ARC: Community: ELMAR: Posting

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Many of you are no doubt familiar with the Journal of Interactive Marketing, which is a publication of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation. Under a prior contract, this journal was published by Wiley but now the DMEF has chosen Elsevier as its new publishing partner.

Wiley has the legal right to publish the journal for 2008, but has decided to do so without any input from the editors or editorial review board. Wiley’s plan is to republish previous articles, a plan that could have a negative impact on the journal’s reputation and which certainly will reduce the journal’s impact factor.

While the above paragraphs recount the basic facts of the situation, what follows below represents my opinion, and it should not be assumed to represent the opinion of any other individual or entity associated, or not associated, with this matter.

I personally find Wiley’s actions to be unconscionable.

Like many other academic journals, the authors and reviewers of the Journal of Interactive Marketing are not paid for their labor on behalf of the journal. Nevertheless, the former and current ERB members and authors, with the guiding help of the editors, have year by year raised the quality and reputation of this journal.

It is this free labor that Wiley now intends to take advantage of, milking the journal for an additional year with filler content, quite possibly damaging its name, but certainly its impact factor. This punishes anyone who has ever published in the journal.

I believe Wiley has miscalculated. Wiley believes that academics are too busy, apathetic and disorganized to matter in this case.

Interestingly enough, Wiley is also in the business of selling textbooks, and it is academics who choose textbooks on behalf of their classes.

If you have an opinion about this matter, I suggest you express that opinion with your Wiley textbook representative. You can identify that person using the following form:

http://professor.wiley.com/CGI-BIN/LANSAWEB?PROCFUN+PROF1+PRFFN15

Textbook representatives are marketers and as such, will be sure to understand the impact of the Wiley corporate brand image on consumer (instructor) textbook adoption behavior.

If you do contact your representative, please check off the "Yes" box on the ELMAR Survey that has been created to keep track of the response to this message.

Charles Hofacker
Professor of Marketing
Florida State University

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