From: Mary Murrell <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 16:24:04 -0500

My thoughts...

The prospectus raises a lot of questions for me. A few of those questions:

1. It estimates that approx. 85% of asst. prof. faculty find
publishers for their books. If that figure really represents a crisis,
is it a crisis that requires a wholesale solution?

2. A great number of first-books/humanistic monographs are not
published by North American university presses. They are published by
commercial publishers here and abroad. They do not figure into this
plan. Should they?

3. As any publisher can tell you, some first books sell remarkably
well and go on to become classics in their field. Moreover, many
second and third books are themselves very specialized and face
difficulties finding publishers, and faculty needs those books for
promotion, too. Does the Prospectus seek to solve the problem of the
specialized monograph in general? If so, how?

4. Does the Prospectus's plan run the risk of granting prestige to
books that don't need a subvention--i.e., those that are judged to
have a sufficient market--and stigmatizing the OA/subvened books as
lower prestige? (Prestige is obviously a big part of what the
Prospectus calls the "research publication value chain."

5. The Prospectus suggests that smaller presses (which it says are 80%
of UPs) are where the problem is happening (retrenchment from
low-selling monographs) as opposed to the larger 20% who have the
means to offset their losses. Would the plan then serve to unfairly
enrich the larger publishers, and, if so, should they be exempted from
the plan? (Say, make the subventions applicable only to those presses
with sales under a certain figure?).

6. Finally, my big question: why do the authors of the Prospectus want
to change most of the "research publication value chain" BUT for the
habit of deciding tenure on the basis of where a book was published?
The Prospectus wants to introduce "innovation in the research
publication value chain" while at the same time it is deeply committed
to the status quo in its stated desire to "stabilize the current
system." That seems contradictory to me.


Mary Murrell
Lecturer, UW Madison
Department of Anthropology


On 06/25/14, LIBLICENSE wrote:
> From: Rebecca Kennison <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:32:37 -0400
>
> It is indeed about time (as Sandy says) that funding models for
> scholarly communication be rethought, with the acknowledgement that
> the “market” (i.e., academic libraries) can no longer support the
> system — and that the humanities and social sciences are in especially
> dire need. The AAU-ARL Prospectus looks to address precisely that
> problem, even though its focus is entirely on first books.
>
> Our own proposal “A Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Open Access
> Publishing and Archiving for Humanities and Social Sciences”
>
> http://knconsultants.org/toward-a-sustainable-approach-to-open-access-publishing-and-archiving/
>
> is a complementary effort thought along similar lines, as both Raym
> Crow (who wrote the AAU-ARL Prospectus) and Frances Pinter of
> Knowledge Unlatched would readily acknowledge. We also look to the
> institutions themselves to take a more active role in directly, rather
> than indirectly, supporting the publication of the research output at
> their colleges and universities. Where our proposal differs from
> theirs is in the breadth of coverage, but our vision is a shared one.
>
> These are worthy efforts. To succeed, they not only deserve but must
> get the attention not only of library directors and deans, but even
> more so of presidents and provosts.
>
> Best regards,
> Rebecca Kennison and Lisa Norberg
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 11:12 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:21:36 -0500
> >
> > All I can say is "amen" and "it's about time." Let me explain why.
> >
> > Back in the late 1960s Indiana librarian Bernard Fry and associates
> > published an NSF-funded study of the allocation of resources in
> > library acquisitions between books and journals, documenting a shift
> > from great expenditures on the former to greater expenditures on the
> > latter, which was an early recognition of what later came to be called
> > "the serials crisis."
> >
> > Responding in part to this shift, but also for other reasons, several
> > of my colleagues at Princeton University Press where I was then
> > working wrote a series of articles for the Journal of Scholarly
> > Publishing about the "crisis in scholarly communication." Although the
> > last of these articles was fairly optimistic about the effects of
> > changes at presses that could shield them from some of the new
> > economic pressures attributable to declining library sales of
> > monographs, the problems continued to get worse over time. Later in
> > the 1970s several foundations cooperated to fund the National Enquiry
> > into Scholarly Communication (housed at PUP), which produced a report
> > in 1979 that recommended, among other things, a broader sharing of
> > support for scholarly publishing among all universities, which this
> > new AAU/ARL initiative is finally taking to heart:
>
> [SNIP]
>
> > The point of this brief history is to make it clear how long this kind
> > of initiative has been in gestation, for at least two decades, if not
> > even longer. So, I say, indeed "it's about time." I welcome it with a
> > hearty three cheers. This can change the face of university press
> > publishing forever, freeing it to pursue the mission of publishing the
> > best scholarship irrespective of its market potential, while also
> > allowing presses to continue publishing other works, like regional
> > books, that still have a viable market.
> >
> > Sandy Thatcher
> >
> >
> > > From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> > > Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 20:42:33 -0400
> > >
> > > The Association of American Universities and the Association of
> > > Research Libraries have an ongoing scholarly communications task
> > > force, comprising provosts and librarians from leading institutions.
> > > This group released just a few days ago a proposal to support a
> > > critical early phase of scholarly publishing. Given the source, this
> > > is a project with very good prospects.
> > >
> > > "Prospectus for an Institutionally Funded First-book Subvention"
> > >
> > > http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/publications/aau-arl-prospectus-for-institutionally-funded-first-book-subvention-june2014.pdf
> > >
> > > Thoughts?
> > >
> > > Jim O'Donnell
> > > Georgetown