No Shelf Required published three articles written by John Peters, an experienced publishing professional, currently an advisor to Cambridge Scholars Publishing in the UK who previously held executive roles at Emerald Publishing and Greenleaf Publishing, among other scholarly engagements. In these articles, Peters tackled some of the key issues that independent scholarly publishers are facing in an era of rapid technological advances, emerging new business models, and an increasingly career-driven education world.
How do independent publishers thrive in a world that needs them to follow research trends more than ever before while maintaining their livelihood? How do they stay committed to publishing long-form scholarship (i.e., monographs) at a time when the humanities are struggling, library budgets are shrinking, and the sustainability of niche academic publishing is called into question?
These three articles give a range of perspectives on these and related issues.
Should academic publishing intersect with social justice issues?
“It’s a conversation many of us who have been mentored in our professional lives may have had, as young practitioners: Be careful about mixing the personal and the professional. Make sure there are boundaries. Try and be a bit more detached. But in more recent years, the advent of postmodern thought has given rise to what people call ‘mesearch’ (or, more academically, autoethnography) – when a researcher uses their personal experiences to tackle academic questions. I want to explore some of the issues of detachment as they relate to a publisher’s work. And, particularly in the context of ‘social justice’ issues such as race, gender, equality, diversity, and inclusion…
As publishers, we are schooled to select, curate, and collate material based on its intellectual rigor and closeness of fit with our publishing mission and likely market demand. So how should we respond to social justice issues in selecting and curating? Should we respond at all? Should we engage? Should we actively ‘lean in’?…
As publishers, our question is: Do we wait for a natural flow of material covering social justice to emerge and consider it on its merits, if and when it does? Do we anticipate, and actively solicit, and seek ways to include it, if we can, when we do find it?
…Should we look for ‘a publishing of the heart’? Should our decisions as to who gets through the gate into the body of published knowledge be just governed by break-even analyses and preserving reputations for quality based on exclusivity? Or by an intention to build a more inclusive and diverse body of knowledge?…”
The last invention: An appeal on behalf of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in an increasingly career-driven education world
“Michael T. Nietzel, senior education correspondent for Forbes, wrote in his 2019 article: “…the precipitous drop in education graduates – led by an exodus of women from the field – comes at the very time the U.S. faces a teacher shortage, a problem that is growing because of the accelerating number of teachers leaving the profession…..as has been recognized by many in the academy, the humanities are struggling. Fewer graduates are majoring in English, history, foreign language, or liberal arts now versus ten years ago. Whether these declines reflect student concerns about employability, a lack of clear purpose or direction for these majors, or the malaise that has gripped the humanities for years is not clear, but the student flight from these fields is unmistakable.”
Publishers, please don’t consign AHSS monographs to the back room. Keep publishing them and keep encouraging others to publish them. If you want to publish them Open Access, do so by relying on realistic business models that work for all sides of the publishing ecosystem. Whatever path you choose, don’t neglect your book programmes. Long-form research is the ‘natural’ form for AHSS.
Research funders and university administrators, please don’t withhold funding from AHSS. Keep it provisioned.
Librarians, please fight for a share of the budget for AHSS titles. They play a part in promoting an ecosystem that develops divergent thinkers. A search for truth and meaning is not only scientific but also philosophical, emotional, artistic, and aesthetic.
Finally, don’t neglect the power of imagination in the battle for a sustainable future, and a future where humanity flourishes in the coming AI revolution. As Einstein said, “Imagination encircles the world.”
The university press that isn’t a university press
“Publishing is changing and evolving, but scholarly publishing remains an industry with deep roots and is sometimes resistant to change. As I used to say to colleagues – you need to remember that academic publishing is a 500-year-old industry serving a 1000-year-old industry (the university), so it’s likely to be quite change-resistant…
…There is often a monolithic approach to profitability, which will drive out knowledge-expanding but uncommercial titles. But some newer entrants to this venerable industry are surviving and thriving with a University Press-like approach to niche publishing…
…Over the years, the scholarly publishing industry has accreted, piece by piece, into larger and larger blocks, through mergers and acquisitions. This means that most of the industry is today owned by multi-billion dollar multinational corporations. This is a continuing trend. And very large corporations naturally favour conformity and efficiency. They set rules based on return on capital employed, contribution to stock values, and economies of scale.
University Presses, by and large, sit outside the reach of corporate acquisitions teams. However, the largest and most successful UPs are approaching a comparable size and scale to the multinational corporation. And smaller UPs are, by and large, constrained by their University parent and their required subsidies….
Is it independence that allows publishers to operate outside ‘the lanes’? Is it independence that allows a publisher to follow the direction of emerging research; to be ‘customer oriented’? Is it independence that naturally encourages gravitation to service quality moments of truth? To be a University Press, without being a University Press?…
…True independence is hard to find. When independence is able to flower, it often does interesting things…”