Hi Liane,

I've been asked about this by the editors of journals in MUSE, and when I looked into it, the articles in question were coming from Thomson Gale.  Look at the "Product Details" section of the listing on Amazon and see if Thomson Gale is listed as the publisher.

I hope this helps.

Brian

-- 
Brian Harrington
Content Development Coordinator
Project MUSE
The Johns Hopkins University Press 
brian@jhu.edu

On Mar 22, 2012, at 12:52 PM, "Taylor, Liane R" <ltaylor@TXSTATE.EDU> wrote:

*Apologies for cross-posting*

 

Hello all,

 

I’m sure we’re not the only library who gets requests to order articles that are for sale on Amazon.com – articles we already have access to.

 

Until recently, I have not looked into the selling of articles on Amazon.com. But a professor who is an editor of a journal has found their articles on Amazon and has asked me for some help in figuring out why. Neither the editorial board nor the president of the scholarly association who publishes the journal knows how these articles were obtained by Amazon.

 

They have contacted Amazon but Amazon has not been forthcoming about how they actually acquired the content; they seem more focused on whether there is interest in making a claim for copyright infringement.


I have not found anything in the literature about this, and I have only found some cursory mentions of this f phenomenon on the web, basically authors saying “Hey, why is my article on Amazon?” with some folks guessing it has to do with distributer agreements with companies such as Gale, etc.

 

This particular journal is carried full-text in Gale, ProQuest, and EBSCO databases. The managing editor has tried to contact ProQuest and EBSCO and not received any response, but they just might not be contacting the right people.

 

I’m wondering if anybody has any experience or knowledge about how articles make it onto Amazon in cases like this? Meanwhile, I’ll keep exploring and maybe contacting folks at Gale, EBSCO, ProQuest and such.

 

Thanks,

Liane

 

Liane Taylor

Serials Acquisitions Librarian

Albert B. Alkek Library

Texas State University - San Marcos
601 University Drive • San Marcos • TX • 78666

ltaylor@txstate.edu • 512.245.2643