OmniScriptum

History

The first publishing house of the group was founded in Düsseldorf in 2002 by Dr. 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; since June 2011, this office is directed by Reezwan Ghanty.

In 2007, the group began distributing its publications through Lightning Source, Amazon, and the German company Books on Demand.

Products and services

Omniscriptum specializes in German, Russian, Spanish, French and English dissertations, theses,and research projects. Its services are free to authors. Its business model involves a team of acquisitions editors, who search the internet for academic authors and invite them by e-mail for their manuscripts. OMS sends emails to people who have written a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation and whose college library has a web-accessible catalog. According to the Michigan Tech Thesis and Dissertation FAQ:

The Australian Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) determined that:

...[I]n order to be considered a commercial publisher for these purposes, companies must generally demonstrate a degree of editorial responsibility and financial risk in choosing to publish, as well as be responsible for the entire publishing process (including printing and distribution). For this reason, 'vanity presses', as well as companies specialising primarily in the publication of theses (such as VDM Verlag, and Lambert Academic Publishing - LAP) are NOT considered to meet the "commercial publisher" criteria.

In April 2010, Omniscriptum founded an imprint devoted to religion, spirituality, and Christian theology: Fromm Verlag. In October 2010, Dictus Publishing was launched to publish political texts related to the European Union.

In 2011, the imprint JustFiction! (also spelled Just Fiction!) began publishing novels and short stories by new, unpublished authors.

As of August 2011, there are two JustFiction! Kindle books listed on Amazon.com.

Editorial policies

Omniscriptum can produce a new book in six weeks: two weeks for the cover and four weeks for production. There is no cost to the author, who receives one free e-copy of the book. Omniscriptum, "tend[s] not to edit works" assuming manuscripts they accept "are already of a high standard". Proofreading is not performed to keep costs low.

In 2010, the publishing house claimed to publish more than 10,000 new titles annually and thus to be "one of the leading publishing houses of academic research". In 2011, Omniscriptum, as a whole, claims to release 50,000 new book titles per month and to be the largest book publisher in the world.

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 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 characterized OMS as "an academic author mill", while Pagan Kennedy notes that OMS's practices are comparable to a form of kudzu 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.

Weber-Wulff recounted the experience of a former student who was contacted by OMS, in an attempt to publish the student's bachelor's thesis. In a 2009 interview published on the OMS website, CEO Wolfgang Philipp Müller, explained the aggressive reputation of Omniscriptum Publishing: "We make an approach to our authors offering to publish their work. That's not good manners in the distinguished publishing sector. On the other hand, our customers are totally satisfied with our publishing service.”

Alphascript and Betascript Publishing

During its activity, the company has worked with many print agencies, such as Alphascript Publishing (created in April 2009), Betascript Publishing (created in January 2010), Fastbook Publishing (created in July 2009) and Doyen Verlag (created in April 2010), who have published books based on online materials. Alphascript lists amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, knv.de, libri.de, schaltungsdienst.de, bod.de, VSG, ingrambook.com, umbreit.de, reha Marketing, smartprofessionals.de, xing.de, lightningsource.com, and bischoffundpartner.de as business partners. These books have been purchased by German libraries at the request of their patrons, and by Flemish libraries.

These titles are published as edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster who are also listed as authors. As of 21 December 2011, there are 180,818 titles listed on the OMS bookshop. Betascript lists "Lambert M. Surhone, Miriam T. Timpledon, Susan F. Marseken, Mariam T. Tennoe and Susan F. Henssonow" as editors, giving an additional 356,765 titles as of 21 December 2011.

Regarding its publishing strategies, Alphascript asserts 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".

In response to an interview question about whether some Alphascript’s books are based on Wikipedia information, Alphascript responded, "Yes, since we believe that the quality of the Wikipedia-articles is so good that it is worthwhile creating books with them. Wikipedia themselves give an impulse for this. The articles published on their sites are free in every respect and without any limitations as to further use. All authors participating in texts of Wikipedia know this or should at least know it." In response to whether this should be made clear in the product description, Alphascript responded, "It is pointed out in every Alphascript book that contents are Wikipedia articles. Do we now have to write in Amazon-books: “Attention! Books contains Wikipedia!”? Then other publishing houses would have to point out in their books: “Attention! Book contains nonsense!”, or: “Attention! Book has only sex-scenario!”

Omniscriptum's editors have distinguished themselves by a large number of works (22,000).

Omniscriptum Group subsidiaries

Omniscriptum Publishing Group has 27 subsidiaries (the date of creation and headquarters are in brackets):

Publishing houses

Service industries