Would you think this was serious?

[sparks]

One of my friends received the letter below by e-mail. A publisher wants to publish her M.S. thesis. Is this how it works when someone wants to publish your work? If it's real, it would be great. If it's a joke, it would be bad one.

----------------------------------------

Dear [My friend's full name],

I am writing on behalf of the German publishing house, /VDM Verlag Dr.
Müller AG & Co. KG/.
In the course of a research on the Internet, I came across a reference
to your thesis on "[Her thesis title]". We are a German-based publisher whose aim is to make academic research available to a wider audience.
VDM Verlag would be especially interested in publishing your
dissertation in the form of a printed book. Your reply including an e-mail address to which I can send an e-mail with further information in an attachment will be greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

[First name of the editor]

--
[Full name of the editor]

Acquisition Editor

VDM Publishing House Ltd.

17, Meldrum Str. | Beau-Bassin | Mauritius
Tel / Fax: +230 467-5601

[e-mail address of the editor]| www.vdm-publishing.com

Business Registration No.: xxxxxxxxx
Board of Directors: [someone's name + someone else's name]

In coorperation with:
VDM Verlag Dr. Müller AG & CoKG (www.vdm-verlag.de)
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing AG & CoKG (www.lap-publishing.com)
SVH Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften AG & CoKG (www.svh-verlag.de)

[bratisla]

Mauritius ???
Well ....
I would be VERY cautious. Mauritius is a fiscal paradise (and home of the publisher of the greatest scam-MMO ever, Dark&Light) ... that sounds fishy at best.

[sparks]

There's more here.

[TERdON]

[VeVe]

[Incompetent]

Someone I know also received an e-mail from this 'VDM Verlag'. It seems they spam out these emails to everyone in academia.

Looks like they've made a certain amount of effort with their website, and the word on the internet is that they're genuine, albeit with no real status (mainly because they will publish absolutely any academic output). But when they say 'publish your thesis', they will only actually make any physical copies of it if someone orders it from them, which is very unlikely seeing as they charge high prices and don't advertise. Meanwhile you probably sign away some rights over the dissemination of your work.

Read the last comment here for example:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/12/publishing-ones.html

As far as I can tell, the only reason you'd 'publish' with these people is if you're working in a job where having published *books* (as opposed to peer-reviewed journal articles) is considered praiseworthy by the pencil-pushers, and going out an outfit like VDM is probably the easiest way to be able to tick this box on the relevant form.

If nobody in your friend's line of work has a book fetish, I suggest she just puts her work up on the internet somewhere open-access. That way anyone who wants to read it can just download it.

[sparks]

Thanks for all the input. I guess she won't go through with it.

[Ijon Tichy]

This is transparently, obviously, and indisputably a 419 scam. Don't touch it with the very shitty end of a ten-foot long shitty stick.

[meganrk]

I have received this exact email...in fact I received it twice, once from VDM and once from a company which is somehow related to them called LAP. It does look really scammy to me too--but since my work actually relates to Germany, it took me a while to come to that conclusion...

[bugoytheman]

even though this is old school, if a firm is really for real and their intentions are good, they'll spend time by showing you evidences that they're for real.

it is really spam. Besides, what happened to the saying, "if you DOUBT, DON'T"?

[sparks]

Well, it turns out that another friend of mine had her master t****s published through this firm just a week ago. I haven't seen the book, though.

[Beautiful_Web]

I received the same dodgy email. Upon googling it I found LAP utilises a number of different names for its aquistion editor - mine was from Yovanee Mooroogiah, but I came across many others.

[mildlymad]

VDM/Dr. Mueller is real and the homepage states that their german location is Saarbrücken. so I would be careful. Also the email says "in coorporation with VDM, so it's someone else???
edit: while this is real, I agree that the way this publication works isn't great in terms of your ownership.There are probably better companies out there.

[Evo]

Rofl, I remember a random lecturer who I was tutoring for that planned to do this. He wanted research funding for the 'new publication' and what the company was going to pay >.> however it was quickly determined taht it didn't work that way.

I think it is actually semi legitimate, they pay you a certain amount and add your thesis to a database where they own teh copyright. They then charge for when people order a copy? Do people ever do this?

I think we worked out that if you have already completely published all the research materials elsewhere eg journals, then its not necessarly a bad thing, though it doesn't count as a new publication.

Its about ownership really, it probably isn't all that worth the money they pay you. Some academics were considering it as they had published everything they possibly could from their PhD thesis and had also already moved on to other areas of research interests.

[spiggy]

It is very much a scam, given that they sent the same email to me offering to publish my masters thesis about melanoma. Which wouldn't be too odd, except:

I'm not a masters student
I don't have a thesis
If I did have a thesis, it wouldn't be about melanoma, as I am not in the sciences and have no intention of studying cancer
The title of my supposed thesis means absolutely nothing to me. Utterly beyond my comprehension.