August 13, 2004

Presses Seek Fiscal Relief in Subsidies for Authors

By PETER MONAGHAN

Universities would provide money to underwrite their professors' books

Publish or perish is the timeworn mantra in the humanities and social sciences. Yet what happens to this ironclad rule of scholarly life when the publishers of academic research themselves begin to perish?

The 90 institutions of higher education that have their own academic presses now bear all the costs of a system used by most if not all universities.

And many of those presses are under increasing