Category: University Presses

“Reflections on University Press Publishing”

In "Reflections on University Press Publishing," a former University of Toronto Press executive examines the current state of university presses.

Here's an excerpt:

As the revenue from sales of books decreases, there has been a corresponding increase in the need for subventions. The average monetary loss from publication of a scholarly book is in the range of $10,000-$12,000—defined as the shortfall between anticipated revenue and all costs, including all fixed and variable costs. In Canada, the usual subvention for an academic book (provided by the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program) is $8000. Thus there is a need for $2000-$4000 in additional subvention for each book published. Some scholarly publishers are able to find this money from within their own operation—usually from private endowments. Frequently, publishers are asking authors to subsidize their own books—either from research funds or, in some cases, from their own pockets. In some cases, publishers are forced to ask authors to provide books in camera ready form—effectively becoming their own typesetters—to subsidize this cost.

Faced with 20% Sales Drop, University of New Mexico Press Cuts Jobs and May Outsource More

In "U of New Mexico Press Downsizes," Rachel Deahl reports that the University of New Mexico Press is cutting jobs, and it may outsource warehouse/customer service operations to cope with a 20% sales decline.

Read more about it at “Most. Revealing. Press Release. Ever“; “UNM Press Announces Reorganization“; and “UNM Press to Fire Three Employees.”

University Presses Face Hard Times, University of Michigan Press Goes Digital

As university presses struggle with increasing financial challenges, the University of Michigan Press is merging with the University Library and it will emphasize an innovative new model of digital monograph publication.

Open Access Publishing in European Networks Launches Newsletter

OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) has launched a newsletter, sending the first issue out as a message on the SPARC-OAForum list.

Here's an excerpt:

First meeting of the Scientific Board

The OAPEN project has installed two external bodies (External stakeholder Group and Scientific Board) to ensure that the needs of scholars, publishers, funders and universities are met by the project's findings and developments. The Scientific Board of OAPEN consists of several international renowned scholars known for their expertise in publishing. Among them are scholars promoting Open Access such as Jean Claude Guédon (University of Montreal) or Gerhard Lauer (University of Göttingen), publishers and editors making electronic publishing come true like Charles Henry (Rice University Press) or Siggi Jöttkandt (Open Humanities Press), but also representatives from funders and university associations like Sarah Porter (JISC) and Sijbolt Noorda (EUA).

The first meeting constituted the Scientific Board as an active part of OAPEN. The board members will serve as a consulting and inspiring body for OAPEN during the funding period and hopefully beyond. Conclusions from the first board meeting were for instance to account for widespread conservative publishing attitudes among HSS scholars and at the same time the need to promote new modes of publishing such as more fluid media forms. The board members emphasised the importance of publisher-organised quality control and Open Access experiments for the mentioned fields and encouraged the project partners to conduct OAPEN as planned

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Digital Videos from Texas A&M's the Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age Symposium

Texas A&M University has made digital videos of presentations from its recent the Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age Symposium available.

Speakers included:

  • Georgia K. Harper, Scholarly Communications Advisor, University of Texas at Austin
  • Michael J. Jensen, Director of Publishing Technologies, National Academies Press
  • Michael A. Keller, Stanford University Librarian, Director of Academic Information Resources, Publisher of HighWire Press, and Publisher of Stanford University Press
  • Clifford A. Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information
  • David E. Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs, National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges
  • Stuart M. Shieber, James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication, Harvard University
  • Donald J. Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

ARL, AAU, CNI, and NASULGC Release "The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship—A Call to Action"

The Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, have released "The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship."

Here's an excerpt:

Primary Recommendation: Campuses should initiate discussions involving administration and faculty about modifying current practices and/or its intellectual property policies such that the university retains a set of rights sufficient to ensure that broad dissemination of the research and scholarly work produced by its faculty occurs. . . .

Some specific institutional strategies include:

  • Initiate a process to develop an institutional dissemination plan by explicitly evaluating existing dissemination activities, policies relating to promotion and tenure, and policies regarding faculty copyrights. For instance, charge a campus blue ribbon task force to advise the provost on key issues raised by the emergence of new forms of scholarly publishing and the gains that might be had by utilizing more effective ways of sharing the high quality results of the processes of scholarly and creative endeavor.
  • With this foundation, develop priorities for supporting new dissemination strategies that enhance the value of the multifaceted investments in faculty research and scholarship by promoting the broadest possible access to it.
  • Engage departments on campus in developing fresh articulations of the criteria that are appropriate for judging the quality of contributions to their discipline, criteria that embrace emerging forms of scholarly work, where those possess the same attributes of quality and contribution to new knowledge, and do not rely solely on traditional publications and historic practices.
  • Develop institutional policies that enable the university to disseminate the full range of its community’s products now and in the future.
  • Where local dissemination infrastructure exists (such as institutional repositories), promote its use and expand its capabilities as required. Where needed, build new infrastructure that supports documentation of the products of faculty work, both for grant management and compliance and for more general purposes.
  • Seek opportunities to invest in shared dissemination infrastructure with other institutions – through shared facilities or by contributing funds to the development of dissemination services by another institution.
  • Encourage faculty authors to modify contracts with publishers so that their contracts permit immediate open access or delayed public access to peer reviewed work in a manner that does not threaten the viability of the journals or monographs.
  • Develop policies or strategies that redirect resources from high cost /low value dissemination practices to development of dissemination mechanisms residing inside the academy.
  • Where universities support presses, work to realign presses more directly with the university mission. Encourage press investments in dissemination activities that correspond to areas of excellence on campus. Consider revising reporting relationships to encourage collaboration between presses and libraries. Invest in press/library collaborations.

Harvard University Press Launches Open Access Law Journal

The Harvard University Press has launched the Journal of Legal Analysis, an open access journal published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

A couple things make the JLA different than the average law journal. First, it's online. At the end of each year, articles will be bundled, printed, and sold to those who wish to procure such a volume, but the focus is on the website, where all articles will be posted, for free, as soon as they are ready for publication. In addition, we're hoping the journal fills a gap in the legal publishing landscape by providing a peer-reviewed, faculty-edited journal that covers the entire academy. In the words of Editor-in-Chief Mark Ramseyer: "Until JLA, there has not been a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journal that covered the whole span of the legal academy. There have been faculty-edited journals for subfields, but not for the entire discipline. With the JLA, we are trying to create a faculty-edited journal that will be the flagship journal for the law school faculty as a whole."

Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues

SPARC has published Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues.

Here's an excerpt from the report's Web page:

SPARC’s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues addresses issues relevant to building sound and balanced partnerships, including:

  • Establishing governance and administrative structures;
  • Identifying funding models that accommodate the objectives of both libraries and presses;
  • Defining a partnership’s objectives to align the missions of the library and the press;
  • Determining what services to provide; and
  • Demonstrating the value of the collaboration.

Also see SPARC's new Campus-based Publishing Resource Center.

Stanford's HighWire Press Hits 5 Million Article Mark

With the addition of a backfile 1884 article, "Dermatitis Herpetiformis," in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, hit the five million article mark. Over two million of those articles are freely available.

Read more about it at "5 Million Articles Online at HighWire: The Evolution of an e-Publishing Platform."

Sandy Thatcher, Director of the Penn State University Press, to Retire

Sandy Thatcher, prolific author and vocal advocate for university presses, will retire from his position as Director of the Penn State University Press. The Press has posted an ad for his position, and Tony Sanfilippo has written a tribute posting on the Are You Loving Publishing Today? blog. Sanfilippo's posting says: "Sandy won't be leaving until sometime next year, and he’s likely to continue to freelance as an acquisitions editor after that."

Academic Publishing Developments: Bloomsbury Academic and AAUP's Tizra Deal

In "2 New Digital Models Promise Academic Publishing for Profit," Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Jennifer Howard overviews two interesting developments in academic publishing: (1) the new Bloomsbury Academic imprint, which offers free access to books in PDF form under Creative Commons licenses (as well as print-on-demand versions), and (2) the Association of American University Presses' deal to give its members lower-cost access to Tizra's Publisher, a publishing e-commerce platform.

Mellon Foundation's 2007 Scholarly Publishing Initiatives

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has released its 2007 annual report, and the "Scholarly Publishing Initiatives" section by Donald J. Waters and Joseph S. Meisel is of particular interest. The complete report is available as a PDF file.

Read more about it at "Mellon Foundation Assesses the State of Scholarly Publishing" (Chronicle of Higher Education subscribers only).

More Coverage of the 2008 Association of American University Presses Annual Meeting: Plus Ça Change . . .

Inside Higher Ed has published "Digital Daze," in which Scott McLemee reports on the 2008 Association of American University Presses Annual Meeting.

Sue Havlish's (Vanderbilt University Press) comment on University Publishing In A Digital Age seemed to sum up the tone of the meeting regarding new publishing models:

The report's proposal of a comprehensive new publishing platform "is the 800 pound gorilla in the room," she said. "Nobody wants to look at the gorilla because we’re all scared of it. Some librarians think that putting a text in a repository is 'publishing' it. There’s a fear of our role as publishers being subsumed by the libraries. But I still want—and I think most people still want—a book that been edited, that’s been shaped into something and marketed to me by a publisher that I’ve heard of already."

Text of Georgia State University Filing in E-Reserves Copyright Case

Georgia State University's filing in copyright infringement suit the e-reserves copyright infringement suit brought against key GSU officials by three publishers is now available. It presents eighteen defenses, including sovereign immunity and fair use.

Read more about it at "Georgia State University Strongly Answers Publishers’ E-Reserve Lawsuit."

Coverage of the 2008 Association of American University Presses Annual Meeting

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an overview of the 2008 Association of American University Presses Annual Meeting by Jennifer Howard ("Scholarly Publishers Discuss How They're Adapting to Changing Realities"; restricted access).

An interesting revelation from the conference was that the University of Minnesota Press has found that its "sales figures through Amazon were 26 percent greater than its combined sales to libraries." Also, rumor had it that Amazon was pressing university presses hard to move any print-on-demand publishing to its BookSurge service (university presses aren't the only ones affected; Booklocker.com has filed a class action suit against Amazon over its POD distribution policy).

Another interesting disclosure was that, with six exceptions, university presses have embraced Google Book Search.

In another CHE article ("Thunderstorms and Open Access"), Stan Katz of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton recounted his trip to the conference, and, reacting to a speech by Stevan Harnad, said that "I fear that the obligation to 'publish' by mounting articles on free Web sites will make it impossible for nonprofit presses (such as the university presses I was addressing in Montreal) and learned societies to sustain themselves." Harnad has replied in "Exchange with Stan Katz at Association of American University Press Meeting in Montreal."

It's possible that there was more conference coverage on the AAUP Blog, but we'll never know, since access to that Weblog is restricted to AAUP members.

Princeton University Press to Release E-Book for the Kindle

Prior to print publication, Princeton University Press will release The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do About It as an e-book for the Kindle, Amazon's e-book reader. The press currently sells e-books in the Adobe Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Reader formats.

Yesterday, Indiana University Press announced that it would sell e-books for the Kindle.

Read more about it at "University Presses Start to Sell Via Kindle."

Georgia State Sued by Three Publishers for Alleged Digital Copyright Infringement in E-Reserves, Course Management, and Other Systems

Backed by the Association of American Publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications have sued Georgia State University alleging "systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works" via GSU's e-reserves, course management, and other systems.

The suit "seeks injunctive relief to bring an end to such practices, but does not seek monetary damages." The defendants named in the suit are the GSU President, Provost, Dean of Libraries, and Associate Provost for Information Systems and Technology.

Read more about it at "Publishers Sue Georgia State on Digital Reading Matter" and "Publishers Take Action against Georgia State University Copyright Infringement."

Kate Wittenberg to Leave EPIC (Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia)

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Kate Wittenberg, Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), will leave that post on June 30. Wittenberg says that she was told that Columbia University plans to shut down its electronic publishing operation.

Read more about it at "Is E-Publishing at Columbia U. on the Ropes?"

Cornell University Library and Duke University Press to Collaborate on Project Euclid

The Cornell University Library and Duke University Press have announced that they will collaborate on the future development of Project Euclid.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Effective July 2008, Duke will provide publishing expertise in marketing, sales, and order fulfillment to Project Euclid's participating publishers and institutional subscribers. Duke will work to broaden and deepen Project Euclid's subscriber base, resulting in greater global exposure for 54 journals and a growing number of monographs and conference proceedings. Cornell will continue to provide and support the vital IT infrastructure for Project Euclid and assume responsibility for archiving and preservation activities, ensuring robust and reliable access to the content deposited with Project Euclid for future scholars, researchers, and students.

Now home to 93,000 journal articles (75% of which are open access), along with 60 monographs and conference proceedings, Project Euclid and its partner publishers will benefit from Duke's commitment to Project Euclid's mission and from the Press's publishing proficiency, reputation for quality consciousness, and university-based value system. Duke's recent initiative to expand its journals publishing program into science, technology and medicine further ensures that together the Cornell Library and Duke University Press will achieve Project Euclid's goal to become a primary destination site for mathematicians and statisticians. . . .

This joint venture was undertaken in cooperation with the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an alliance of universities, research libraries, and organizations, created by the Association of Research Libraries.

Leadership for Project Euclid will be assumed by management at both Cornell and Duke.

University of California Issues Report on Publishing Needs and Opportunities at the University of California

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the University of California system has issued a report on Publishing Needs and Opportunities at the University of California. The report, based on interviews with over 100 UC faculty and administrators, was written by Catherine H. Candee, Executive Director of Strategic Publishing and Broadcast Initiatives, and Lynne Withey, Director of the University of California Press. It does not appear to be currently available on the Internet, and the office of the Executive Director of Strategic Publishing and Broadcast Initiatives does not appear to have a Web presence.

The article describing the report, "U. of California Assesses Its Publishing Needs," is restricted to CHE subscribers.

Surprisingly, UC faculty seem to be generally content with their publishing options, whereas administrators are more concerned with the erosion of options, especially for humanists. New digital publishing options are thriving. Candee and Withey are working together to provide a wide range of options for faculty, embracing everything from open access to restricted, subscription-based access models.

Postscript: The report is now available online.

Supporting Digital Scholarly Editions: A Report on the Conference of January 14, 2008

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities have published Supporting Digital Scholarly Editions: A Report on the Conference of January 14, 2008, which was written by Ithaka staff.

Here'a an excerpt from the "Introduction":

On January 14, 2008, a group of editors, representatives from university presses, and other stakeholders met to discuss the future of scholarly editions and how they might best be supported in the digital age. . . . .

The objectives of the meeting were:

  • To identify services and tools that are critical for supporting digital documentary editions;
  • To assess the need for a service provider to facilitate the production of these editions; and
  • To articulate the key uncertainties involved in creating such a service provider, so that those can be further investigated.

This report documents the workshop, with the goal of providing a reference not only for participants, but also for others in the community who are concerned with the future of scholarly editions. It is divided into three sections that follow the course of the day itself:

  1. Developing a vision for the next generation scholarly edition
  2. How do we get there? Identifying needs and gaps
  3. Creating a service provider for scholarly editions

NYU Libraries and Institute for the Future of the Book Partner to Develop New Digital Scholarly Communication Tools

The New York University Division of Libraries and the Institute for the Future of the Book will work together to develop new digital scholarly communications tools.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"We are constantly watching the unfolding digital landscape for new paths we might want to take," said Carol A. Mandel, dean of the NYU Libraries. "IFB is a thought leader in the future of scholarly communication. We will work together to develop new software and new options that faculty can use to pubish, review, share, and collaborate at NYU and in the larger academic community."

For the past three years, IFB has been researching, prototyping, and sketching out models for how university presses could expand their publishing programs to include digital and networked formats. IFB is best known for its series of "networked book" experiments, which modify popular blogging technologies to create social book formats for the Web. Among these are: "Without Gods" by NYU’s Mitchell Stephens, "The Googlization of Everything" by Siva Vaidhyanathan, "Gamer Theory" by McKenzie Wark (the first fully networked digital monograph), and "Expressive Processing" by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, which is currently undergoing the first blog-based peer review.

Out of these projects, IFB developed CommentPress, an extension for the WordPress blog platform that enables paragraph-level commenting in the margins of a text. IFB is also at work on a powerful open source digital authoring environment called Sophie, the first version of which has just been released.

"We are thrilled to be working with NYU," said IFB Director Bob Stein. "We now have the benefit not only of the Libraries’ first-rate technical support, but also of working with world-class faculty, many of whom are leading innovators in digital scholarly communications."

In an auspicious start to their partnership, NYU Libraries and IFB have been awarded a start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to design a set of networking tools that will serve as the membership system for MediaCommons, an all-electronic scholarly publishing network in the digital humanities that IFB has been instrumental in developing.

Under the agreement, three of IFB’s leaders will serve as visiting scholars at NYU. They are Bob Stein; Ben Vershbow, IFB editorial director; and researcher Dan Visel. They will work with NYU librarians; with the digital library team, headed by James Bullen; and with Monica McCormick, the Libraries’ program officer for digital scholarly publishing.

Read more about it at "Major News: IFB and NYU Libraries to Collaborate."