This shift away from publishing monographs parallels a much more damaging decline in tenure and the increased reliance on contingent faculty labor. The problem for a young scholar isn’t getting published. It is getting a job that affords time to think and write. —Greg Britton
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No, the number of monographs published during this time period has increased. Our system for vetting academic scholarship works. It’s been working for a very long time and continues to provide a valuable service to both the academy and to society. —Jane Frances Bunker
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Publishers, press directors, editors, scholars, and other insiders share their views on the state and future of academic publishing.
Partially. The market for monographs is so constricted that university presses find it increasingly difficult to publish them, especially in undiversified lists. That said, it could be argued that some of the slack has been picked up by the commercial scholarly presses (e.g., Lexington Books, etc.) who do continue to publish monographs. This is an understudied and, I think, underappreciated segment of the scholarly book culture. —Peter J. Dougherty
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Most university presses continue to publish monographs, even at their own financial peril, as increasingly fewer scholars support their colleagues by purchasing or assigning academic books. And the scholarly credentialing system has not collapsed as Professor Greenblatt feared. Our publishing programs still directly reflect the needs of the academic community, and if standard promotion and tenure processes in the humanities and social sciences radically shift in the future to de-emphasize scholarly book publication, university presses will evolve to reflect that change. —John Byram
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The decoupling of the publishing process from the hiring and tenure process has been debated as long as I’ve been in publishing. Publishers are the tail to the academy’s dog in this regard, and I see no tangible, widespread signs that this system is changing. — Niko Pfund
When people say “presses are abandoning our discipline,” I think they sometimes mean “a prestigious press has abandoned our discipline.” But if California drops a field, say, and Georgia picks it up, there isn’t less publishing being done in that area. Part of what may need to change is the perception, on the part of some tenure and promotion committees and the scholars being judged by those committees, that books only “count” if they’re from one of the small group of presses with the biggest names. —Derek Krissoff
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Universities are doing more to offer subventions to faculty, and now we are seeing the launch of the AAUP/ARL/AAU monograph funding program. With one foot in scholarship and another foot in the market, presses are forced to confront those areas in which scholarship does not sell, and someone is going to have to pay to get books produced in those areas if books are still “the thing” for tenure. —Brian Halley
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University-press editors are quite uncomfortable when they think that a tenure decision has been “outsourced” to them. A book is just one factor in the tenure or promotion decision, and we would prefer that it remain just one factor. —Jennifer Crewe
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The real problem now is that young scholars, facing a challenging job market, feel compelled to have a contract in hand when they apply for teaching jobs. Until fairly recently, young scholars would first publish a few articles, all the while working on the book, which they would complete by the fourth or fifth year in the rank of assistant professor. Only then would they seek a publisher for their work. —Beatrice Rehl
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I don’t think young scholars have been damaged by changes in publishing. In some areas it may even have reduced the number of wasted books produced for purely professional reasons rather than out of enthusiasm. —Ian Malcolm
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We do not publish books because a scholar needs a job. The press’s responsibility is to the world of scholarship at large.—James McCoy
