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