Stan Katz: Publishing and University Prestige
[Stan Katz directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.]
Some of us have wondered whether university presses were going to survive in the digital age. Many have worried that the Great Recession would prove the death knell for academic presses. It would seem that the apparent decline of traditional academic print publishing (the dramatic decrease in the number of copies purchased by academic libraries faced with mushrooming serials prices), combined with the pressure on universities to restructure their budgets in order to cope with dramatically decreased budgets, would make the typical university press an irresistable target for the bean counters in campus financial planning offices.
But most universities have not abandoned their presses. Perhaps that is because most universities have been making serious efforts to put their presses on a pay-as-you-go basis for more than a decade, and the academic publishers have proved sufficiently resourceful to find at least modestly active markets for their books and journals. Some of the larger academic presses are in fact doing quite well. Peter Doughterty, the director of the Princeton University Press, tells me that PUP is just closing the books on the best financial year it has ever had. I am not sure, but I think the main reason for PUP's success has been its capacity to sign economics books that continue to sell well as the world economy tanks.
But not all presses are doing as well. Just a couple of weeks ago we heard that the Southern Methodist University Press was going to be closed at the end of this month. The announcement provoked the usual complaints that the publishing sky was falling, but last week the Chronicle's Jennifer Howard reported that SMU's provost, Paul Ludden, had announced he would appoint a task force to consider whether the university should continue to have a press, and, if so, what sort of press it should be. It may be relevant here to notice that SMU's Houston neighbor, and peer institution, Rice, recently created an all-electronic press (on whose advisory board I sit). Ludden has not indicated what he thinks the options for SMU are, but he has announced four criteria to guide his publishing task force....
Read entire article at CHE
Some of us have wondered whether university presses were going to survive in the digital age. Many have worried that the Great Recession would prove the death knell for academic presses. It would seem that the apparent decline of traditional academic print publishing (the dramatic decrease in the number of copies purchased by academic libraries faced with mushrooming serials prices), combined with the pressure on universities to restructure their budgets in order to cope with dramatically decreased budgets, would make the typical university press an irresistable target for the bean counters in campus financial planning offices.
But most universities have not abandoned their presses. Perhaps that is because most universities have been making serious efforts to put their presses on a pay-as-you-go basis for more than a decade, and the academic publishers have proved sufficiently resourceful to find at least modestly active markets for their books and journals. Some of the larger academic presses are in fact doing quite well. Peter Doughterty, the director of the Princeton University Press, tells me that PUP is just closing the books on the best financial year it has ever had. I am not sure, but I think the main reason for PUP's success has been its capacity to sign economics books that continue to sell well as the world economy tanks.
But not all presses are doing as well. Just a couple of weeks ago we heard that the Southern Methodist University Press was going to be closed at the end of this month. The announcement provoked the usual complaints that the publishing sky was falling, but last week the Chronicle's Jennifer Howard reported that SMU's provost, Paul Ludden, had announced he would appoint a task force to consider whether the university should continue to have a press, and, if so, what sort of press it should be. It may be relevant here to notice that SMU's Houston neighbor, and peer institution, Rice, recently created an all-electronic press (on whose advisory board I sit). Ludden has not indicated what he thinks the options for SMU are, but he has announced four criteria to guide his publishing task force....