by different journals (from the same top-tier) was up to a factor 5. In mid-2010's, the price became even, at about 2000 USD/paper (within 10% margin.) I suppose, InTech want to be in the same price bracket, so they raise the fee accordingly.
In view of their rapidly growing revenue, it would be very good of them to start branching out, splitting into InTechPhysics, IntechMedicine, IntechBiotechnology etc., as Nature did over 10 years ago. That would increase visibility and separate nonsense from solid monographs. (Their monographs in physics are not any worse than special topics collections/volumes in such journals as New Journal of Physics, Physics of Plasmas, Applied Physics B etc.) I hope they come to senses and do that.
Dear Serge,
No misinterpret me, I just giving people some facts and in fact a few hours before, before doing the analysis I presented here, I had written a comment on a different thread, that may give you a complementary perspective:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_InTech_Open_Science_a_predatory_or_a_ligitimate_publisher#view=5ad0b2e7dc332d052007f038
if you want to publish with them or not, is up to you, all I would suggest is: just make sure you know what you are getting for your money.
Now, I do concur that impact index is a relative measure, but while a wrong piece of science can get a lot of citations for being awfully wrong, perhaps even with the authors knowing it in advance, a journal is different, because citations mean "other scientists are reading its published papers and using the information in it". It is serving the purpose of scientific communication. Indexation serves an additional important purpose in these days of overwhelming abundant scientific literature, it helps you locate the research related to what you are doing and read it (some of it you may cite later, when you publish). When not indexed, it is likely to go unnoticed (and it would not be cited). Wrong or right, indexation is a useful tool.
And yes I am a professor! that is a fact, is not good or bad, but it would be stupid on my side to pretend to be one kind of professional and act as some other kind. I am expected to be analytic, rely on verifiable data and take opposing views without passion, just check facts. I truly do not take personal.
There are several kinds of books. Some try to educate, some others try to summarize research, some others try to advance knowledge and discuss theories. Check some chapters within the InTech open, you will find many that look like a journal article: i.e. they are full of technicalities and present a lot of data. In theory, the papers should be original and somehow novel, as they were peer-reviewed. I really have not checked such fact with enough care, because I have not come across with chapters from InTech books that contain information related to what I do. They may be there, but as they are not indexed, their titles do not appear when I scan the literature using automated tools to identify the contributions I need to read. I wish I had time to scan all literature manually, but I have limitations.
Other editorials are business too, make money, charge the authors and readers and some journals they run are low impact. TRUE! - but the journals are indexed and these businesses do not lie about it, the impact index is public, can be verified and as far as i have seen, the number they give are correct. If you do not like them its fine, you don't have to. I do not like them either, I use them, these business fit my needs.
I do not know about InTech revenues, you may do some research and may start here:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/intech
best wishes
Rogelio
Just a detail : the "free copy" for the Author, in reality, can be only obtained if he buys another copy ! Predatory publisher, YES.
The benefit of being grown up is that you don't have to buy anything.
2 Rogelio: I get your point, it is better to have an open access text out in New Journal of Physics, for a similar price, without page limit, and with the citation index ~4 instead of 0. I only pointed out that books (not just InTech's, any books) and journals fill different niches. If some desire to publish technical articles in the book, it's just a poor judgement. After all, the peer review in the journal is to ensure (however imperfectly) the lack of technical lapses, avoid misinterpretation, and prevent, figuratively speaking, selling a dog food for a steak. Conversely, most books/monographs, if you check them out, are barely reviewed; it is assumed that if you are invited by the publisher, then you are trusted to do an honest job. That's why the books contain material previously published and passed through the peer review elsewhere, the material that may be extended and commented, with a fresh point of view, perhaps, but, in its core, peer-reviewed already.
As regards visibility: I have examples of papers published in Applied Physics B getting 1000+ citations, and those in Physical Review Letters (one of my own), barely squeezing out half a dozen over the same period of time. These examples are not rare. And I can point out junk published in Nature Physics (for no other reasons that the editor likes the authors and hand-picks the referees to ensure acceptance.) Obscurity of a journal has little to do with the notoriety of your work. It mostly depends on how aggressively you promote it. If you do promote it in earnest, yet fail to get recognition, the work is possibly junk. And if you don't, why complaining and blaming the failure on the journal or the book where you published it?
" ...I really have not checked such fact with enough care, because I have not come across with chapters from InTech books that contain information related to what I do. They may be there, but as they are not indexed, their titles do not appear when I scan the literature using automated tools to identify the contributions I need to read. I wish I had time to scan all literature manually, but I have limitations." - Google Scholar searches everything, and it's high time to learn to use it. In fact, I do not use any other search engines, and never miss a necessary piece of information.
Sincerely,
Serge
Dear Serge,
Google Scholar is not bad, but filters out very little, it frequently takes a lot my time to find what I really need. Sometimes I use it, but not all of the time.
I do not think I have to "promote" my work beyond making it visible by publishing in a recognised journal. if it is valuable (useful) and visible, it will get consideration by itself. As you well mentioned craps may slip into NATURE and SCIENCE, but very good papers are more frequent in this journals. Your wording sound like if you despise this editorials (if so, you are free to do so) - as for me - I find like or displease irrelevant - I try to use their journals, as I find convenient to my interests.
When I published the chapter on the InTech book was because a scientist whose work I regard as respectable invited me (Horacio Pérez-Sánchez, I do not know him personally, though). The Open access publishing model was less noticeable at the time (or at least it was for me), and I did not take the time to analyse the price/visibility relationship. And as I said, things at InTech have changed, at the time the printed copy was part of the cost, you did not have to buy one copy, a policy change that hides an increase in prices.
Finally to end up this conversation, which is straying away from the thread topic: I am not complaining merely stating some facts and telling my side of the story - I really do not take it personally as I said.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Thank You everybody for comments and sharing personal experience. Now is clear for me that InTechOpen changed in last years unfortunatelly in wrong direction. Nowadays it is not a good place to publish data. Thank You for all for helpful answers.
The publishing fees would translate to a whooping amount for a third world author.
I have submitted a chapter in a book, Breastfeeding in February 2017, I have not heard anything from my contacts at Intech. I am an expert in breastfeeding, pediatrics and neuroscience. This was my second chapter in a book by Intech. The first book went quite well and the editor was Dr. Michael Fitzgerald, an expert on Autism. The book was published in April 2017. I have published in peer reviewed journals on the influence of breastfeeding on lowering the prevalence of autism.
From Intechopen, i received recently the following email:
" Due to your involvement in the field, and the research you published in your paper, "Effects of surface treatments on photoelectric work function of silver-nickel alloys," IntechOpen invites you to extend your work and offer a more comprehensive overview of your studies. Contribute a chapter to "Photodetectors," an upcoming Open Access book edited by Dr. Kuan Chee."
Now, I am writing a book on electromagnetism at a known and recognized publisher in France who pays me the copyright. I do not want to waste my time, especially since I have to pay an astronomical sum to publish my research (about 1600 euros).
Like many participants in this discussion, I suspect Intechopen to be a predatory publisher. Am I right or wrong?
I think it was borderline before 2012, nowadays it should be considered as predatory.
1) They produce mainly books with "peer review" but lack formal indexation.
2) They prices are as high or higher than those charged by recognized editorials of indexed Journals such as PLoS, BMC and Frontiers In.
3) The Editor selection process is not clear, nor the stringency of the review.
4) Impacts (as far as I have been able to verify) go from low to negligible.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Thank You one more for all comments. I agree with Rogelio Rodríguez-Sotres and Mohamed Akbi that InTechOpen is predatory. As for me the costs for publishing data is much to high as Rogelio writed.
Dear All,
Thank you for your interesting comments and valuable advices. Intechopen should be considered as predatory. This is the conclusion we can draw.
Kind regards
Mohamed
Predatory, yes, I confirm by personal experience (not to be repeated, of course).
IntecOpen Limited; I just submitted an abstract, etc for an Algorithm to prevent SCD, $1800 required later on. I wonder if I can still back out?
David
I guess you still can, but I bet they will try to prevent you from doing so, probably offering you a discount or other "benefits".
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Thank you, Rogelio,
"Benefits", that is a surprise ! In the fine print I found that if more than usual editing is required that the $1,800 is increased. I need to get my process out to the world and my options are limited at age 90. I may have to use your method of negotiation yet,
Regards,
David
2 David:
You do not have to do anything, except, in order to be polite, you may tell them that you have changed your mind and wouldn't submit a chapter.That will end the matter. As a native English speaker, and as long as you stick with their style (for which they provide an MS Word template), you will not need editing beyond the debugging of typos, which is free. I wonder: where 1800 USD comes from? Last I checked, it was 1200 Euro per chapter (as long as you stay within the page limit, which is ample.) Under a current exchange rate, that would barely make 1400 USD. Also: Mr. Rogelio is a renown fighter against this particular publishing house, most ready for an advice.
Cheers,
Serge
This week IntechOpen Limited did not respond to my Abstract or my following e-mail. That must be IntechOpen's new way of saying your chapter does not fit in our latest collection of chapters.
i also sent IntechOpen a formal letter in an effort to protect my discovery of "how to avoid asymptomatic SCD".
Yes, FORGET, as Gaspare just said.
I intend to try an e-book next. Any words of wisdom?
I know Springer being more and more active in producing and selling Electronic versions of chapter of books....
I have just offered to write a book chapter for IntechOpen. Following this interesting discussion, I have to reject this invitation! Thank you..
I have invitation from intechopen too to write book chapter, tell me its worth to write or not?
It is not worth it, Dilbag.
I did hard work for them. They gave no response to receipt of my Key words/abstract. Until I sent a formal certified letter. Then they said they were sorry to see me go but they would keep me on their list for next time.
I also found they were on the predator list in 2012, David
Dears All,
thank you for all discussion in this session. i have same invitation to write a chapter in InTechopen.
You are right Prof. GALATI, we do not deal with the predatory publishers. As for Alfian Nur Rosyid, let me remind you of the Italian proverb: "chi va piano, va sano e va lontano". Do not worry, every thing in its time.
OMG! I nearly uploaded my full article. Luckily I decided to check out this discussion..
Congratulations Mohd Zairul !
That's fine what you did and you will not regret it. Be sure.
Best wishes.
Hi everyone,
I was invited to contribute in an IntechOpen book. Some colleagues warned me about this publisher, therefore, I did a quick searchin the Internet. I found the following newspaper article. It seems to me clear now that this publisher has be involved in cuestionable practices.
Regards
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/health-canada-kept-predatory-publisher-despite-warning-about-shoddy-science-from-government-expert
Thanks for sharing this.
It is regrettable and disheartening to see the lack of ethics in a human activity that is so depending on trust and goo will.
Best wishes
Rogelio
Dear Rogelio and Serge, I learned a lot from your discussion. I am a Professor in Malaysia and Iwas 'invited' to submit a chapter. I put a lot of hard work into it and checked out their website plus looked through some of the books. Seemed legitimate to me. The price was high though, and a bit of a struggle for me to pay it. The chapter is long andt has been published (Crush Injuries of the Hand). I wish I had read this before - I would have sent it somewhere else.
Anyway we learn from our mistakes - plus I learnt about Beall's list of predatory publishers. I had no idea about this term, and have been in academic line for so long - I was duped!
Having said that, the chapter and book have been published - it is there inopen access.
I guess I will not be publishing anymore.
Roohi
Thank you Professor Roohi for your honesty and sharing. It does not diminish the quality of your work. Three years ago, I had the same experience with a fake conference (WASET: another category of predators) where I presented part of my research work that I had the chance to publish later in a good journal ...
Never again this! No more publishing with intechOpen! No more participating to Waset conferences!
We will boycott IntechOpen, Waset, ... and all the predators.
Best wishes,
- Mohamed.
Dear Sharifah David and Mohamed,
Thank you for sharing your experiences, and do not feel bad about it. I consider impossible to be aware of all possible situations, and certainly this editorials make a careful job hiding their lack of recognition and the weakness of their peer-review. After all, their profits and survival (as business) depend on it.
To our fortune, more and more scientists are becoming aware of this kind of editorial malpractice and your experiences will, I am sure, have an impact in the future scientists under your supervision. They will be better prepared to avoid being deceived.
More than a Boycott it is a matter of "sense and sensibility". Science is a matter of trust and we all need editorials to contribute by providing trustworthy ethically sounding filters to maintain the value of scientific communication in their different modalities. Therefore, in the most selfish interest, each one of us needs to pay attention to the background of the editorial group who is offering us their services; just with the same skepticism we look at providers of lab-ware, kits and chemicals, required for experiments. I am sure you all are very picky and ask for all relevant details before buying something from a new provider.
In simple words, we need to lean to identify the signs of good and bad editorials. You may be interested in this article, which I did post in a different related thread:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-29/medical-journals-have-a-fake-news-problem
FROM THE THREAD:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_I_trust_OMICS_publishing_group?view=5b5f1a4ff4d3ec52e172ab77
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Thank you for sharing this information. I ll not submit my work to them.
Dear Serge Kalmykov ,
I read with interest your comment. After the initial shock of "discovering" Beall's list and finding InTechOPen on it, I have done my own research and am coming to my own conclusions:
1. The merit of an article lies within the article.
2. A book chapter is different from a research article - I agree with Serge, the book chapter gave me the chance to present the topic as I wished it - not be bound by referree opinions.
3. InTechOpen does publish the book - and it is up to the author to do so after looking at the other submissions - although in my case they dropped!
4. InTechOpen - the citations, references etc do come in. It is OA.
5. The fee is exorbitant. I think it should be reduced.
So now - the golden question - would I do it again? I am a reputable professor - but I do see some benefit in this. I would do it if the situation warranted it.
Dear Sharifah
Your reputation will not suffer a bit if you publish with Intech. It is a decent, even though a somewhat second/third tier publisher (I agree with every point of your inquiry.)
Yet we should start with the endpoint. Their exorbitant OA fee (similar to that of PLoS, Scientific Reports, or New Journal of Physics) is not going to be reduced. Do you/your group have budget to pay it? If not, then forget it and stick to the conventional paywall model.
If you have the budget, then one has to decide on the purpose of such publication. For myself, I would not send to Intech brand-new results which may actually benefit from a rigorous peer review. Additionally, articles in regular peer-reviewed journals/magazines have a benefit of much better visibility than book chapters (regardless whether they are published with Intech, or Springer, Kluwer, de Guyter etc. etc.)
I myself found Intech instrumental as a vehicle to publish once in a while a short unsolicited review or a primer. (I will do it again if needed.) Also, an Intech chapter may be a good platform to publish a case study (or a collection of case studies) which may be inappropriate for a regular journal, but has a clear pedagogical benefit (especially due to OA.) In these cases, I would not draw any benefits from a peer review. Paying the fee (even exorbitant one) would save me time/money; I am not going to waste my costly working hours in bickering with the referees on the matters of style and opinions, to their and mine frustration. Yet I would not through around cash in 2000 Euro chunks all the time. One chapter every 5-6 years, to keep certain things important to myself archived, is enough. (I have one invitation pending, but I will drop the ball for now; they will come again with a better project and in a better time.)
I reiterate that the original research that needs more than one opinion must be published in regular peer-reviewed press, whether OA or not. To this end, Scientific Reports or PLoS may be an option (though I disagree heartily with their policies that the paper merits should not be judged on the basis of impact.)
I also reiterate that registration to submit a chapter is nonbinding. If you have the budget and right material, then check on the volume editor before registration, then check on the list of contributors (accessible upon registration). If the company does not look right, then drop out. Actually, it is to their benefit to look for the editors - who are the reviewers at the same time - who are willing to reject proposals. Yet rejection by Intech remains the rarest occurrence. (I was surprised that they rejected your project.)
I guess, that's it.
Good luck,
Serge
Dear Serge,
TQ for your comments and valid, pertinent advice. Just for the record, they didn't reject me, I said no to them.
Thomas Nickl I checked and their chapters were indeed indexed in the Book Scitation Index from Web of Science (WOS).
Dear Andrés,
Be carefull with the WOS data on InTech, there is a Journal named INTECH published by the INSTRUMENT SOCIETY AMERICA with impact index below 1. That is not InTech Open the editorial. There are also a couple of Journals (Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems & Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology) that use to belong to InTech Open but now these are handled by Sage Inc. These appear as InTech owned Journal up to may 13th, 2016 and InTech still handles: Int. J. Agricultural Chemistry, Int. J. Regenerative Medicine, Int. J. Geoscience Research, Int. J. Engineering Business Management, Int. J. Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology, Int. J. Textile Science and Technology, Int. J. Radio Frequency Identification & Wireless Sensor Network. NONE OF THEM INDEXED.
The editorial advertises over 47000 chapters, out of them, only 70 chapters, from 39 Books are indexed in PubMed.
Apparently,
InTech managed to register some specific chapters and a few books in the indexation services, but this would not be applicable to all they have published, and most likely will not apply to future books.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Mr. Rogelio is surely a great believer that InTech us an ultimate evil. Let's make his world view crumble.
1. Go to the master list of books indexed in WoS: http://wokinfo.com/cgi-bin/bkci/search.cgi
2. Type in InTech in the search field, click "Go"
3. Retrieve the list of 911 entries, every one of which is an indexed InTech book.
Some entries repeat, hence there are less than 911 books indexed. Maybe (conservatively) just about 500, or ~ 1/7 of the published titles total. All the more reason to be more selective about the book project to join. All the less reason to trust biased opinions.
I certainly have not looked at that list. Honestly, I could not access that database when I tried a few months ago, my apologies.
That list includes 442 unique ISBN numbers (that would be 442 Books), 12.4 % of the books the have published to this date (according to their own website).
Why are not all registered? - beats me!
I sampled a few books and could not recover but a handful of citations per title. My sample was far from exhaustive, that is true.
Notably, on their website there are citations advertised for books not listed in the WOS list. Those I could not trace in the WOS core collection. Why do an publisher have to make statistics so cryptic? - It hardly helps their cause.
Personally, I still find the price of a chapter too high considering the recognition of the publisher - and if the numbers are so good (as they say) why not provide less cryptic statistics?
Regarding my opinion, if such opinion is biased or not - it is also a matter of opinion... honestly, I does not really worries me.
And again, everyone is FREE to use the media fulfilling his needs - it's not about evil or goodness.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
" I sampled a few books and could not recover but a handful of citations per title. My sample was far from exhaustive, that is true.
Notably, on their website there are citations advertised for books not listed in the WOS list. Those I could not trace in the WOS core collection. "
This is just another proof of the proposition that quality of the paper, the attention it draws among the community, and its bibliographic metrics are correlated rather weakly (if not at all.) Being indexed in WoS is not a fetish. All InTech books in physics that I found worth uploading (and there are plenty of them) are not in WoS core collection. What do I care? As an editor, reviewer, and practicing researcher, it is I who decides what is worth and what is not, not some obscure statistician/librarian.
Dear Serge,
What I find difficult to swallow is the manipulation of the facts with questionable intent, in an activity so dependent of truthfulness and honesty.
If I sell the production of books, but these may not end up being listed in databases - why not saying it openly? why not explaining how the listing process works and what will be the destiny of your chapter?
As you said repeatedly, there seem to be a market for that. So there is a marked for self-archiving (so much cheaper by the way), conference proceedings and other services...
When the editorial started doing this job back in the 2000's, their site was not so full of pompous facts of difficult corroboration, most of the invitations came from the book editors themselves, and the prizes were not so high.
Had they stuck to that business model, I would not have any complain about them. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.
And at the risk of sounding insidious, I should stress: "anyone if free to choose them as conveyors of their work" - I have no trouble with that - personally, I had enough.
Best wishes
Rogelio
I have found that in 1 month since my 2 book chapters have been "published" by InTechOpen, they have been read 60 times and my RG score has gone up by 2 points (10% increase), so I am a happy camper. That in itself is the reward.
Besides, I am proud of my work. I am happy that people are reading it for free and appreciating it.
Congratulation Laura Rebeca Jimenez-Gutierrez ,
As I repeatedly say, the publisher does not make the quality of the work, it is the authors responsibility.
You probably would have got even more citations if your chapter had been published in a place with higher visibility, but that we shall not really know.
best wishes
Rogelio
In the last month I have received several spam messages from them: two invitations to submit proposals for two different books, and one invitation to be the editor of another.
Their books are low quality, both in terms of the topics covered and in their writing style. Some chapters contain grammatical errors, some have figures with the wrong caption, etc. It is obvious that there is barely any review from the editors. The writers of the chapters I've read are not experts in their field, they have just a superficial understanding of the topics they cover; therefore, the topics are treated superficially. This is subjective, but there are many articles in Wikipedia that are much more well written than many InTech books.
My personal opinion is that they are only interested in our money; if you pay, you get published. I wouldn't waste time and money with them.
I think we all have to be alert
The wave of Open Access predatory publishers may grow
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06178-7
Best wishes,
Rogelio
And regarding the value for your money, you may find this graph interesting:
http://www.eigenfactor.org/openaccess/oa.php
Best wishes
Rogelio
Dear Rogelio Rodríguez-Sotres Thank you for those two indices!
Ricardo E Castro I don't think that all their books are useless - such sweeping statements are unscientific! I agree with Rogelio that the quality depends on the author's contribution. Also dependent on the Editor of the book to do their work.
hello
i am preparing the chpter book for publishing in IntechOpen. I am currently in reviewing progess. it's an official publisher or predatory open access ....
could you inform me please ..
Dr. Dehni. A
Please go up this thread and check on Popular answers, these should give you a good idea about what is best for you.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Predator or not ? When In TechOpen will send to you the Referee's comments on your manuscript, you will get a partial answer....
@Abdellatif
The list of predatory publishers is subjective and relative. Do a good job yourself. Be proud, not ashamed of your work and you will be fine.
Dear Dr. Abdellatif Dehni,
At first, you have to continue and to finish your work independently if intech open is a predatory publisher or not. Meanwhile, I join my RG colleague Rogelio in telling you to check the popular answers of this discussion before the payment. The amount payable is exorbitant, so read carefully the comments of colleagues in this discussion before you commit to pay ..
In addition, I hope that the following link will allow you to follow other interesting discussions and give you further advices.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_InTech_Open_Science_a_predatory_or_a_ligitimate_publisher?view=5babaccf11ec731b6d50381a
At the end, i hope that you could decide what is the best choice for you.
Good Luck.
Thank you, dear Dr. Rogelio and all who participated in this chat!
I've got now an imagination of what the InTechOpen is. I'd paid 90 Lbs for hardbound book and now going to pay appr. 1500 Lbs for publication. Alas, I needed seeking such a dubious information about the Intech's renome prior to submitting the chapter. Looks like I can smell a rat. Their announce on indexing in WoS was the strongest argument. Yet I was surprised upon receiving the reviewer's favorable conclusion - almost no remarks except minor ones, and meanwhile, I was utmost unexperienced author and this chapter was my first attempt to publish something fit for indexing in WoS.
But still I hope for a successful way out of situation and eventual indexing of my chapter! Hopefully, InTech will not be a predator for a while... Eventually, I wish to think good on him!
Thank you, all who participated and information in this chat!
At first I was interested in the offer from Inthepipon but after the fee to be paid was too high, so while I was pending to see the next change
I have an opportunity to submit a book chapter in Intech Open. I want one line suggestion that whether I should opt or not to this publisher? Is this publisher genuine or fraud?
Its paid service. I also got a opportunity but i didn't take it up because of the payment
Dear Narendra Kumar,
In the almost unanimous opinion of the participants in this discussion, intechopen is a predatory publisher. So, ignore them, because they are above all looking for money, science is for them just a pretext...
Further, to complete your opinion, take a look to the present discussion and also to another one about intech open, in the following link:
www.researchgate.net/post/Is_InTech_Open_Science_a_predatory_or_a_ligitimate_publisher?view=5bef5479979fdc92d5087dea.
Good luck,
Regards.
Publishing with IntechOpen can be the first exercise in writing large forms. A soft review with quality, depending mainly on the Editor’s personality, is a good thing, giving you the freedom to get your own way. I noted that after publishing, you can be invited by more prestigious publishers, such as Springer. However, this exercise is only possible if you somehow find funding.
Yes, Alexander, I absolutely agree with you! I do not regret of my writing for IntechOpen, actually. I percept this quite expensive attempt as a first step upward. Besides, they were very kind to me, giving enough time to complete the work (I fell ill during a process of preparing the chapter). The only circumstance which made me upset - they gave no transparent explanations when offered this project. I had addressed to curator the least two times to clarify whether my chapter really would get in WoS, but they just omissed this point. Afterwards I've learned that my chapter will not be listed in respectable databases that worth to be mentioned. Nevertheless, I do not regret, as acquired experience in writing the large things costs much, and they really gave me a chance. So, I am rather thankful to IntechOpen.
We also received a proposal to publish in this edition, which would seem to be serious harm. But much embarrassing cost, which is not openly stated in the correspondence, but somehow imperceptibly posted on the site.
After reading the comments on this edition, and checking the website List of Predatory Publishers https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/#I and Beall's List of Predatory Publishers https://clinicallibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/ bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers / , we have seen that this publication is predatory, and their main goal is personal gain due to the poor knowledge of the authors. Therefore, in order to preserve their own reputation and their money, and I don’t recommend this edition!
No, it isn't. They have no serious quality check, and they care only a matter : MONEY.
So sad! Anyone, could you prompt me how can I increase the visibility of my chapter provided IntechOpen didn't care of including their authors in none of respectable databases? I guess, it's impossible by no means, but the way out should be found somehow.
Absolutely, Gaspare Galati. Profit at all costs without worrying about science. This is the motto of these predators (publishers, fake conference organizers,...). They do their business on the backs of credulous researchers. Shame on them !
I was also offered this opportunity and my chapter was accepted. The fee to be paid is actually High. i also still have to get the publication rights from journals since it is a chapter summarizing some work I and my collaborators did a while ago and published in various journals and which I decided to join in a chapter. I an still indecisive about the whole thing. Let us say something happened and I could not pay, can I simply withdraw and decline publication or do I have to pay a fee? Does anybody know?
Anyone who has already submitted their work to this publisher can safely withdraw their work without paying anything. Evidence - provide links List of Predatory Publishers https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/#I and Beall's List of Predatory Publishers https://clinicallibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/ bealls-list-of-predatory publishers /
Any treaties are valid, firstly, if both parties have an honest dialogue, they describe a detailed action plan for the implementation of their duties; secondly, if payment has not yet been made. The authors have no obligations to the predatory publishing house before payment.
Saule Balmagambetova When working with such publishing houses, all responsibility for all issues falls on you. I am not sure that other scientists will pay attention to publications in this publishing house.
To Arystan Omarov. Yes, dear colleague. This fact has become quite obvious from your previous feedback. Seems, all evaluations have been made: we deal with predatory publishing house.
The question was - How can I get away with failure of publication? For instance, would it be worthful placement the chapter in RG? To what extent this step would might save my publication with quite valuable content? Where else?
To Saule Balmagambetova. The best way - look for another edition, and publish your article there, even without any changes. And do not apologize to fraudsters, waste extra emotions about this. We all make mistakes, but it is important to stop on time.
Pay attention to the following publication.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_InTech_Open_Science_a_predatory_or_a_ligitimate_publisher#view=5c3423c1aa1f09335457eb64
Good luck!
Too late, unfortunately. Our chapter has been published online, and now they cannot clarify time of final publishing. So, we failed to share our findings in proper way. I regret of my decision to publish with them. All this was one large mistake. Alas!
So, who can point me way out, without futile reasoning, is it worthwhile to place our chapter here, in Research Gate? Would such a placement be eligible for citing? Who cited works from Research Gate? In what types of journals?
Colleagues, I would be very grateful to anyone who can provide us by some adequate prompt.
I've seen 8 downloads of our chapter to the moment in their site (IntechOpen). Does this mean the chapter might be citeable?
Dear Saule Balmagambetova ,
Downloads mean some has read your work, yet you do not know who.
The potential readers could be working in closely related areas and might cite you, but they may be working in something vaguely related, found your work interesting, but may not cite you.
In the end when you publish your work, you expect to be read, and that eventually may lead to citations. There is no guarantee.
Publishing with InTech does not demerit your work, the only problem is: "it turns out to be an expensive medium in relation to the visibility they grant you. This is becuase your chapter is unlikely to get included in broadly known scientific literature databases such as WOS and PubMed.
However, your chapter will eventually appear in the results of google-scholar-searches aiming at the subject of your chapter, which means it is not inaccessible or hidden.
Because it is open access, you may uploaded in RG without infringement of copyrights, but RG is not a journal, is a repository, and a closed one, because it can only be downloaded by members.
There are however repositories called Archiving Servers (ArX), like Cornell's ArXiv, where you can submit your paper it is published and you are fed back with observations and criticisms from your colleagues, you can then make amendments until your paper is "mature" and you decide to leave unchanged.
Some of this sites have charges, other are free, but in not all of them peer-reviewing is compulsory before your initial version is uploaded, and only a few of them are indexed. There is even an initiative to develop standards for such publication model (https://www.openarchives.org/). May be the model of the future... who knows.
One thing you can do to increase your visibility is to create a google-scholar-profile, all you need is a gmail account (free and easy to get). Such profile is public and gets listed in searches
As an example, I include a link to Prof. Frances Arnold profile:
https://scholar.google.com.mx/citations?user=wil5NhcAAAAJ&hl=en
She is Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2018 and did bother to create her profile, but do not feel intimidated, anyone is entitled to have one, and google scholar is not a vanity fair, it is science communication search tool.
I hope you find these considerations useful.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Dear Rogelio!
I found your considerations invaluable. This is a real way to increase the visibility of our chapter, though without citing in WoS. I've come along to Google profile you mentioned, and liked the idea. I have an account in Google. I'll try to create something similar in the nearest time. Cordial thanks!
Dear Sir/Madam
Kindly suggest me whether to go for chapter publication with intechopen. I am in dilemma. The editor of the book is one of the leading researchers of Asia. Will the name of Editor matters for my publication or should I withdraw my decision of publishing ??? Please let me know @saule Balmagambetova @ Rogelio @arystan Omarov
Dear colleague!
First, you should clarify, what kind of Trust is going to cover publishing costs of the book edited by Dr. X. If it is Welcome trust, your book will be indexed in WoS after checking of the content. If not, you will get in my situation. They never explain properly, as it is really half-predatory publishing house. For instance, they missed all deadlines for final publishing of the book where my chapter is placed. Without any worthful explanations. So, gather all available info before making decision. Don't hesitate to be very bothersome and unpleasant with your curator. Their main goal - to gather money, but to be not sank, they sometimes practice properly.
Dear Niranjan C a ,
I think Saule Balmagambetova opinion is truly worth considering. She knows from experience, and that is very valuable.
In addition, if you are prepared to spend money, you should consider spending it in a publication House with better reputation and higher visibility.
Big publishers also publish books, they are just more stringent about the topic being trendy, the approach having some kind of appealing novelty and the authors having some recognition. Not a surprise, they run a business. Some of this Publishers offer also the open access gold model, if you prefer you book to be completely accessible.
Funny enough, these Houses do not have to chase authors, you write to them and make a proposal for a book, then an editor or an editorial team will analyse your proposal and let you know if they are interested. Check all these sites:
https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/book-authors-editors/writing-a-book-proposal/924
https://www.elsevier.com/authors/book-authors
https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/book-authors/submit-your-proposal/index.html
https://taylorandfrancis.com/partnership/authors-and-editors/
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/why-publish/submit-proposal
Best wishes,
Rogelio
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Books