From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:37:34 +0100 Sally has done her homework. I have not. I shall if I may substitute many. My impression is that in the US there are more self-publishing learned societies comparatively speaking (compared with the UK) but again I have not done the analysis. Blackwell (before the purchase by Wiley) used to claim that they published for over 600 learned societies but they did specialise in working with learned societies. Anthony -----Original Message----- From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:53:34 +0100 I'm not sure Anthony is right about 'most' learned societies publishing in association with a larger (often commercial) publisher When I checked the Ulrich's statistics in 2007, 8027 publishers were listed with (socie*, socia*, institu* or istitu*) in the publisher field (another 3531 had (universi*)). 4994 of these combined groups were publishing active, refereed scholarly journals. The average number of journals per publisher in these two groups was just 2.42, which suggests to me (given that it includes large UPs such as Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago etc) that many of them were probably publishing only one title. Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU Email: [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- 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 ***************** From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2012 10:37:08 -0500 No commercial publisher has a faculty editorial board that is given the responsibility of reviewing readers' reports and approving publication of every book proposed by the publishing staff. That is what I meant by "quality control," Rick, and it is indeed unique to university presses and is a requirement of their membership in the AAUP. Sandy Thatcher At 2:48 AM -0400 7/4/12, LIBLICENSE wrote: From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 15:46:32 +0000 All university presses are mandated to have quality control procedures in place for their operations. That is what makes them university presses. Er, no. What makes them university presses is the fact that they're owned and run by universities and call themselves university presses. If having "quality control procedures in place for their operations" made a publisher a university press, then by that definition most (if not all) trade publishers would be university presses. -- Rick Anderson Acting Dean, J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah [log in to unmask]