Who We Are

Mitch Allen and Vida Prater are the principals of Scholarly Roadside Service. Between us, we represent over 75 years of experience in academic publishing, writing, and administration. For the past decade, we launched and ran Left Coast Press, Inc., a boutique scholarly publishing house (now part of Routledge).

Mitch Allen had a 40 year career in academic publishing.

• 20 years in marketing and acquisitions for Sage Publications
• Launched AltaMira Press in 1995 (now part of Rowman & Littlefield) and ran it for 10 years
• Launched Left Coast Press in 2005 (now part of Routledge) and ran it for 11 years
• Responsible for publishing over 1,500 books in almost every field in the social sciences and humanities
• Launched over 25 new scholarly journals
• Publisher liaison/advisor with the editors of over 100 journals, many affiliated with academic societies
• Former editor of two academic journals
• Ph.D. in archaeology from UCLA
• 15 years teaching experience at four universities
• Author/coauthor of two academic books and over 25 other publications
• Recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the American Anthropological Association, the World Archaeological Congress, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction
• Has run dozens of workshops for scholars on publishing and writing on five continents over 30 years

Ariadne “Vida” Prater had 25 years service in academic administration and a decade plus in publishing

• 25 years in academic program administration at UC Berkley
• Specialist in interdisciplinary programs, internationally-focused programs
• Expertise in budgeting, program development, human resources, staffing, student advising, herding academic cats
• 11 years CFO for Left Coast Press