Appendix C: Recommendations to Press Directors
Recommendation 1: Tell a compelling story
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Within higher education, much of the recent agenda for change in scholarly communication has been centered in libraries. From open access advocacy, to institutional repositories, to tools for the creation of electronic content, libraries are leading the university’s response to the high cost of published scholarship and the demand for robust technology platforms on which to build the electronic scholarship of the future. University presses have a big role to play, but they need to make that role more concrete and persuasive to the academic community by making clear how they can:
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- lower the cost of scholarship through fair pricing
- return the revenues of scholarly publishing back to the parent institution for reinvestment in educational, research, and publishing activities
- offer cost recovery and sustainability models that depend heavily on commercial discipline, accountability and recognized value (as opposed to the gift economy or institutional funding)
- extend the reach of their institution’s prestige and reputation through the press’s imprint and through applying the university brand to university-sponsored publishing projects
- ensure that universities can rely on support for credentialing through the high standards and mature vetting and peer-review system developed by their presses
- ensure that young faculty have opportunities to publish, even in niche fields where the commercial return may not justify publication
- offer faculty and graduate students the opportunity to develop as authors through mentoring and professional training programs sponsored by the press
- offer faculty, academic departments, and graduate students publishing environments in which to build “virtual labs†that enable a continuum of research and dissemination options for dynamic online content
- develop compelling cases to bring outside funding to the university through the inclusion of a branded publishing component in research grants
- Team up with libraries to pursue a powerful coordinated advocacy agenda and technology infrastructure.
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For all of these reasons, presses should position themselves to be a much bigger part of the university’s portfolio of strategies to manage scholarly communication as a core component of its mission.
Recommendation 2: Create a strategic plan
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Articulate a long-term vision that inspires local constituencies (and those who hold the purse-strings). Universities need to have a better grasp of what is possible for their presses. To that end, every press should create, and regularly update, a 5-year strategic plan, complete with ambitions for their publishing programs and a financial framework. This document can form the backbone of discussions with owners about where the press is headed, how it contributes to the “public good†agenda for higher education, and how it aligns with the interests and ambitions of the particular university. It will create a framework for long-range discussions about publishing priorities, investment and subsidy expectations, and shared criteria for success. Each press will have a different approach to this vision, which will depend on conditions at the host university.
Recommendation 3: Realign with university
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Presses should take advantage of being “inside the tent,†and having access to scholars and scholarship while it is still in formation. They should make sure they have a copy of the university’s strategic plan, and initiate discussions about ways to help the university deliver that plan through publishing solutions. They should fight to be at the table when major new academic programs are being planned, and to have a publishing component built into major research and capital campaigns. They should take an inventory of the exciting new academic ventures at their institutions, and consider which ones might lend themselves to publishing programs. They should reach out to the professional schools to form publishing alliances and joint ventures.
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A key question this raises is how to ensure that presses do not evolve into vanity publishers (the concern that got them where they are now). What we heard is that university presses do and should act as the sector of university publishing that relies on peer review and rigorous standards of selection – that is the prestige of the imprint. Other types of publishing will arise from the parent institution, and university presses may play a role in this publishing through service functions (editorial, marketing), or through collaborative linking to unrefereed content on campus, but the press proposition remains the protection of standards of selectivity, credentialing, and refinement (cooked rather than raw content), as well as setting a price for that selectivity and refinement. And to the extent that the programs of the press can be realigned with the institution’s academic priorities, the desires to be close to the institution and publish the best scholarship can be compatible.
Recommendation 4: Focus
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Publishing the occasional book in a discipline that is not at the center of the press’s priorities is a distraction and does not serve the interests of the author either. Presses should carefully select areas where they can excel, set ambitious targets, and concentrate on building those programs. These programs will no doubt include traditional areas of excellence built over time by presses. But every university, no matter how small, also provides ample opportunities for press specialization in areas that reflect its intellectual ambitions. The best drama school in the country might well set out to publish the best drama list. Georgetown University Press has built the leading Arabic studies list in collaboration with the university’s Arabic studies department. A university that has set a goal to build interdisciplinary programs could work with its press to create model online interdisciplinary publishing centers in targeted areas.
Recommendation 5: Reframe conversations with development offices
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Presses should seek to work with development officers to build a publishing component into campaigns related to a major new academic program or center. They should help to create scripts for potential funders about how dynamic publishing helps to accomplish their goals, create global reach and impact, and brand campus initiatives.
Recommendation 6: Collaborate with libraries to co-develop tools and programs
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Work together to identify content of institutional value. Co-develop products, tools and professional educational and training programs for faculty, researchers, and students around traditional and electronic publishing issues, procedures, etc. Co-develop joint programs for preservation and archiving or collaborate in support of third party platforms that ensure preservation. Co-develop tools for content creation and online collaboration.
Posted by kimballs on August 9, 2007
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