5 ms·

MIT Press makes 82 additional books open access

70 points by gregsadetsky 3y ago

akasakahakada 3y ago
I think the list is a legit showcase of how broken the academia is in case of making titles. Every book is literally XXX: YYYYYYYYYYYYY With nonsense main-title and long as hell sub-title. Why not put some effort into making a medium length descriptive title all in a single sentence?
- bmitc 3y ago
  Title styling aside, MIT Press is an excellent publisher.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Most academic textbooks are not for general audience. If the main title and subtitle don’t make any sense to some people, then the author did not write the textbook for that audience.
  - askin4it 3y ago
    [flagged]
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  This feels like the same complaint that you can't gain all the nuance in an article from reading it's headline. A title is there to be eye catching and get you interested in the subject. If you want to know what the book is about read a short synopsis or the table of contents.
- stonedge 3y ago
  I wrote a paper for a class a few months ago. In a previous life, I was a tech-audience editor that required writing article titles with a hook to lure people into reading. On my first draft of the paper, I used one of these styled titles and the comments that came back said that it was too "flowery"; since it was an academic paper, it should be more like the pattern you indicated. And sure enough, I changed it and all my subsequent papers to that pattern and never got dinged again.
- aredox 3y ago
  This is a legit showcase of how broken American publishing is in case of making titles. This pattern is so typically American than I can immediately identify it, the same way American TV shows or documentaries are esthetically strongly peculiar.
peanutcrisis 3y ago
It might just be me, but the books that were made open access seems to have a distinct slant at first glance. I wonder if the list is intentionally curated with some ideological goal in mind, the way the American Library Association does with their "queering of the catalog" [0]. [0] https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/drabinski2013.pdf https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/drabins...
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Right wing politics generally has a lot less affinity for reading. Also they’re not the ones getting their books banned in half the country, so accessibility isn’t a problem.
- inhumantsar 3y ago
  I counted maybe five or six books which might have a "distinct slant" based on nothing but the title, and nearly all of those were of the "viewing this topic from this perspective" variety. The vast majority of those titles seem distinctly technical and/or non-political. Claiming that this was "intentionally curated with some ideological goal in mind" is a stretch. Baader-Meinhoff maybe?
  - inhumantsar 3y ago
    Also it seems like these titles came from the libraries they made partnerships with and the authors who agreed to OA. Not sure any individual or committee curated the list.
  - peanutcrisis 3y ago
    The Baader-Meinhof effect is possible. I did also recently learn about the ALA's president's philosophy towards library management, so I could be drawing parallels between that and what the MIT is doing when there's none. I will probably give the listing a more rigorous look again.
    - inhumantsar 3y ago

70 points by gregsadetsky 3y ago

I think the list is a legit showcase of how broken the academia is in case of making titles. Every book is literally XXX: YYYYYYYYYYYYY With nonsense main-title and long as hell sub-title. Why not put some effort into making a medium length descriptive title all in a single sentence?

bmitc 3y ago
Title styling aside, MIT Press is an excellent publisher.
j7ake 3y ago
Most academic textbooks are not for general audience. If the main title and subtitle don’t make any sense to some people, then the author did not write the textbook for that audience.
- askin4it 3y ago
  [flagged]
patmorgan23 3y ago
This feels like the same complaint that you can't gain all the nuance in an article from reading it's headline. A title is there to be eye catching and get you interested in the subject. If you want to know what the book is about read a short synopsis or the table of contents.
stonedge 3y ago
I wrote a paper for a class a few months ago. In a previous life, I was a tech-audience editor that required writing article titles with a hook to lure people into reading. On my first draft of the paper, I used one of these styled titles and the comments that came back said that it was too "flowery"; since it was an academic paper, it should be more like the pattern you indicated. And sure enough, I changed it and all my subsequent papers to that pattern and never got dinged again.
aredox 3y ago
This is a legit showcase of how broken American publishing is in case of making titles. This pattern is so typically American than I can immediately identify it, the same way American TV shows or documentaries are esthetically strongly peculiar.

peanutcrisis 3y ago

It might just be me, but the books that were made open access seems to have a distinct slant at first glance. I wonder if the list is intentionally curated with some ideological goal in mind, the way the American Library Association does with their "queering of the catalog" [0]. [0] https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/drabinski2013.pdf https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/drabins...

aaomidi 3y ago
Right wing politics generally has a lot less affinity for reading. Also they’re not the ones getting their books banned in half the country, so accessibility isn’t a problem.
inhumantsar 3y ago
I counted maybe five or six books which might have a "distinct slant" based on nothing but the title, and nearly all of those were of the "viewing this topic from this perspective" variety. The vast majority of those titles seem distinctly technical and/or non-political. Claiming that this was "intentionally curated with some ideological goal in mind" is a stretch. Baader-Meinhoff maybe?
- inhumantsar 3y ago
  Also it seems like these titles came from the libraries they made partnerships with and the authors who agreed to OA. Not sure any individual or committee curated the list.
- peanutcrisis 3y ago
  The Baader-Meinhof effect is possible. I did also recently learn about the ALA's president's philosophy towards library management, so I could be drawing parallels between that and what the MIT is doing when there's none. I will probably give the listing a more rigorous look again.
  - inhumantsar 3y ago