7/18/2022
The Scholarly Infrastructure of the Humanities is Eroding
Rounduptags: higher education, scholarship, humanities, Peer Review
Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
Editors, I’ve discovered, are desperate to find scholars willing to review articles, prospectuses and book manuscripts. Department chairs are at their wit’s end as they struggle to get scholars to review tenure and promotion files. Leading humanities journals find it increasingly hard to attract qualified, experienced candidates to serve as editors.
A growing number of humanities scholars are drifting away from what were once considered professional obligations. The result: editors and departments, more and more, are forced to turn repeatedly to the same reviewers if they want a timely evaluation.
Yet these challenges only represent the tip of an iceberg. Not so long ago, it was unimaginable that a humanities faculty member would refuse to write a letter of recommendation for a student. Now, to my dismay and disgust, the higher ed press contains articles that openly disavow any responsibility to write such letters—and not simply on political grounds.
Equally disturbing is the disarray within the scholarly book trade. With an average print run of 200 copies or even fewer, the publication of scholarly monographs is in deep trouble. In fact, many leading scholarly presses are only interested in books with at least a modicum of trade potential. Otherwise, even a subvention is insufficient to ensure publication. At the same time, interest in publishing anthologies, even those with wholly original essays, has tanked.
Certainly, scholarly articles continue to appear, even though an increasing number of journals seek deliberate provocations rather than the building blocks of scholarly knowledge. Revised dissertations, too, are still published.
Nevertheless, the problems are spiraling. Their root cause isn’t simply financial. It lies in the growing number of humanities faculty who disavow any responsibility for sustaining the academy’s scholarly underpinnings.
The humanities scholarly infrastructure has always depended on volunteer labor. Journals did not compensate reviewers, and university presses only offered a token payment. Nor were faculty compensated for reviewing candidates for tenure and promotion. Many journal editors accepted the position in exchange for a single course release and help from a lone graduate student. These responsibilities came with the job.
So what’s going on?
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of