[Geo4All] UN SDG mapping book updates

Fri Jun 2 07:46:52 PDT 2017

Anthony-

Not to throw another wrench in this but the ICA has an agreement with Springer on all book publications.  Essentially, they have first refusal. They would not refuse publication for this project.

You could rightly argue that the ESRI publication would likely be less expensive than that from Springer.  The reason is that ESRI subsidizes their press through software sales, and there you see the problem that Suchith is rightly addressing.

-- M>
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Prof. Michael P. Peterson
Department of Geography / Geology (http://www.unomaha.edu/geogeo/ )
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Omaha, NE  68182-0199
Office (402) 554-4805
Fax (402) 554-3518
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On 6/2/17, 3:53 AM, "GeoForAll on behalf of Anthony Robinson" <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org on behalf of acr181 at psu.edu> wrote:

    Suchith,

    One way to approach this situation is to treat it as a conflict. Another way 
    to approach this situation is to treat it like an opportunity for mutually 
    beneficial collaboration.

    Is it necessarily true that any book published by Esri Press must 
    necessarily be "against the spirit of openness in geo education"? I'm not 
    sure how you can make that judgment before anything's even been written, let 
    alone published. And how would it be "neutral" for the ICA to obey your 
    directive and not ever collaborate with proprietary vendors? Did you know 
    that Esri Press publishes the Semiology of Graphics, along with quite a few 
    other titles that don't even talk about software?

    The ICA book effort will involve the collective work of dozens of ICA 
    commissions with the idea of showing how maps can truly matter for global 
    problems. I know you don't believe it's possible, but consider that Esri and 
    other companies may in fact actually care about global problems and be 
    working to solve them. It's possible to run a business that makes money and 
    also be a good citizen. Also consider that ICA represents cartographers 
    around the world. Most of those cartographers have jobs in a wide range of 
    settings, including in for-profit companies. A GeoForAll MOU doesn't prevent 
    ICA from doing things that GeoForAll doesn't love.

    Once again I feel like the GeoForAll effort is hampered by a strict dogma 
    that tests every geospatial initiative with a purity evaluation that 
    virtually nothing will be able to meet. And once again it's an argument 
    against doing something with no proposed viable alternative.

    Finally, I'll add that I think it is quite problematic that there appears to 
    be no collaborative decision making process by which GeoForAll speaks out on 
    issues like this one. If I'm wrong about that I'd be happy to be corrected.

    Regards,

    -Anthony

    Anthony C. Robinson, PhD
    Assistant Professor, Department of Geography
    Director for Online Geospatial Education, John A. Dutton e-Education 
    Institute
    Assistant Director, GeoVISTA Center
    The Pennsylvania State University
    sites.psu.edu/arobinson/

    -----Original Message-----
    From: GeoForAll [mailto:geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of 
    Suchith Anand
    Sent: Friday, June 2, 2017 9:39 AM
    To: geoforall at lists.osgeo.org; m.j.kraak at utwente.nl; sg at icaci.org
    Subject: [Geo4All] UN SDG mapping book updates

    Dear  colleagues,

    As you are aware there is some excellent work done by our ICA colleagues by 
    highlighting the value of cartography by “mapping” the UN sustainable 
    development goals. Silvana and our colleagues have done excellent work 
    highlighting the importance of openness in reducing inequalities.

    I believe this is a very important activity  but recently  I came to know 
    that the book  proposal that is planned  to be developed from this is being 
    planned to be published through a properitery GIS vendor ‘s publishing 
    house. Hence I have written to Menno-Jan requesting him to consider 
    publication on this important issue through  any neutral academic publishing 
    houses as publishing this through properitery GIS vendor ‘s publishing 
    company is against the spirit of openness in geo education and ICA-OSGeo MoU 
    .  I think it is important to have both properitery and open solutions but 
    ICA as an organisation should be neutral . Hence very important not to 
    promote Properitery vendor agenda esp in UN SDG work by having the 
    properitery GIS vendor publishing this. As an ordinary ICA volunteer  I am 
    disappointed to see this.  I am grateful that Menno-Jan has understood my 
    concern and I hope this will be rectified asap.

    I will keep you updated on the developments.

    Best wishes,

    Suchith

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