= Premium Content

  • Monday, May 28, 2012

Previous

Next

What Is Publishing? A Report from THATCamp Publishing

November 28, 2011, 8:00 am

By Prof. Hacker

[This is a guest post by Adeline Koh, an assistant professor of literature at Richard Stockton College, New Jersey. Her research and teaching interests are in postcolonial literature and theory, 20th century British literature, African and Southeast Asian literature, global feminist theory, and the digital humanities. She is currently the director of The Stockton Postcolonial Studies Project, an online magazine on postcolonial studies and the digital humanities. Find her on twitter at @adelinekoh. -GHW]

How is academic publishing adapting to the Internet? This October, I took part in THATCamp Publishing in Baltimore, an “unconference” that explored some pressing new questions, such as

  1. Who should publish digital scholarly research?
  2. Should digital academic research be published by the university press, or the university library?
  3. How should the process of peer review change?
  4. And finally, who should provide the work that goes into producing a publication—editing, peer review, administration and graphics?

THATCamp Publishing provided a forum for three stakeholders in this changing industry: traditional academic publishers, libraries-as-publishers, and faculty. While traditional publishers are interested in the bottom line, libraries-as-publishers are focused on the problem of access. Faculty, on the other hand, are concerned with how their publications will lead to promotion, tenure, and the advancement of knowledge. THATCamp Publishing highlighted how the evaporation of funding for scholarly publishing and the rise of the Internet as a low-cost, easy-access means of dissemination are radically changing the nature of this industry, and the inter-relationships of these three stakeholders.

What is a “Publisher” Anyway?

The entry of many research libraries into the publishing industry has muddied the definition of what exactly a publisher is. These include M-Publishing by the University of Michigan library and the Scholarly Resources Integration department of the Ohio State University library.

Upon signing a contract with a traditional publisher, authors and editors generally expect that the publisher will be responsible for work like copyediting, administration, finding peer reviewers, graphic design, and marketing. But university library publishers do not offer this level of publishing support. This was raised in Patricia Hwse’s (@pmhswe) session “So You Want to Start a Journal,” where librarians stated that they are not full-service “publishers,” but offer “publishing support services.” By this they mean that they offer basic infrastructure for publishing online such as web hosting and software. All the other work is left up to the authors and editors.

Librarians indicated that the difference between a “publisher” and a “publishing support service” has been confusing for faculty. However, this distinction is an important one and has significant implications for potential authors or editors. On the one hand, using a library publisher can afford authors and editors more control over the publishing process, and over the cost of the publication. On the other hand, going this route means that authors and editors are now responsible for the substantial work of editing, administration, graphic design, and marketing. So does “publishing” simply mean the act of making content available (which is what library publishers do)? Or does “publishing” include the additional work of polishing and reviewing the manuscript, and later marketing and distribution?

This confusion is compounded by the fact that the relationship between these library publishers and the traditional university press is unclear and still in flux. For example, while the webpage for M-Publishing is housed at the University Michigan Press website, M-Publishing remains part of the university library and not part of the press.

Who Will Fund the Work?

The distinction between the role of a “publisher” and a “publishing support service” raises the issue of who is responsible for the work of editing, copyediting, peer review, design, and marketing—work that goes into the actual production of the manuscript. Scholars assume that this will be provided by the press, but librarian-publishers assume that this will be provided by the author or editor.

At the same time, traditional scholarly publishers stated that they have a hard time finding means to justify the work of production. Scholarly monographs are usually produced at a financial loss, and the press makes up for this by relying on the revenue from paid journal subscriptions to balance the books.

Thus, in relation to the work involved in manuscript production, open access publishing can be either a boon or a curse, depending on which side you are on. Academics and library publishers generally embrace open access as a means of raising visibility and the democratization of knowledge. But for traditional scholarly publishers, open access makes it difficult to recoup the costs of producing manuscripts. Open access journals—where there is no charge to access the content of the journal—do not generate any subscription revenue. This raises the question “If paid journal subscriptions are the main source of revenue for scholarly presses, where is the funding for the production of monographs going to come from if we move towards open access?”

The work of producing manuscripts has become a matter of passing the buck: it needs to be done, but each side seems to think that it is another party’s responsibility, and there are few avenues to find funding for it. This has deep implications for the future of academic publishing.

  1. Does this mean that academic authors and editors are going to have to take over the work of copyediting, design and marketing, along with the actual research and writing of their manuscripts?
  2. Who should do this “invisible” work, and where is the funding for this work going to come from?
  3. And how is the problem compounded with the rise of open access?

Should the Peer Review Process Change?

New forms of peer review may involve having a version of the manuscript published online before it is actually published by the journal or press. Peer reviewers for the online manuscript are generally sought from both the general public and a selection of carefully-chosen scholars. Notable experiments with this new type of publication include Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s (@kiftz) Planned Obsolescence, which was published online and commented upon by its two external reviewers online before being published by NYU press, and two issues of Sarah Werner’s (@wynkenhimself) edited Shakespeare Quarterly. More about this new form of publishing and the “Unpress” can be found here.

Many university press publishers indicated that academic authors were generally interested in these new forms of peer review, but that best practices for new types of peer review were still unclear. They raised concerns that making peer review completely “open” might encourage an onslaught of spam in the comments, while others pointed out that making the process open to only a selected number of reviewers might defeat the purpose of a truly open peer review. Attendees debated as to whether peer review could also serve as a marketing tool. One participant related an incident where a textbook with a large number of reviewers actually provided a ready audience for the book once it was complete, especially because these reviewers felt that they had a significant impact on the eventual shape of the book.

Anonymity is also a concern in new forms of peer review. Sarah Werrner related that while authors were unfazed by having to use their real names in this form of peer review, reviewers were more hesitant to break out of their anonymity. Another participant raised the issue of academic labor: if peer review becomes a “crowdsourcing” process, it will count less for service and lines on a reviewer’s CV, and make it less valuable as work.

Ultimately, all were in agreement that despite the difficulties it posed, new forms of peer review were intriguing and all were eager to find new ways to pursue it. Emily Arkin (@emilyarkin) at Harvard University Press suggested the possibility of adapting the review system from Slashdot, an aggregator for technology news that uses an innovative moderation system where commenters rate the usefulness of comments. Slashdot users earn “karma” for their ratings, which in turn leads to how seriously their comments are taken. I mentioned the new project experiment Hypothes.is–still in developmental stages–which will provide a “peer review” of the entire Internet. Participants also raised a few illuminating examples of new types of peer review within academic publishing, such as the online journals Postmedieval and Kairos and the PressForward initative at George Mason University, which will be publishing the proceedings of past THATCamps.

Conclusion

THATCamp Publishing provided a valuable forum for academics, librarians, and publishers to interact. Together we discussed important questions about how digital forms of publishing are actively changing the way we conceive of publishing today. How all three will negotiate the changes to the industry is yet to be determined.

More from THATCamp Publishing:

  • Details on THATCamp Publishing: For those interested in further details on THATCamp Publishing, a Google docs folder containing notes on the sessions started by Aram Zucker-Scharff (@chronotope) can be found online. The twitter feed for the conference can be found using the hashtags #thatcamp and #pub.
  • For Librarians and New Forms of Publishing: Patricia Hwse (@pmhswe) has started a google group to discuss the subject of library publishing services (https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/libpub), an extremely informative discussion space for exchanging ideas about library publishing services.
  • Useful Questionnaire for Faculty on “How to Start Your Own Journal”: Librarians expressed that if faculty who wanted to use the library “publishing support service” to either publish a book or start a journal often need to clarify how their publication would address a need within scholarship. They indicated that questions that faculty should think about include: 1) what is the mission of my journal? And, 2) what gap within established journals does my journal address? Amy Buckland (@jambina), on the request of Miriam Posner (http://www.miriamposner.com/, @miriamkp), shared a questionnaire on Google Docs which librarians might find useful to give scholars interested in starting a journal: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-nm9UK-DjQWjZfe1KXZjRcNe9iXY_TaCYjRuSE5y5Fg/edit

See also…

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr image "Mixed Media Painting (Detail) by Choichun Leung" by See-ming Lee]

This entry was posted in Profession and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

  • Print
  • Comment
  • 22174596

    Great post.  I want to pull out an old Elton John album and read Harry Potter now. “I miss Daniel…oh I miss him so much!”

  • jackdrty

    Thanks for this succinct overview of key discussions at THATCamp Publishing, particularly the divergent perspectives of authors, libraries, and publishers. My co-editor Kristen Nawrotzki and I also have questioned how academics currently define “publishing” in the introductory essay for our open peer review volume, Writing History in the Digital Age (http://WritingHistory.trincoll.edu), under contract with the University of Michigan Press. Most humanities scholars care about whether their scholarship will be publicly disseminated in a form that “counts” for hiring and promotion, which admittedly is a somewhat squishy standard in this digital era. The current edition of our volume consists of 30 essays. If each had been posted on an individual author’s blog site, most academics say it would not “count” toward scholarship. But when pooled together onto one site, with open peer review by general readers and appointed experts, followed by authors’ and editors’ revisions and decisions, and a formal acceptance by the Press, it does “count”. The difference between the two is the degree of “invisible labor” and the decision-making process to reach our quality standards. Based on our experience, scholars and publishers need to discuss who will play each of these roles, and what support will (or will not) be offered by libraries and colleagues, and spell it out in agreements to supplement traditional book contracts (which have not changed with the times). The work is not easy, but we can make it more visible and widely understood, as we attempted to do in the “How this book evolved” section on our site above.

  • http://sarahwerner.net Sarah Werner

    This is a great report–thanks for the thoughtful coverage and analysis of the discussions! I wanted to add a quick clarification: I am an Associate Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly; David Schalkwyk is the Editor. I guest edited a special issue on Shakespeare and Performance that, as you note, used an open peer review process during 2011 (that issue is now in print as the Fall 2011 issue). SQ did an earlier open peer review for a special issue on Shakespeare and New Media that was guest edited by Katherine Rowe (that became the Fall 2010 issue). Both open reviews were hosted at MediaCommons and can still be found there, for those who are curious: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/shakespearequarterlyperformance/ and http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/ShakespeareQuarterly_NewMedia/.

  • m_kahn

    Just a quick note to clarify the relationship between MPublishing, the University of Michigan Press, and the UM Library. MPublishing is indeed part of the UM Library, as is the University of Michigan Press, which is also administratively part of the library. As a unit, MPublishing brings together publishers, technologists, and librarians to serve as the hub for scholarly publishing for the UM community. For more information, see http://publishing.umich.edu/.

  • adel9348

    Thanks for your comments. I’d love to talk to you more about your book, which I’ve heard about, and what you’ve encountered–please email me at Adeline.Koh[at]stockton.edu. Thanks!

  • adel9348

    Thanks for the clarification, m_kahn. My impression from speaking to MPublishing rep at THATCamp Publishing was that the exact relationship between the Press and the library was unclear in terms of the role and scope of each party. 

  • procrustes

    This column refers several times to difficulty in finding funding to support the publication process. But what is the  purpose of publishing?  All to often academic publishing exists as an entirely supply-side phenomenon, with little regard for potential readers or use of the content.  Individuals and libraries are more likely to support financially publications that actually attract an audience and get used.  So are grant funders.  It can hardly be lost on any potential funder that most academic publications are seldom read or cited.  One of the virtues of the OA movement is that it tends to move the cost to authors, who are the primary beneficiaries of their publications.

  • sand6432

    This discussion would have been more illuminating if it had distinguished between journal publishing and monograph publishing, which are handled in different ways by university presses (and, indeed, all scholarly publishers). These two also differ in significant ways from textbook publishing. The transition to digital does not mean these differences become less important. For journal publishing, presses have never been directly involved in the peer-review process; that is handled entirely by the scholar-editor, supported by an editorial advisory board. The press’s role is limited to selecting the editor of the journal and approving the membership of the advisory board. The press takes care of copyediting, typesetting, printing, marketing,subscription fulfillment, and distribution. (Note that design occurs once, or at least at very infrequent intervals, whereas each book usually receives its own separate design, unless it appears in a series where a template design is used.) For monographs, presses are involved in acquisitions, developmental editing, and peer review (involving both in-house staff, expert reviewers, and a faculty editorial board) as well as design, typesetting, printing, binding, order fulfillment, and warehousing. Because of these major differences, libraries can readily become publishers of journals just by providing a platform that is open access where articles can be posted by the scholar-editor’s office after acceptance. (Libraries are not well positioned, however, to do subscription-based journal publishing.) Copyediting can be outsourced to free-lancers or made the responsibility of the editorial office. The onetime design of a journal can also be outsourced. Libraries are not set up to do monograph publishing invoilving the full panoply of peer review, however, and they would be foolish to try doing so. Experiments like those at Michigan (and at Penn State, where I directed the press as a subunit of the library and where the press and library jointly operated the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing) work because the library and press both contribute their staff skills in different areas to make the process operate effectively. —Sandy Thatcher

  • 22022711

    This article raises some good questions but also reproduces some prevailing misunderstandings. I question, for example, this stark dichotomy: “While traditional publishers are interested in the bottom line, libraries-as-publishers are focused on the problem of access.” Libraries, too, have a bottom line; that’s why they cannot provide what publishers do. And that inability significantly affects readers’ access to the work.

    I think this is especially problematic when it comes to books, since each new title is a unique contribution (rather than the next issue in a journal with an audience built up over time). So each new book must be introduced to its potential audience. Libraries lack the resources and the processes not only to offer peer review, copy editing, and composition (which can be outsourced to freelancers), but also to make the world aware of their books’ existence.

    At one university I know of, the library has attempted to create a small press, separate from the institution’s press, to publish scholarly books on an open-access basis. They soon found that they could not satisfy authors’ demands to disseminate their work. The library was not set up to send complimentary copies to journals for purposes of review, or even to notify journals’ review editors about the existence of an open-access version. They had no copies of books to send to conferences in the relevant fields. They did not subscribe to Eloquence or any other such service to ensure that data about the books flowed out into the larger world. Instead, the library was relying entirely on the Google search mechanism to lead potential readers to the open-access version of the book. In a world with billions of websites, and a search mechanism that seems to favor commerce, I am skeptical that many readers learn about these books.

    A collaboration between a university press and a university library would seem to offer the best solution, in that it can take advantage of what each has to offer.

  • adel9348

    Thanks to everyone who has commented so far on their thoughtful input, clarifications and additions. Everything raised so far has been great food for thought, and would be a good starting point for the next iteration of THATCamp Publishing. -Adeline Koh

  • 11121328

    This article does a great job of clarifying a very basic misunderstanding. Posting is not publishing! Scholarly publishers add tremendous work and value to the process, from peer review and editorial development to copyediting, design, production, distribution, and marketing. Why would anyone expect libraries to take this on?

  • shawnmar

    I think this is a very interesting report as well.  I was also at the
    conference and intrigued by the consistent differentiation between
    “publishing” and “publishing support services.”  I think the
    inter-relationship between publishers and libraries and the services
    they offer is an important one, and I wrote some more extensive comments
    at http://engagingscholarship.com

  • gregbritton

    There is something of a Rashomon effect in Professor Koh’s concisely detailed description of publishing from three perspectives that are linked but divergent in key ways. What unites them is an interest in the mission of scholarly communication – authors, publishers, and librarians all hope for the broadest possible dissemination of ideas, information, and argument – and what divides them often comes down to who should pay for the work involved in doing that.

    Koh calls that work “invisible” and that too is part of the problem. Publishers have not been good about communicating the value they provide, not in “producing manuscripts” as Koh inaccurately states (scholars do that work), but in preparing, shaping, improving, and marketing the work done by scholars.

    I attended the Baltimore THATCamp and during a lunch break I overheard a young librarian say to a colleague, “I just don’t get it when publishers start to talk about ‘business models.’” That seems to be the root of much of disagreement and confusion. We lack a common understanding and vocabulary for talking about our shared interests and divergent needs. We are also deeply suspicious that the other side is out to best the other. As institutional budgets contract and there is less cash in the scholarly publishing system, it is essential that these three groups come together on their shared goals. Technology holds much promise and peril for all three, but fighting over a shrinking pie will result in everyone going hungry. Conversations like THATCamp could go a long way to creating a shared understanding of what it at stake for all of us.

    I applaud Professor Koh for her excellent description of this complex ecosystem.

  • monica_mccormick

    Many thanks to Adeline Koh for recapping the complex discussions that occurred at THATCamp publishing. This piece certainly conveys my own sense of the conversations–that we all had more questions than answers, and it was very fruitful to air them. I agree with other comments that these communities need to keep talking, correct misconceptions, and find common ground.

    A few points of clarification:

    Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s manuscript for Planned Obsolescence was actually reviewed simultaneously in two ways: NYU Press sent it to two traditional peer reviews, while it was also posted at MediaCommons Press for open peer review, where more than 50 individuals added comments. The final book (having been revised in response to these readings) is now available for sale, while the earlier version with comments remains online here:
    http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsolescence/

    Also, in regard to the many questions raised about open peer review, I remind readers that NYU Press and MediaCommons have received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to study open peer review. We are exploring pros and cons, developing protocols for conducting it, and assessing technological options to support it. Our findings/report will be available (for open peer review!) in summer 2012. Here’s a brief description of our plans from the Chronicle in April 2011:
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/taking-a-closer-look-at-open-peer-review/30877

  • monica_mccormick

    While I agree it’s important to distinguish between publishing and posting, and between publishing and publishing services, I’d also suggest that “publishing” encompasses many distinct activities that can be accomplished in many ways. What most scholarly presses traditionally do may not be necessary in all cases, or may be done by other participants. Adeline has usefully captured here some of the diverse options that are emerging.

    Rather than saying that “Publishing is X; therefore activities that don’t include all that are not publishing,” I find it more helpful to ask, for any given publishing program, What, among the set of publishing activities, do we need? Which can be best managed by which partners? and How will the costs for those activities be covered? There are innumerable ways to organize ourselves. I urge us not to get trapped in a predetermined notion of “real publishing” — that will needlessly limit our imaginations.

  • http://twitter.com/jmittell Jason Mittell

    Nice summary of what sounds like an interesting un-conference. One quibble with a point made by a participant: “if peer review becomes a “crowdsourcing” process, it will count less for service and lines on a reviewer’s CV, and make it less valuable as work.” This assumes that it actually counts for something on a CV now! I’ve never encountered a situation where hiring, promotion, or salary decisions factor somebody’s peer reviewing into the process. Service is always the shortest leg on the stool, and such reviewing work seems much less “valued” than work at ones own institution or professional society.

    One potential upside of public, open-reviewing is that you can actually get some (indirect) value for reviewing: if your comments on a piece are seen as interesting or demonstrating expertise, the author & other readers might look at your work, remember your name, or perhaps invite some collaboration. Such greater circulation of your reputation can eventually lead to things that really “count” (as well as the satisfaction of interesting conversation & exchanges). But with blind review, nobody except the editors come away thinking more of you – and that only leads to more requests to do manuscript reviews!

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.

  • The Chronicle of Higher Education
  • 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W.
  • Washington, D.C. 20037