From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 14:52:37 -0500
And my thoughts in response . . .
> 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?
If those publishers include the likes of Peter Lang, Edwin Mellen
Press, and University Press of America, then, yes, it is a problem.
Those presses are virtually worthless for credentialing purposes. And
presses that do not post their books online open access create a
problem by severely limiting access to the books--just a couple of
hundred copies in academic libraries, mostly in the U.S. This is not
dissemination of knowledge "far and wide," as Daniel Coit Gilman
called for in setting up the Johns Hopkins Press in the late 19th
century.
> 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?
The plan does talk about possibly including some commercial academic
presses. And there are vast differences among such presses in the
rigor of their peer review and the value they add to manuscriots.
> 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?
Yes, it talks about possibly extending the plan to books beyond the
first in the future. It also contemplates the possibility that some
monographs will go on to have significant markets in print, just as
books by Cory Doctorow put up online for free have sold well in print.
> 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."
I believe the plan incorporates the idea of a "dual track" for
university press publishing that I outlined in my 1996 essay.
> 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?).
Enrich? The plan is for subsidizing "first copy" costs of publication.
It does not involve providing any surplus to presses in addition. I
see no reason that it should be limited to just the smaller presses.
> 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.
Does the plan really do this? I don't read it as encouraging tenure
committees just to rely on the prestige of a publisher's imprint,
without ever actually opening the book. It even talks about
experiments with post-publication review ("innovative quality
certification regimes" in its heavy-handed jargon).
> Mary Murrell
> Lecturer, UW Madison
> Department of Anthropology
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