Re-engineering scholarly communication: A role for university presses?

Journal of Scholarly Publishing

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 204-207

  Thatcher, Sanford G ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0002046947     PISSN: 11989742     EISSN: 17101166     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/jsp-027-04-197     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. R.M. Lumiansky, 'Foreword,' Scholarly Communication: The Report of the National Enquiry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1979), xi
2. Model University Policy Regarding Faculty Publication in Scientific and Technical Scholarly Journals: A Background Paper and Review of the Issues, July 1993
3. Report of the AAU Task Force on Intellectual Property Rights in an Electronic Environment, May 1994
4. I discuss these political obstacles in Towards the Year 2001,' Scholarly Publishing 24, 1 (1992): 26-7.
5. In response to criticisms of an earlier draft by myself, Janet Fisher, and others, the TRLN Task Force inserted into its final report the following qualification: 'Research published by university and most association presses remains essentially within the community of university research scholars and, thus, under university control. No change in current copyright transfer practices is needed with these scholarly presses because they share the fundamental values of university-based scholarly research and a common vision for the future of scholarly communication.' See its Model University Policy, vi.
6. The AAU/ARL Task Force initially included no university press representative at all, but, after some lobbying by the AAUP, it was persuaded to invite Colin Day, director of the University of Michigan Press, to be an ex officio member. His input undoubtedly accounts for such passages as the following in the task force's report: 'The problem is not that university presses are poorly managed. It is, rather, that they are not being asked by universities to do some of the things they can do well and that most urgently need to be done, especially in establishing viable and prestigious alternatives to expensive commercial journals in science, technology, and medicine. They are not provided with the necessary financial basis for such activities, nor are they brought into strong collaboration with the university's other information management agencies. From this perspective, universities are arguably wasting the publishing assets they have built over many years at precisely the time when the university's inability to control the costs of scholarly communication is most evident and most threatening to the vitality of the research mission of the university.' Report of the AAU Task Force, 131
7. I discuss this myopia more fully in Towards the Year 2001,' 35. Another good example of it may be seen in the complete absence of any reference to university presses in the section devoted to 'Diverse Constituents within the University' (or even anywhere in the index) in Kenneth Crews, Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993), 14-18-even though this book was published by a university press! Any promotion of an aggressive policy on 'fair use' within universities must consider its effect on university presses; otherwise, universities risk shooting themselves in the foot by adopting practices that can only damage their own presses. Crews came to appreciate the role of university presses more as he skilfully negotiated the formulation of guidelines for electronic reserve systems in academic libraries, guidelines that have been formally endorsed by the AAUP.
8. A recent example of a proposal that takes no account of universities' own stake in intellectual property as owned by their presses is 'On My Mind: Copyright Could Be Wrong,' American Libraries (February 1996) by Bert R. Boyce, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Louisiana State University, who argues: 'Current copyright law impedes the progress of science and the useful arts and therefore subverts the explicitly stated intent of those who drafted the primary law of the land. Since it is institutions of higher education that suffer the main economic loss from this unconstitutional law, it is these institutions that should be leading the fight against it.' For a different view of copyright's value for universities, see my 'Why Texaco Is Important to University Presses,' Against the Grain 7, 1 (1995): 1, 14-17.
9. Bennett worked closely with the Johns Hopkins University Press in launching Project Muse during his tenure as library director at that university. He was also speaker at a plenary session of the 1994 AAUP annual meeting devoted to 'On-Campus Library/Press Cooperation in a Networked Environment.'
10. This statistic comes from the AAUP Titles and Journals Published Survey' for 1994. This number does not include the journals published by the American Chemical Society, American Mathematical Society, American Psychiatric Press, and the Modern Language Association of America, which are associate members of the AAUP.
11. Gene R. Hawes, To Advance Knowledge: A Handbook on American University Press Publishing (New York: AAUP 1967), 30
12. Gene R. Hawes, To Advance Knowledge: A Handbook on American University Press Publishing (1967), 30 Ibid.
13. Gene R. Hawes, To Advance Knowledge: A Handbook on American University Press Publishing (1967), 30 Ibid.
14. Gene R. Hawes, To Advance Knowledge: A Handbook on American University Press Publishing (1967), 30 Ibid.
15. One part of this fascinating story is told by Robert Gannon in Hellions of the Deep: The Development of American Torpedoes in World War II (University Park: Penn State Press 1996).
16. See the landmark report by Bernard M. Fry and Herbert S. White on The Economics and Interaction of the Publisher-Library Relationship in the Production and Use of Scholarly and Research Journals (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation 1975).
17. This is the major theme of the reports from the Triangle Research Libraries Network and the AAU/ARL Task Force cited above in notes 2 and 3. For a more nuanced approach to the question of copyright, see Anthony M. Cummings et al., University Libraries and Scholarly Communication (New York: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 1992), especially chapter 11, 'Economic and Legal Issues.'
18. See my 'Latin American Studies and the Crisis in Scholarly Communication,' LASA Forum 23, 4 (1993): 10-14.
19. Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park: Penn State Press 1994)
20. 'Electroníc Scholarly Publishing: A New Form of Scholarly Communication,' October 1995, 1
21. Colin Day, 'A Framework for Thinking about the Issues,' 15 September 1993
22. Russ Dennison, 'Accreditation May Be the Answer,' Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues 160, 3 (27 March 1996)
23. Robert Ubell Associates for the Coalition for Networked Information, 'Cost Centers and Measures in the Networked Information Value Chain' (25 March 1996): 24-5
24. For any such cooperative endeavour to be ultimately successful on a wider scale, more universities would have to become involved in paying the costs, other than by just purchasing books and journals for their libraries as they do now. This is not a new idea: the National Enquiry in 1979 included this among its recommendations, that 'universities without presses become active participants in the publishing process as sponsors of work produced on their campuses.' It went on to elaborate: The publishing initiative in the United States is now concentrated in the relative handful of universities that have presses ... and the burden of subsidizing scholarly publication falls on these same institutions. The other 1,500 or so universities and four-year colleges neither participate in the publishing process nor help pay the cost. We believe that they could and should participate constructively in both functions. There are a number of ways in which they could do so, ranging from title subsidies to participation in a consortium (such as the University Press of New England ...).' Scholarly Communication, 24-5
25. Jerry D. Campbell, 'Copyright, Public Policy, and Digital Libraries: Searching for First Principles,' in Copyright, Public Policy, and the Scholarly Community (Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries 1995)