Perhaps you have already received an email offering to publish your dissertation, article or thesis at VDM Verlag, at European University Editions or at Presses Académiques Francophones, (which only have academics and academics in name) ?
You are not the only one! In recent years, the mailboxes of students, doctoral students and teacher-researchers have been regularly spammed on a large scale by this type of message.
This may sound enticing and as an author you are free to choose where and how to publish your thesis. But before acting on it, we advise you to consult the numerous warnings disseminated almost everywhere on the web, in particular that of the presses of the University of Quebec, without forgetting to read the comments .
To summarize these caveats:
If you want to have your thesis in book form to give to your parents or your little cousin for Christmas, go ahead!
But if you want to promote your work, distribute it as widely as possible, keep your rights and develop your CV, stop !
Because in the end, these print-on-demand houses are not publishers, do not really have an editorial line, and do not contribute anything at the editorial or scientific level:
For example, a thesis published by a scientific publisher is never the same version as the defended thesis, as explained by a lecturer from the University of Caen on his blog . And the European University Publishers and consorts will simply print your thesis from a PDF file that you provide to them.
It could even be detrimental to your career and stain your CV. And finally, as more often than not you have to assign all or part of your copyright, this will prevent you from using your work again as freely as you wish.
For our part, to give visibility to your thesis, we simply advise you to authorize its online distribution within the framework of the program for the deposit and distribution of electronic theses of the UNS and thus to contribute to the free software movement . access . And nothing prevents you from looking for a publisher at the same time, and it is even possible that thanks to the online publication it is he who contacts you!
