Full Text Article
Author: Katina Strauch
Description: President and Publisher, IGI-Global
Link: pdf
ATG Interviews Dr. Mehdi Khosrow-Pour
IGI-Global
by
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member at Penn State University for over twenty years, I believe. Tell us about
your name. Where are you from originally?
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Northern part of Iran called Langrood (translation:
in my family. My dad was a shopkeeper
and could not afford to pay for my schooling, so at age 13, I quit high school
and went to work to support the family financially.
week and also managed to attend the local night school in order to receive my
high school diploma. After serving two
years in the
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Army, I came to the States in 1973 as a student where I lived in
Washington, D.C. for a short time and then moved to Florida where I lived for
the next nine years. During my
educational career, I managed to obtain a Bachelor of Business Administration
degree from the
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of Miami, an M.B.A from
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Institute of Technology, a Master in Computer Information Systems from
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Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) from Nova Southeastern University (NSU)
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dissertation emphasis on Management Information Systems.
odd jobs, such as waiting tables, driving a taxi, serving as a security guard,
tutoring and computer programming to pay for my education.
faculty member for the
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International University and
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County Community College, and joined the faculty of the
TimesNewRomanPSMT;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'> at
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as an Assistant Professor. There I
taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Information Systems for the next
18 years and also chaired the
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Systems Program during most of those years.
In 2000, after 20 years of teaching, I left my tenured faculty position
at Penn State
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during my years in academia and was able to be very active in many research
circles. Through my research, I authored/edited
more than 30 scholarly books and journals, over 50 research articles, and
chaired many professional conferences and edited their proceedings.
past seven years, I have been able to learn tremendously through my leadership of
an innovative publishing house currently playing a major role in changing the
landscape of the publishing industry.
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my tenure at
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State on teaching and research, I also had a tremendous desire to
become involved in the practical business side of my training.
hard work, determination and commitment, combined with intelligence (my
equation for succeeding in anything in life is; Success = Hard Work +
Determination + Commitment + Intelligence), in 1988 the same year that I became
a U.S citizen, I started
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Global (formerly “
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Group Inc”) in the
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of Pennsylvania with less than $5,000 of my own savings.
journals, reference publications, case studies, and conference proceedings in
the areas related to the utilization and management of information technology
resources, I aimed for the company to uncover concept-driven publications not
yet produced by large STM (Scientific, Technical, and Medical) publishers whose
investments at the time weighed heavily on hardware technologies and the
technical side of computer science. During
the next twenty years,
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Global managed to publish vast volumes of research and innovations
related to issues revolving around the applied side of technology, as well as
organizational, managerial, and societal aspects of information technologies in
modern organizations worldwide. The primary
mission of the company from conception was to expand the body of research in
all academic programs, tagging information science as an interdisciplinary
field. I always believed that
information technology is not the domain of computer science or accounting
fields, rather it is the domain of all academic disciplines including
education, social science, and humanities, as well as business, engineering,
and natural science programs.
With this rooted
initiative, it has been the ongoing business motto of
and base this objective to expand research on “Highest Quality,” “Excellent
Service,” and “Positive Image.” Every
employee of
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Global has pledged to these commitments and a plaque indicating their
commitment sits on each employee’s desk.
company — Idea Group, I believe. Why did
you change it?
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coverage of topics and diverse contributing authors, editors, and customers
representing researchers and scholars from more than 100 countries, it became
more obvious that the company had risen to truly be a global publishing
house. As a matter of fact, close to 50%
of our authors and editors represent research institutions outside of North
America. In January 2007, we modified
our name to
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TimesNewRomanPSMT;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'>, which
is an acronym for “
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Group Inc,” and added the word “Global” to represent the globalization of
our focus. I always tell colleagues and
our customers that the
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Global conversion is the same as when IBM decided to go from being called “International Business Machine” to
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them. How many books and journals do you
publish in total? Number of books
published per year?
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Global’s initial imprint was “Idea Group Publishing” which is now known as “
publish reference titles with strong emphasis on topics related to information
technology utilization management and knowledge management, software
technologies development & applications, multimedia and business process
engineering. In 1997,
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publish innovative, emerging and more specialized reference titles in niche
technologies and fields on a fast track basis, which allowed researchers in the
field to learn about these breaking technologies and applications much
faster. In 1999,
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address the ever expanding need for reference titles in the fields of online
and distance education, utilization and technologies.
reference titles in all aspects of online and distance education, with its well
renowned four-volume
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of Distance Learning, and continues to publish 20-25 new titles annually in this
area. In 2001,
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launched by
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Global to publish titles with a strong focus on practical,
organizational and managerial issues of information technology applications in
organizations. In 2003,
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(formerly “Idea Group Reference”
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publish comprehensive reference titles in all topics of information technology
starting with well recognized titles such as the Encyclopedia of Information Science Technology
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(five-volume), the
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of Digital Government (three-volume), and the Encyclopedia of Information Technology and Gender
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(two-volume).
TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'>mToday
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publishes comprehensive reference titles under four categories “Encyclopedia”,
“Handbook of Research,” “Premier Reference Source”, and “Multi-Volume
Collection.” IGI Global’s newest imprint, “Medical Information Science Reference
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to publish interdisciplinary reference publications with direct emphasis on
bio-medicine, bio-informatics, and healthcare information systems research.
TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'>IGI
Global is scheduled to publish approximately 250+ new titles in 2008
under its current six imprints, which is an exponential increase from the 10
new titles published by the company in 2000.
In addition to books,
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Global currently publishes 30 scholarly quality peer-reviewed journals,
which will increase to 60+ by end of 2008.
The company plans to expand this collection to 100+ journals by the end
of 2009. The entire collection of
in its online aggregated database,
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Global is also the publisher of the most comprehensive collection of
400+ real-life cases studies in all aspects of business information technology
management. All
aggregated database,
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that IGI Global
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emerged as the industry leader in creating and disseminating knowledge in
computer science and information technology management.
future? Will print on paper in book form survive?
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any industry, particularly publishing, I can be a bit biased due to my
technology background, but at the same time, I am realistic enough to
understand that the forces of technology are not the only motivator in shaping
consumers’ choice, as there are many other forces involved, such as societal,
organizational, governmental and cultural, as well as how readily businesses
embrace change.
In regard to the status of
print vs. electronic formats, libraries are able to benefit from advances of
electronic technology and are hence offered more content in electronic formats,
which in turn provides an added ease of access, economical efficiency, less
storage required, among other benefits.
However, one has to realize that a library’s existence in many
institutions contributes in a major way to the organization’s livelihood, such
as its ability to be used for fund-raising purposes for the organization in
whole. Major universities bring in
millions of dollars by using the library as an academic shrine where donors,
mostly alumni, foster the growth of the organization through providing
financial benefactions in support of the library’s consistent expansion of its
collection of millions of print publications, where if stored electronically,
could be held in a fraction of the space required by the current huge
infrastructure! Another current force
against the total use of electronic technology is the credibility of scholarly
publications that are only available in electronic format.
and editor-in-chief of five major peer-reviewed journals, I can attest that
many P&T (promotion & tenure) committees of our major research
universities still do not accept published manuscripts in only electronic
format as viable research, and it is for this very reason that many of my
colleagues make sure that what they are submitting is also published in
print! Another force contributing to
this dilemma is the fact that there are still many library users and patrons
who would like to find publications in print in the library due to a variety of
demographic reasons or simply preference.
In my opinion, we are in
the midst of a transition in understanding, accepting, and utilizing electronic
formats, since during the past several years this movement has accelerated
significantly. However, I have trouble
with the prediction that within the next 10 years everything will be in
electronic format! The truth of the
matter is that both print and electronic format will continue to be in demand
with more willingness toward electronic format, but electronic will not wipe
out print format. A good analogy can be
the introduction of rental and on-demand movies.
more flexibility vs. a trip to the movie theater, but despite the availability
of movies in these new formats, there are still many movie theaters and many
individuals who prefer the traditional venue experience.
one also has to realize that it is part of consumer behavior and sometimes it
takes a long time to change this behavior.
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Global’s strategies to contribute to the above movement have been very
proactive. Starting with our first
journal published in 1988, we have always offered libraries free electronic access
to our journals when a library subscribed to the print.
electronic subscriptions under a less expensive pricing.
access to electronic format free of charge for the life of the edition to the
entire university community when a library purchases a print version of any of
our comprehensive reference titles published under our
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published under our newest imprint, “Medical Information Science Reference
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of research libraries through its family of aggregated online databases such as
InfoSci-Journals
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our collection of journals;
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a collection of all of our books that consists of close to 800 titles; and
studies. As a publishing house believing
in the power of innovation, we have been contributing our share in helping our
customers take advantage of technological developments within the scope of
their needs and acceptance of these new realities.
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student believing in the easy exchange of knowledge to all researchers all over
the world. However, I also believe that
there are certain direct and indirect costs associated with dissemination of
information in any format. In my
opinion, with advances in the Internet and some of the excessive greed of major
publishing houses, the
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Access movement is a natural phenomenon for fair cost that also includes
backlash to some of these for-profit practices.
Having said that, some of my colleagues in academia believe in the
extreme side of the spectrum, in which there should be no charge for accessing
research knowledge. This is the same
contention made by many people about the music industry, where arguments for no
costs are applied to any and all music they wish to access, regardless of the
costs associated with production of that music.
Yes, some musicians share their music free of charge to anyone, but by
the same token, there exist volumes of commercially produced music where both
the artist and the production company have invested in the work and therefore
expect some returns on their undertaking.
Given this, it is not truly fair that a consumer questions why these
constituents are not providing their music free of charge.
and comprehensive reference titles in electronic format free of additional
charge. Through this model, we firmly believe that we have already recovered
our investment on the title by selling the print version and therefore, there
is no need to charge our customers an additional fee for the electronic
format. I wish more publishers would
begin following our business model to facilitate additional access to
research. Furthermore, currently
few new models which would allow us to become a more active player in the
Hershey, Pennsylvania. Do you like chocolate? What are your hobbies? What do
you read in your spare time?
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“The Sweetest Place on Earth,” with an additional editorial office in New York
City. Yes, we are on Chocolate Avenue
where we are just a few blocks from the Hershey Chocolate Factory and often, the scent of
fresh chocolate meets us at our office doorstep.
I personally do not like chocolate, but my wife, Beth, enjoys it enough for the both of us.
music, which I truly believe overcomes all social and cultural boundaries.
classical, rock (classic and alternative), jazz, country, particularly
satires. I recently finished reading
TimesNewRomanPSMT;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'>’s latest
book “The World is Flat.”
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Finally as a part of my job
of managing
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Global, I also try to keep up with research in my field of study, and
actually devote two days a week on my schedule to keep up with my writing and
editorial work. I recently finished a
Public Information Technology (two-volume) with my
colleague Prof. David Garson
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is due to be released in February 2008.
In my spare time, my wife and I manage a non-profit private charity
foundation entitled the “
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Forgotten Children Foundation,” providing nutritional,
educational, and medical assistance to handicapped orphaned children in third
world countries.
Thanks for giving me this opportunity to share with you and your
readers about
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Global and my views about our industry.
As much as I strongly believe that technology is allowing many societies
to achieve much greater power in the dissemination of knowledge, at the same
time, the technology is also contributing to widening the economic gaps between
developed and underdeveloped nations.
Perhaps this is the most important global issue challenging all of us as
the citizens of this World.