Omniscriptum Publishing Group, formerly known as VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, is a German

publishing group Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

headquartered in

Riga, Latvia Riga ( ) is the capital, primate, and largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga metropolitan area, which stretches beyond the city lim ...

. Founded in 2002 in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

, its book production is based on print-to-order technology. The company publishes theses, research notes, and dissertations through its

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

bookstores. OmniScriptum is designated as non-academic by the

Norwegian Scientific Index CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is the national research information system of Norway, and is owned by the Royal Ministry of Education and Research. CRIStin documents all scholarly publications by Norwegian researchers, an ...

, and its subsidiary Lambert Academic Publishing has been described as a

predatory Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...

vanity press A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a book printer that is paid by authors to Self-published, self-publish their books. A vanity press charges fees in advance and does not contribute to the development of the ...

which does "not apply the basic standards of academic publishing such as peer-review, editorial or proof-reading processes." The company also offers print-to order publishing for fiction authors. It previously specialized in publishing and selling

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

articles, but has stated that the practice of publishing Wikipedia content ended in 2013.

History

The group's first

publishing house Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

was founded in

in 2002 by Wolfgang Philipp Müller and relocated to

Saarbrücken Saarbrücken (; Rhenish Franconian: ''Sabrigge'' ; ; ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of cities and towns in Germany, city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken has 181,959 inhabitants and is Saarland's administrative, commerci ...

in August 2005. The Mauritian office was established in April 2007 and was managed from 2008 up until May 2011 by David Benoit Novel, followed by Reezwan Ghanty. In 2007 the group began distributing its publications through

Lightning Source Lightning Source is a printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. The company is a business unit of Ingram Content Group. Originally incorporated in 1996 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee, Unit ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

, and the German company Books on Demand.

Products and services

Omniscriptum specializes in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

, and English dissertations,

theses A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

, and research projects. Its business model involves a team of acquisitions editors who search the internet for academic authors and invite them via unsolicited email to submit their manuscripts. The editorial team sends emails to people who have written a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation and whose college library has a web-accessible catalog. In April 2010 Omniscriptum founded an imprint devoted to

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

spirituality The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...

, and

Christian theology Christian theology is the theology – the systematic study of the divine and religion – of Christianity, Christian belief and practice. It concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Ch ...

: ''Fromm Verlag''. In October 2010 ''Dictus Publishing'' was launched to publish political texts related to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

Controversies

Wikipedia content duplication

Various branches of the company, including Alphascript Publishing (created in April 2009), Betascript Publishing (created in January 2010), Fastbook Publishing (created in July 2009), and Doyen Verlag, have published books consisting of compilations of Wikipedia articles. These books are widespread and have been purchased or acquired by various libraries and academic institutions in Europe and Asia; many copies can be found at the

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; zh, t=國立臺灣大學, poj=Kok-li̍p Tâi-oân Tāi-ha̍k, p=, s=) is a National university, national Public university, public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1928 during Taiwan under J ...

. The titles were published as edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster who are also listed as authors. , 180,818 titles were listed on the OMS bookshop. Betascript lists , Miriam T. Timpledon, Susan F. Marseken, Mariam T. Tennoe, and Susan F. Henssonow as editors, giving an additional 356,765 titles . Regarding its publishing strategies, Alphascript asserted 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 The adjective ''free'' in English is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (''gratis'') or "with little or no restriction" (''libre''). This ambiguity can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it often is in ...

". Omniscriptum has edited 22,000 works. According to the company, the last compilation of Wikipedia articles was published in 2013. The company has stated that it stopped the practice of publishing Wikipedia content in order to focus on "original academic (and) special interest authors."

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 ''Berner Zeitung'' (literally: "Journal of Bern"), also branded as ''BZ'', is a Swiss German-language daily newspaper, published by Tamedia in Bern. History and profile ''Berner Zeitung'' was first issued on 3 January 1979. Four different pape ...

'' 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 Victoria Strauss (born 1955 in Exeter, New Hampshire) is the author of nine fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the ''Stone'' series (''The Arm of the Stone'' and ''The Garden of the Stone'') and the ''Way of Arata'' series ('' ...

characterized OMS as "an academic

author mill An author mill is a publisher that relies on producing large numbers of small-run books by different authors, as opposed to a smaller number of works published in larger numbers. The term was coined by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, as a parall ...

", while Pagan Kennedy notes that OMS's practices are comparable to a form of

kudzu Kudzu (), also called Japanese arrowroot or Chinese arrowroot, is a group of climbing, coiling, and trailing deciduous perennial vines native to much of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and some Pacific islands. It is invasive species, invasive in ...

weed 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.

Imprints

Omniscriptum Group subsidiaries

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

Publishing houses

* VDM Verlag Dr. Müller GmbH & Co. KG (2002, Saarbrücken, Germany) * AV Akademikerverlag GmbH & Co. KG (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Scholars' Press Publishing is a trademark of: AV Akademikerverlag GmbH& Co. KG Heinrich-Böcking-Str. 6–8, 66121, Saarbrücken * LAP Lambert Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG (Saarbrücken, Germany) * Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften GmbH & Co. KG (

, Germany) * EUE Editions Universitaires Européennes (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Verlag Classic Edition (2009, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Saarbrücker Verlag für Rechtswissenschaften (2009, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Lehrbuchverlag (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * EAE Editorial Académica Española (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * PUA Publicaciones Universitarias Argentinas (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Fromm Verlag (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Dictus Publishing (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany) * BB Bloggingsbooks (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Trainerverlag (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * JustFiction! Edition (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Doyen Verlag (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany) * Palmarium Academic Publishing (2013, Saarbrücken, Germany) * GlobeEdit (Saarbrücken, Germany) * FastBook Publishing (2009,

Beau-Bassin Beau Bassin-Rose Hill (or Beau-Bassin Rose-Hill; ; ) is a town in Mauritius, located in the Plaines Wilhems District. It is administered by the Municipal Council of Beau Bassin-Rose Hill and has a population of 147,066 inhabitants, making it the ...

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

) * Alphascript Publishing (2009, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius) * Betascript Publishing (2010, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius)

Service industries

* VDM Publishing House Ltd renamed International Book Market Service Ltd (2008, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius) in 2011 * VDM Verlagsservicegesellschaft mbH (2008, Saarbrücken, Germany) * VDM IT-Dienstleistungen GmbH & Co. KG (2008, Saarbrücken, Germany) * MoreBooks! Publishing GmbH (2009, Chişinău,

Moldova Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a Landlocked country, landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of and population of 2.42 million. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. ...

) * Morebooks! The online bookshop (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany) * BetterBooks! Publishing GmbH (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * NicerBooks! Publishing GmbH (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany) * VDM Verwaltung Aktiengesellschaft (Saarbrücken, Germany)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Omniscriptum Book publishing companies of Germany Book publishing companies of Latvia Book selling websites Wikipedia-derived encyclopedias Publishing companies established in 2002 Mass media in Saarbrücken Self-publishing companies 2002 establishments in Germany