Omniscriptum Publishing Group, formerly known as VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, is a German
publishing group
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
headquartered in
Riga, Latvia
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava (river), Daugava river where ...
.
Founded in 2002 in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...
,
its book production is based on
print-to-order technology.
The company publishes theses, research notes, and dissertations through its
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...
bookstores.
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
CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is the national research information system of Norway, and is owned by the Royal Ministry of Education and Research. CRIStin documents all scholarly publications by Norwegian researchers, an ...
, and its subsidiary Lambert Academic Publishing has been described as a
predatory
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
vanity press
A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where anyone can pay to have a book published.. The term "vanity press" is often used pejoratively, implying that an author who uses such a service is pub ...
which does "not apply the basic standards of academic publishing such as peer-review, editorial or proof-reading processes."
The company also offers print-to order publishing for fiction authors. It previously specialized in publishing and selling
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
articles, but has stated that the practice of publishing Wikipedia content ended in 2013.
[
]
History
The first publishing house
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
of the group was founded in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...
in 2002 by Wolfgang Philipp Müller, and transferred to Saarbrücken in August 2005.[ The Mauritian office was established in April 2007 and was managed from 2008 up until May 2011 by David Benoit Novel, followed by Reezwan Ghanty.]Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
,
Products and services
Omniscriptum specializes in German, Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
for academic authors and invite them by unsolicited e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
for their manuscripts.religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
, spirituality, and Christian theology: ''Fromm Verlag''. In October 2010 ''Dictus Publishing'' was launched to publish political texts related to the European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
.
Controversies
Wikipedia content duplication
Various branches of the company, including Alphascript Publishing (created in April 2009), Betascript Publishing (created in January 2010), Fastbook Publishing (created in July 2009),National Taiwan University
National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan.
The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...
.
The titles were published as edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster who are also listed as authors. 180,818 titles were listed on the OMS bookshop. Betascript lists , Miriam T. Timpledon, Susan F. Marseken, Mariam T. Tennoe, and Susan F. Henssonow as editors, giving an additional 356,765 titles .
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
The English adjective ''free'' is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (''gratis'') and "with little or no restriction" (''libre''). This ambiguity of ''free'' can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it ...
".
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
''Berner Zeitung'' (literally: "Journal of Bern"), also branded as ''BZ'', is a Swiss German-language daily newspaper, published by Tamedia in Bern.
History and profile
''Berner Zeitung'' was first issued on 3 January 1979. Four different pape ...
'' 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. American writer Victoria Strauss
Victoria Strauss (born 1955 in Exeter, New Hampshire) is the author of nine fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the ''Stone'' series (''The Arm of the Stone'' and ''The Garden of the Stone'') and the ''Way of Arata'' series ...
characterized OMS as "an academic author mill",Pagan Kennedy
Pagan Kennedy (born c. 1963) is an American citizen, American columnist and author, and pioneer of the 1990s zine movement.
She has written ten books in a variety of genres, was a regular contributor to the ''Boston Globe'', and has published ar ...
notes that OMS's practices are comparable to a form of kudzu weed proliferation in book publishing.
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.
Multiplication of imprint names
Omniscriptum Group subsidiaries
Omniscriptum Publishing Group has 27 subsidiaries (the date of creation and headquarters are in brackets):
Publishing houses
* VDM Verlag Dr. Müller GmbH & Co. KG (2002, Saarbrücken, Germany)[
* Fromm Verlag (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)
* Dictus Publishing (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)][
* BB Bloggingsbooks (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
* Trainerverlag (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
* JustFiction! Edition (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)]Beau-Bassin
Beau Bassin-Rose Hill (or Beau-Bassin Rose-Hill; french: Villes sœurs; ) is a town in Mauritius, located in the Plaines Wilhems District. It is administered by the Municipal Council of Beau Bassin-Rose Hill and has a population of 147,066 habit ...
, Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
)[
* Alphascript Publishing (2009, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius)
* Betascript Publishing (2010, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius)
]
Service industries
* VDM Publishing House Ltd renamed International Book Market Service Ltd (2008, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius) in 2011Moldova
Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised state of Transnistr ...
)
See also
* Alphascript Publishing book by Miller FP, Vandome AF, McBrewster J: a scanned example
* Books LLC
* Ingram Content Group
Ingram Content Group is an American service provider to the book publishing industry, based in La Vergne, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Ingram Industries.
Shawn Morin is CEO, and John R. Ingram is chairman of Ingram Industries.
History
The ...
* Philip M. Parker
* Print on demand
Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While oth ...
References
External links
Omniscriptum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Omniscriptum
Book publishing companies of Germany
Book publishing companies of Latvia
Book selling websites
Wikipedia-derived encyclopedias
Publishing companies established in 2002
Mass media in Saarbrücken
Self-publishing companies
2002 establishments in Germany