Republishers reproduce Wikipedia content wholesale in hard copy, usually for profit. The licensing terms may or may not be properly included in the publication. Publications that include some content from a Wikimedia project are not considered as republished.
- Using these republishers on Wikipedia
- Republishers are not reliable sources and not acceptable external links in articles per the verifiability policy. Articles that use a republished work as a source should be edited to either remove the work or to tag the source with {{Circular-ref}}. Leave {{backwardscopy}} on the article's talk page to identify Wikipedia as the original source.
- Legality of republishing
- Every contribution to the English Wikipedia has been licensed for re-use, including commercial, for-profit printing in hard copies. Republication is legal, so long as the licenses are complied with.
- Effect of non-compliance with licenses
- If the license is not complied with, then the republication is a copyright violation. You own the copyright to your contributions, not the Wikimedia Foundation. Legally, the Wikimedia Foundation is in the same position as the republishers (except that the WMF always complies with your license terms), because the WMF is republishing your copyrighted content under your license. If someone violates the terms of the license, then enforcement needs to come from the copyright owner. Consequently, complaints about violations need to be made by a person who actually wrote part of the improperly republished material.
Note: While some republishers do not even attempt to use properly issued ISBNs, noting those that do enables circular refs to be spotted more easily.
USA International Business Publications/International Business Publications
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USA International Business Publications
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http://www.ibpus.com/
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Description
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Sample
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See discussion at [1].
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Rating
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Zero. Listed as © Publisher; Wikipedia and the GFDL do not seem to be mentioned.
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Compliance
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All titles reviewed are verbatim reprints of a collection of Wikipedia articles. Some titles state that "some" of the content is in the public domain. Website states that "Each book always has the latest content available on the day of ordering. The content of all book is updated on a perpetual basis." They further state that they have "used its best efforts in collecting, analyzing and preparing data, information and materials for this unique guide." Claiming to be the publisher, they also say that use "for any commercial purposes requires a special written permission from the publisher."
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Contact info
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[email protected]
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Actions
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Jean-Pierre Hombach (author)
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Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishing
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eM Publications
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Description
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Sample
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[3]
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Rating
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Compliance
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Confusingly lists Wikimedia Foundation as the author, though the republisher is not affiliated. Lists names of Wikipedia editors who contributed to the articles.
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Contact info
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Global Vision Publishing House (publisher)
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Global Vision Publishing House
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http://www.globalvisionpub.com/globalbooks/
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Description
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Sample
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See the discussion at the Reliable Sources noticeboard: some (not all) books copy from Wikipedia. Do not presume that any book from this publishing house is a reliable source; do not link to copyvio.
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Rating
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Zero. Listed as © Publisher; Wikipedia and the GFDL do not seem to be mentioned. Some books copy from other sources, both online and printed, and do not appear to acknowledge those either. Many books have a more encyclopædia-like structure, with a series of many articles / short sections rather than one big body of prose; different articles/sections in the books sometimes appear to borrow from different sources. In one case an obvious grammatical error in the source text appears to have been copied verbatim.
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Compliance
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Various Global Vision books have raised concerns of copyvio on wikipedia articles, but in each case the article text predates the date the book was published.
- Copied from other (non-wikipedia) sources
- "Spiritual Value of Social Charity", in which the first visible page of text - apparently written by the publisher themselves - is a direct copy of "History and philosophy of social work in India" (published by somebody else, decades earlier).
- A randomly chosen sentence from "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Sanskrit Literature" also appears in a 1996 book from a different source: [4]
- "Nuclear weapons and national security: emerging challenges for Asia" copies extensively from [5]
- A randomly chosen sentence from "21st Century India : View and Vision " also appears in a 2003 book from a different source: [6]
- The first sentences of "Rāvaṇa and Laṅkā", [7] nominally written by R.K. Ramakrishnan, is copied from "India in the Rāmāyaṇa age: a study of the social and cultural conditions in ancient India as described in Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa", published 1967 [8]
- "Basics of guidance and counselling" appears to copy from a 1984 book by a different Indian publisher which in turn copies from the 1965 "Testing for Teachers".
- "Role models in management (leadership and communication)" copies from "Effective Leadership" by Adair
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Contact info
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Actions
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No actions taken yet.
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Hephaestus Books
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Description
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Sample
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Rating
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Compliance
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From book descriptions on Amazon: "Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Hephaestus Books continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge."
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Contact info
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Actions
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VDM Publishing is the largest known republisher and operates at least 78 imprints:
Doyen Verlag
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https://www.doyen-verlag.de/
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Description
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Sample
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Compliance
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Contact info
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Actions
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It is possible to have these books withdrawn from Amazon by complaining, particularly of you are the author of a substantial amount of content on Wikipedia.
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