Rob Calver writes:
Large and complex datasets are becoming prevalent in the social and behavioral sciences and statistical methods are crucial for the analysis and interpretation of such data. The Chapman & Hall/CRC Statistics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Series aims to capture new developments in statistical methodology with particular relevance to applications in the social and behavioral sciences. It seeks to promote appropriate use of statistical, econometric and psychometric methods in these applied sciences by publishing a broad range of monographs, textbooks and handbooks.
The scope of the series is wide, including applications of statistical methodology in sociology, psychology, economics, education, marketing research, political science, criminology, public policy, demography, survey methodology and official statistics. The titles included in the series are designed to appeal to applied statisticians, as well as students, researchers and practitioners from the above disciplines. The inclusion of real examples and case studies is therefore essential.
We [Chapman & Hall] are interested in proposals for books covering all aspects of the application of statistics to problems in the social and behavioral sciences. If you have an idea for a book, please contact Rob Calver ([email protected]). Please provide brief details of topic, audience, aims and scope, and include an outline if possible.
This is slightly off-topic, but I would value responses from this list.
[editor: feel free to (1) reject this as inappropriate and suggest that I post it on my own blog (and point readers to it if you saw fit); (2) post it as a separate topic.]
I have been approached by a publisher about the possibility of submitting a book proposal on a particular subject. It's on a topic of interest to me, although not necessarily my main focus, and I think I could do a good job with it, but of course it would be a lot of work. (I have previously written a reasonably successful book aimed at a similar audience, so I have at least some grounds for confidence.)
There are various reasons pro and con(especially money vs time), but the big ones for me are (pro) academic reputation vs (con) locking up my work in a for-profit, non-open venue. The main reason for me to do the book (besides the enjoyment I would get from writing it and the sense that I would be contributing something worthwhile) would be academic reputation — bluntly, citations of a work considered to be peer-reviewed. I couldn't really publish this work as a series of peer-reviewed papers — it's more pedagogical and it wants a more consistent treatment. The main reason *not* to do it (besides the time, effort, and distraction from other projects) is that I would feel a bit guilty taking knowledge that I might otherwise post publicly, with some sort of Creative Commons license, and give the copyright to a for-profit publisher.
I could obviously write the book and post it on the web myself, or self-publish it, but I don't know of any such venue that would be citable as a legitimate source by readers [both for my benefit, and for theirs in defending the statistical approaches they have taken].
Check out iuniverse.com
@Rodney: interesting, but I don't think iuniverse meets my criteria at all: I am not interested in making money, but in disseminating the information in a way that is (1) open and (2) academically respectable [e.g. peer-reviewed].
PLoS ONE?
Thanks for continuing try, but here is my quibble about PLoS ONE (which I have published in): I would have to publish as a series of standard-length papers, rather than being able to use a more coherent/monolithic form (which a book, or an online site/wiki, would allow me). Also, even though PLoS ONE is only filtering (supposedly) on the basis of technical correctness, I'm not sure that this is what they're looking for — I think they want to publish original research rather than synthesis of methods.
What about a wiki-style thing? Roll your own PLoS ONE ….
A nice thing about a book is that users can hold it. Reading stuff online can be tough.
Are there any non-profit presses?
http://www.loa.org/
http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_c…
This is my last comment, promise :o) http://en.citizendium.org
@Ben: If you insist on having your book in an academic series, either Now Publishers or Cambridge Uni Press may work for you.
Here's the pitch for Now, the gist of which is that you keep the copyright and can distribute PDFs for free. The actual print books and e-books are expensive. Here's a list of their machine learning books.
Among the traditional publishers, Cambridge has been very good about allowing authors to post PDFs. Examples include Manning, Raghavan and Schütze's Introduction to Information Retrieval and MacKay's Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms. My own experience publishing a book with Cambridge was great, though it was almost 20 years ago.
Having said all that, I'm going to go the print-on-demand route for the two books I'm working on now. I have good advertising channels (through this blog and my own blog) and hopefully enough of a reputation that people won't dismiss the books out of hand.