Another reason to serve as a reviewer: to see if any passages look "familiar."
There's a Packt book about Nginx development that extensively plagiarizes material from my website. The book is niche enough that I haven't bothered seeking damages, but they've been very non-helpful after many emails. Overall they seem like a pretty shady company. I wouldn't ever do business with Packt, but serving as a reviewer may help push things in a good direction, as you say. On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 7:51 PM, John Myles White <[email protected]> wrote: > It does make me feel better knowing that you'll be reviewing the book. > > -- John > > On Dec 4, 2014, at 5:49 PM, Jacob Quinn <[email protected]> wrote: > > That's a good point John. I definitely had the thought looking over the > outline that a bunch of the 0.4 changes will make certain parts out of date > pretty quickly. > > Then again, I figured if I helped review, I could perhaps help push things > in a good direction and help make it as timely as possible. > > -Jacob > > On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 8:35 PM, John Myles White <[email protected] > > wrote: > >> I hate to say it, but Packt's handling of its Julia publications is >> rather troubling. I received a request to review this book and told them I >> wasn't free, but the truth is that I would prefer that they not pubilsh >> this kind of book at all right now. The blurb refers to several things that >> may not even exist in JuliaStats, including lists, factors and ANOVA's. I >> think the whole thing is premature. >> >> -- John >> >> >> On Dec 4, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Wilfred Hughes <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I received an email today about being a technical reviewer for a book on >> Julia! >> >> We're currently developing a book titled *Mastering Julia* aiming at >>> building statistical models with linear regressions and analysis of >>> variance (ANOVA) and will be working on probability, probability >>> distributions, and random variables covering data structures such as >>> matrices, lists, factors, and data frames. This book is targeted at >>> Intermediate >>> level developer in statistical languages and one who will be having >>> understanding of Core elements and applications. >>> >>> Would you be interested in acting as reviewer for this book? >>> >> Now, I enjoy Julia, and I'm happy to help promote the language, but I >> don't think I'm particularly qualified to be a technical reviewer of a book >> on Julia programming. I found this thread on julia-dev: >> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/julia-dev/HrdpknFgdfk/SAVMyyacT_sJ >> where Packt contacted a large number of folks seeking an author. >> >> Has anyone else received something like this? In principle, I'm all in >> favour of producing promotional or teaching materials, but I'm surprised it >> lead to me being contacted. >> >> >> > > -- Evan Miller http://www.evanmiller.org/
