Interview with Dr Mehdi Khosrow‐Pour President and Publisher of Idea‐Group Inc., Hershey, PA
| Pages | 30-32 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050510644383 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Author | Julia Gelfand |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Interview with Dr Mehdi Khosrow-Pour
President and Publisher of Idea-Group Inc.,
Hershey, PA
Julia Gelfand
30 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 10 2005, pp. 30-32, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050510644383
Q1. What was the trajectory of your
career to date? I believe you started
your professional career as an electrical
engineer and spent many years in the
academic sector teaching and doing
research when you entered professional
scholarly publishing. What led you to
forming Idea-Group?
Mehdi Khosrow-Pour (M.K-P.). I
graduated from the University of Miami
in 1977 with an undergraduate degree
in business, and one year later obtained
my MBA from the Florida Institute of
Technology. I worked for two years as a
computer programmer before pursuing
my second Master's degree and
ultimately my doctorate. I joined Penn
State University as a faculty member
where I taught for 20 years until
eventually retiring in 2000. While at
Penn State, I started Idea Group Inc.
(IGI) in 1987 as a small publishing
company of several academic journals
covering information technology
topics. My primary motivation for
starting IGI was to publish a new
journal entitled the Information
Resources Management Journal
(IRMJ) for a professional non-profit
organization called the Information
Resources Management Association
(IRMA) that I was heading at the time
as the official publication.
Q2. Your name is synonymous with
good luck in the private publishing
sector and as a rather remarkable
businessperson who has survived and
flourished in a changing industry.
Please share with us how you handle the
increased pressures of publishing,
competing demands, narrower margins
and still over the years expanding it to
the number of imprints and thus larger
number of released titles it now
includes? Can you speculate where you
may take it in future developments? Are
eBooks going to be the future or will we
see print continue?
M.K-P. I became involved in
publishing as an academician with a
passion for quality scholarly
publications in my discipline, rather
than just the goal of making money.
Our goal has always been to publish
innovative titles with strong depth of
coverage and timeliness as the two
major criteria to make each published
title a successful publication for IGI.
We keep our overheads low and try to
focus on how we can serve the market
needs by constantly staying in touch
with the latest research in our
discipline. Obviously as a former
academician and researcher, I have the
training and understanding of how to
keep up with research development in
the information science and technology
field. In terms of future development,
our goal is to evolve as a scholarly
publishing house with the full
understanding that electronic contents
delivery is the ultimate future of the
publishing industry. Although the
growth rate of e-books markets has
been surprisingly slow during the past
decade, there is no doubt in my mind
that e-book markets will expand
exponentially in the future.
Q3. Idea-Group, Inc. has established
itself as a major publishing house. How
did you do it in Hershey, Pennsylvania?
Can you suggest if it easier or harder
than having a presence in New York for
instance. Your web site and literature
promote the concept of ``innovation'' ±
what exactly does that mean?
M.K-P. Obviously not being located
in New York or Boston has its own
disadvantages! However, it helps to be
in a small town setting where many of
our overheads are kept low and allow us
to stay more competitive. In terms of
publishing innovative titles, we try to
publish titles related to the ongoing
research and demands in the field of
information science and technology.
Not all titles that we publish are
profitable in terms of sales, but at the
same time our entire collection provides
tremendous coverage of all aspects of
the discipline.
Q4. You have always been an active
author, editor and contributor to many
titles having birthed them and seen
them to published product, like the
recently released Encyclopedia of
Information Science & Technology
(2005) which has been lauded very
positive reviews. How do you manage
and oversee a company that not only
issues books but now journals and
casebooks or case studies? What role is
there for the journal over time?
M.K-P. As an author and editor in
my discipline, I clearly understand what
is involved in either authoring or
editing a book. This understanding
helps IGI to set up practical
expectations for our authors and editors.
As a result, we are now annually
producing 150+ new book titles, ten+
encyclopedias and handbooks of
research, 30-50 comprehensive case
studies, and 26 journals, as well
publishing proceedings and online
databases. In terms of our journals, we
do not view journal publications as
profitable in comparison to book
publishing, but again, by publishing
academic scholarly journals we can
maintain our academic involvement
and stay up-to-date with current
research in the field.
Q5. What three things have you learned
that have been critical in continuing to
grow your business and what are the
biggest challenges you face today in
scholarly and professional publishing?
By the way, do you consider IGI a
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