From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:44:03 +0100

Sandy

Does AAUP expel publishers who do not exercise this high level of quality
control. I would be very interested in knowing how this is monitored. For
example does a university press who only uses reviewers from within the
university perceived as exercising a high level of quality control. This is
a genuine question. I know very little about AAUP procedures though back
early in the last decade I questionnaire all the university press members of
AAUP over work I was doing on electronic solutions to the problems of
monograph publishing and had a huge variety of replies which seemed to
indicate very different regimes.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:08:43 -0500

Undoubtedly, Anthony, many learned societies operate in a similar way.
However, there is no formal requirement for them to do so in order to
be a member of, say, the American Council of Learned Societies, which
would be the organizational counterpart to the AAUP.

I was not implying, either, that commercial publishers do not exercise
"quality control." Indeed, I work part-time for one now, Lynne Rienner
Publishers, and can assure everyone that the peer-review procedures
used are quite as rigorous as any I have experienced in university
press publishing.

The difference is that no outsider really knows how "quality control"
is managed by a commercial publisher, or a learned society for that
matter, whereas the requirement for AAUP membership is a public
guarantee that a high level or quality control is exercised by any
AAUP member press.

I would also note that the dynamic of decisionmaking when a faculty
editorial board is involved is significantly different from what it is
without such a board. This makes the process more complex but also
richer in some ways. I have explored this dynamic in my essay on "The
'Value Added' in Editorial Acquisitions" in the Journal of Scholarly
Publishing (1999): http://www.psupress.org/news/pdf/THEVAL~1.PDF.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 18:18:33 +0100
>
> Sandy
>
> I think you will find that most learned society publishers have a
> similar publications committee which of course reflects the community
> they serve rather than a single university. The majority of learned
> societies that publish (I think I am right in saying) do so in
> partnership with a larger publisher often a commercial publisher. That
> commercial publisher is responsible as a publisher for books and
> journals that have the same level of quality control. Of course as
> someone who has worked much of my life for a commercial publisher I
> would argue that the quality controls I used and which were demanded
> of me by a commercial organisation working through an editorial
> committee or some such were just as rigorous as those which involved
> my getting agreement from the Delegates of OUP. In both cases I
> usually had control over the referees/reviewers I went to. I certainly
> would not give any special preference for any reviewers from a
> particular university or society and was thus able to get an
> international view and avoid blackballs resulting from academic
> rivalries or preferences of distinguished people for their colleagues
> or former students.
>
> Anthony