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Pearson largest U.S. publisherDARIEN, Connecticut, October 31, 2004 -- Education publisher Pearson continued in 2003 as the largest college house in the United States, according to the trade journal Subtext. Pearson's college sales were $1.4 billion, off slightly from 2002. The Subtext breakdown, with numbers rounded:
Pearson Education
Thomson
McGraw-Hill
Houghton Mifflin
Wiley
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| $ 1.4 billion
1.1 billion
540 million
226 million
190 million |
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| -0.4 percent
0.8 percent
1.9 percent
6.6 percent
8.0 percent |
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Donnelly settles discrimination suit| WASHINGTON, October 24, 2004 -- Book printer R.R. Donnelley & Sons settled a race discrimination lawsuit filed by black workers at its Lakeside plant for $15 million. Edith Jones, lead plaintiff in a class-action suit, asserteded that black employees were treated unfairly when Donnelly closed the plant. In the settlement, Donnelly admits no wrongdoing. Thed company has also paid an addtional $20 million to settle other discrimination claims related to the closing. |
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Pearson buys altonaEd products| BOSTON, Massachusetts, October 23, 2004 -- Pearson School Systems bought altonaEd, which created the School Information & Performance package for teachers to manage classrooms. The PIP package is known for its diagnostic capabilities on student performance. Terms of the acquisition were not announced. The president of Pearson School Systems, Mike Evans, said PIP will be integrated with Pearson's SASIxp and CIMS student information systems for "the greatest degree of choice" to meet school district needs. |
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Study finds peer-review foiblesLAS VEGAS, Nevada, October 22, 2004 -- A social-work professor who submitted sham papers to 33 scholarly journals found problems in the peer-review process. William M. Epstein of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas said that although none of the article was accepted for publication, numerous reviewers missed fictitious references, flawed analysis, inaccurate quotations and statistical errors. Epstein described his experiment in the journal Research on Social Work Practice.
One of his purposes, Epstein said, was to test his idea that that social-work journals are more inclined to publish papers that support rather than challenge traditional social work methods. He circulated a pair of articles about a fictitious child foster-care program, one with a positive conclusion, the other negative. Both versions were methodologically flaws, and identical except for the conclusions. The negative version received seven flat rejections, the positive version only two, he said. Also alarming, the positive version received four acceptances albeit conditioned. The negative version received no acceptances. Epstein concluded, as he had suspected, that journals in his field too reluctant to publish information about techniques that don't seem to work.
About the peer reviews, Epstein said almost three-quarters were inadequate; in his paper. He characterized them as "incomplete, short, personalized, and even impenetrable." Only a few reviewers mentioned that his papers lacked coherent accounts of their statistical tests. This, he said, explains the appalling quality of research in the field." |
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Study faults schoolbook system| WASHINGTON, October 21, 2004 -- The schoolbook adoption system in half the states has led to mediocre, dumbed-down content, according to a study by the Fordham Foundation. The system is "fundamentally flawed, according to the report, which carries the title The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption. The report says that state policies on adoption force publishers to tone down content and writing and sidestep racial, ethnic, gender and regional issues. This vanilla-izing reflects a political correctness movement from the 1990s and has given special-interest groups undue sway in schoolbook content. |
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Book restructuring at Smithsonian| WASHINGTON, October 20, 2004 -- After missing a deadline to erase a $1 million deficit, the Smithsonian Institution's academic publishing unit will be broken into academic and trade units. Trade publications will be assigned to Smithsonian Business Ventures, an existing unit that sells trinkets and Smithsonian-branded items. The academic publishing unit, Smithsonian Books, will be pared down but continue with grant-supported publishing under the Smithsonian Press imprint. Sources said the scholarly publishing unit would continue as an outlet for works created by Smithsonian museum and research units but with a focus shift to general-interest works. The list will be trimmed and there will be layoffs, the source said. |
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Video plugs textbook innovations| WASHINGTON, October 19, 2004 -- Textbook publishers have created a video, Higher Education Goes High-Tech, which is being distributed by the Association of American Publishers. "The video offers a glimpse of the amazing teaching and learning resources that weren't even a dream when most of us were in college," said Pat Schroeder, the association's president. The goal, she said, ios to demonstrate thay publishers are
"a student's best friend and a teacheršs strongest ally." The video can be seen online at AAP | |
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Sizing up the used-textbook industryNEW YORK, October 18, 2004 -- Book industry analyst Al Greco says his estimate that the used textbooks have grown to a $2 billion industry is conservative. Even so, Greco says, it's no more than an educated guess. Greco, of the Fordham University graduate school of business administration, has analyst responsibilities with the Book Industry Study Group. Here is how he explains his $2 billion estimate:
According to the National Association of College Stores, which represents about 50 percent of all college bookstores, students spent $1.6 billion on used textbooks in the 2001-2002 academic year (the last year NACS reported data). Since NACS represents 50 percent of the college bookstores, and since students also purchase used textbooks online (Amazon.com; bn.com; E-BAY; and 20-plus other sites), the total amount in the remaining 50 percent plus online plus E-BAY was at least another $400 million, pushing the total to $2 billion (in 2001-2002).
Actually, Greco says, the total undoubtedly has grown sinee the 2001-2002 data: "While we handle the book industry stats for the Book Industry Study Group, we have not estimated the total used textbook dollar amount for 2002-2003 or the 2003-2004 academic years. However, based on conversations with college textbook publishers and college bookstore people, we believe the amount spent on used textbooks, especially textbooks purchased online, has grown sharply."
Greco noted that it would be difficult if not impossible to estimate the amount of book content placed on traditional library reserve or electronic reserve. "The amount of money lost by textbook publishers to the used sector and the electronic reserve sector would push the amount beyond $2 billion," he said. |
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AL GRECO
$2 billion estimate is conservative |
Online used book service launched| SAN DIEGO, California, October 17, 2004 -- Online business solutions provider Studio54Design.com launched an online service for college students to buy and sell used textbooks. Students can set their own price and typically get back a about 60 percent of the retail price, Studio54Design said, claiming that campus bookstores offer only about 10 percent of retail. Buyers contact sellers through special email addresses at the Online Book Exchange site. When the book is bought, the seller ships it to the buyer and receives payment. Users pay a flat fee of $3 to list up to five books for one semester. They can pay $5 to list six to 10 books. "The OBE leverages all the benefits of the online auction method to give students optimal return on their textbook investment -- and to offer them an alternative to their campus bookstore," said Studio54Design.com chief executive Marc Gaxiola. He called the service "EBay for Textbooks." |
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Book printer faces worker protest| VERSAILLES, Kentucky, October 13, 2004 -- Workers at the Quebecor prtining plant in Versailles, Kentucky, have petitioned the company to restore reductions in health benefits and to improve plant safety. Thed petition protests insurance cuts and higher co-pay premiums. The petition also asked fro reforms to prevent the kind of forklift accident that killed Quebocr worker Carolyn Cox Campbell. |
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Westlaw wins magazine citation| NEW YORK, October 12, 2004 -- The magazine Law Office Computing gave its annual Readers' Chiuce award for legal research to Westlaw. |
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Leaning.com, Plato in joint project| PORTLAND, Oregon, October 11, 2004 -- Online technnology provider Learning.com will provide curriculum and integration tools to a new joint project with Plato Learning for real-time correlations between subscribing schools and state, national and international skill standards. The tools will expand the usefulness of Plato's K-8 correlational database. |
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Pearson leads U.S. el-hi publishersDARIEN, Connecticut, October 10, 2004 -- Education publisher Pearson continued in 2003 as the largest el-hi house in the United States, acording to the trade journal Subtext. Its el-hi sales were %2.1 billion, up 2.3 percent from 2002. The growth, in a difficult period of shrinking school spending, was rooted in major Scott Foresman and Prenticsa Hall adoptions, especially in elementary social studies. Pearson also is the largest U.S. college publisher and tghe largest overfall U.S. education publisher. The Subtext breakdown, with numbers rounded:
Pearson Education
Harcourt Education
McGraw-Hill
Houghton Mifflin
Scholastic
WRC Media |
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$ 2.1 billion
1.3 billion
1.2 billion
848 million
369 million
203 million |
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-12.0 percent
-0.4 percent
9.7 percent
13.2 percent
-2.9 percent |
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| McGraw-Hill Excluding recentg acquisitions, sales rose 5.8 percent to $1.7 billion in the company's third quarter, compared to a year earlier. Income rose 12.2 percent to $324.5 million. Education sales grew 2 percent to more than $1 billion. Education profits rose 9.1 percent to $323.3 million.
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| Varsity. Sales grew 49 percent to $32.1 millioon in the company's third quarter, which ended Septemebr 30, compared to a year earlier. Net income grew 92.1 percent to $7.3 million.
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Lexis keeps CCH research sources| NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 2004 -- Legal database provider LexisNexis renewed its arrangement wuith Wolthers Kluwer to provide Kluwer's CCH materials, including tax, securities, personnel and financial research services, to LexisNexis subscribers. The full CCH line will be available only through Kluwer and LexisNexis portals. |
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Houghton issues eReference software| BOSTON, Massachusetts, October 8, 2004 -- Houghton Mifflin's electronic publishing unit, part of its trade and reference division, launched its eReference download reference software and related web site, eReference.com. The site includes full print-version texts of the fourth edition of American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Roget's II: The New Thesaurus. Other titles can be downloaded, including New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Wall Street Words: A-Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor, American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary and American Heritage Spanish Dictionary. |
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McGraw opens research center| CENTENNIAL, Colorado, October 7, 2004 -- Educational publisher CTB/McGraw-Hill, which provides K-12 and adult education assessment solutions, opened a research office in Centennial, a southeast Denver suburb. Educational assessment and psychometrics experts will work on state contracts for K-12 assessment and accountability products. The staff will coordinate its work with CTB/McGraw-Hill researchers at corporate headquarters in Monterey, California. The Centennial office is the first CTB/McGraw-Hill satellite facility for research, although there are scoring facilities, in Delran, New Jersey; Indianapolis, Indiana; Salinas, California; and Mather, California. |
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Professional, scholarly sales surgeNEW YORK, October 6, 2004 -- Sales of professional and scholarly books, which ahd been ladding this yeark, scored a 27.2 percent increase un August, compared to a year earlier, according to the latest data from the Association of American Publishers. College sales were up slightly in Auguts,. El-hi sales off slightly. Here is the year-to-date data as extrapolated from 92 reporting publishers:
University press (hard)
Prof'l, scholarly
Univ press (soft)
College
El-hi |
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27.2%
18.1%
21.2%
1.3%
-2.4%
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to-date
11.7%
10.1%
8.9%
2.5%
-2.8%
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Biology society regrets creationist articleSEATTLE, Washington, October 6, 2004 -- The Biological Society of Washington issued a statement that an article advancing intelligent-design theory, an alternative to Darwinism evolution, appeared by mistake in its quarterly journal Proceedings. The society's governing board said the paper was published "without the prior knowledge of the council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, or associate editors." The board did not offer an explanation for how the article became the first creationist piece in a peer-reviewed science journal, but the society's president, Roy McDiarmid, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, called it was "a really bad judgment call on the editor's part."
The former editor of Proceedings is Richard Sternberg, a fellow at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health. Sternberg also is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, which promotes the idea that nature has a purpose. McDiarmid acknowledged that the paper had been reviewed by three scientists and recommended for publication pending revisions. Doubts have been raised, however, whether the reviewers were evolutionary biologists.
The article was written by Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, ,and a professor at fundamentalist Palm Beach Atlantic University. In the paper, Meyer Deals with the origin of animal phyla, a far broader issue than normally appear in Proceedings, whose articles deal mostly with specific species of plants and animals. Meyer's paper contends that current evolutionary theory cannot explain how new animal forms developed in the distant past. His intelligent-design theory doesn't draw on biblical creationism but attributes life to an unspecified creator.
Meyer said the article grew out of a presentation he made at a conference attended by Richard Sternberg, then the editor of Proceedings. . They discussed the possibility of a paper for Proceedings," Meyer said, so he submitted it. Meyer said several journals that deal with the origin of animal forms would seem to have been logical places for the article. |
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Book people triumph in satire ruling| WASHINGTON, October 5, 2004 -- The decision of the Texas Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of satire was a victory for 15 groups of creative people that filed friend-of-the-court briefs defending the right to satirize. The court picked arguments from the briefs, including one by R. Bruce Rich and Jonathan Bloom for the Freedom to Read Division of the Association of American Publishers. They argued that "satire is the type of speech on matters of public concern the protection of which is the transcendent purpose of the First Amendment." At issue was a satire in the alternative weekly Dallas Observer that used Gov. George W. Bush, a local prosecutor, a judge and other public officials in the jailing of a first-grader for a post-Columbine disturbing essay. |
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| New Times, Inc. v. Isaacks et al. |
Anti-Patriot petitions go to Congress| WASHINGTON, October 4, 2004 -- Petitions against Section 215 of the 2001 Patriot Act, with 180,000 reader signatures, were presented at a Capitol Hill news conference. Author Salman Rushdie, president of PEN American Center, who was among presenters, said that Section 215 could be used not only against readers who borrow library books or buy books that put them into a suspicious category but against all readers. Lee Hamilton, vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, was quoted that there is evidence of "an astounding intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans that is routine today in government." The signatures were gathered at bookstores nationwide and presented by Rushdie and officers of the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and the Association of American Publishers. |
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| Norman M. Bradburn (psychology), University of Chicago, Seymour Sudman (psychology), University of Illinois, Brian Wansink (psychology), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote the revised edition of Asking Questions: The Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design -- For Market Research, Political Polls, and Social and Health Questionnaires (Jossey-Bass). |
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| Thomas D. Davis (philosophy), De Anza College, wrote Philosophy: An Introduction Through Original Fiction (McGraw-Hill). |
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| Hans Steiner (psychology), Stanford University, edited Handbook of Mental Health Interventions in Children and Adolescents: An Integrated Developmental Approach (Jossey-Bass). |
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Author delayed response to plagiarySEATTLE, Washington, October 3, 2004 -- Architectural scholar Meredith Clausen was first hesitant to make an issue out of the plagiary from her 1999 book, Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect, but finally decided to go forward and demand an apology. Clausen, of the University of Washington faculty, said what turned the corner was learning that the book containing the plagiarized sections, Structures of Our Time: Buildings That Changed Modern Life by Roger Shepherd was on the list of recommended readings for an introductory architecture course at her alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley. "Knowing that students were going to be reading Shepherd's work, and thinking that it was he who came up with the insights and the connections, that was really painful," she told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "I thought of all those hours I had spent interviewing Pietro Belluschi before he died, traveling back and forth from Seattle to Portland, three hours each way, largely at my own expense."
About her initial hesitancy, Clausen said: "I don't like inflicting pain or suffering on anybody, and I knew this would certainly have some sort of impact." The impact has been serious. Shepherd has resigned under pressure from the Parsons School of Design. His publisher, McGraw-Hill, has shredded its inventory of the book and recalled remaindered copies. Clausen's publisher, MIT Press, has filed a copyright suit against McGraw.
Meanwhile, Shepherd said he is drafting an apology Clausen. In an interview withy the Chronicle, he said: "I'm going to tell her I have remorse for this, and that I take total responsibility. And in fact, I'm probably not going to be able to write any more books. It's really a tragedy, probably the worst thing I've ever done." |
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McGraw opens research center NEW YORK, October 2, 2004 -- The Association of Educational
Publishers announced that three leaders in the field will be inducted into its hall of fame:
Tom Snyder, founder of educational software publisher Tom Snyder
Productions, now part of Scholastic.Joan Ganz Cooney, creator ofSesame Street.Joan Irwin, director of publications for the International Reading
Association
The induction ceremony will be December 2 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. |
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Government sued for halting booksNEW YORK, October 1, 2004 -- Four book industry and scholarly organizations sued the federal government for barring U.S. publication of works of writers from embargoed foreign countries. The organizations say the First Amendment is at stake. The issue is the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows among the President to place sanctions on countries that threaten U.S. security. Although An "informational materials" are exempted, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has publication of materials from some foreign writers for the past two years, according to the suited, filed in federal court. The suit focuses on an order banning materials from Iranian writers.
Marc Brodsky, chair of the Professional and Scholarly Division of the Association of American Publishers, made the First Amendment argument: "In this country, a publisher doesn't need to go to the government to get permission to publish a book." In effect, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the Treasury Department, requires a special license be issued for works from countries under sanction. The suit says that U.S. publishers are suffering a chilling effect against working with authors living in countries under the embargo. |
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Association of American Publishers (Profession-
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Arcade Publishing
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