From discussions with various university press publishers during Frankfurt Book Fair week in October 2010 I have noted many criteria which make a University Press stand out. The most important one is the requirement for Peer Reviews. In an address given at the inaugural AEUP meeting in Frankfurt , Marike Schipper from Leuven University Press, Belgium
She went on to say: [extracts and précis]
“Some University Presses publish books, others are into Journals; most use paper, but many publish in various electronic ways. We acquire, read and select manuscripts or articles, we edit and proofread them, we design covers and layout, have them printed or produced, and we promote, distribute and sell them.
How do we therefore distinguish ourselves from other publishers, scholarly or other?
The relationship between a university press and an academic institution takes on many shapes and forms, and it is very hard to define the concept of ‘university press.’ The fact that we share a distinct and formal relationship with a parent or partner institution sets us apart from any other scholarly publisher that does not have such a relationship. In many ways, a university press operates as an extension of its parent or partner institution and is therefore a key player in a more general network – including learned societies, scholarly associations and research libraries – that facilitates the distribution of scholarly knowledge and research. It is this connection to a larger framework that has several implications for a university press.
Our formal connection to the scholarly community and our commitment to disseminate academic research implies that the main criteria for publishing a manuscript are the scholarly content of the work. In order to assess the quality of this content, university presses rely on an extensive network of editorial board and/or external reviewers who advise the publisher on what to publish and what not. This peer review process is at the heart of university press publishing. It means that important but highly specialist research written for a small group of peers in less common topics which are being ignored by the larger commercial publishers may still have a chance of being published with a university press. And it is also what we are good at: to publish specialist research and to bring it to an international audience of academics, librarians and individual readers across the world.
It would be a bit naïve to think that university presses do not at all look at a title’s market potential. Even the university presses that are fully committed to the Open Access model need to take the numbers into account and calculate possible profits and loss. The sales potential is in most cases subsidiary to the quality of content because not all our titles need to be commercially viable per sé. This is what sets us apart from other scholarly publishers that need to make a profit to satisfy their shareholders. Our shareholders are the academic community and to satisfy them we publish books because of their scholarly, intellectual and creative merits, even if (but not because!) their scope and readership is small or sometimes tiny.
Within the University Press “family”, there are various business models to be found. Some are fully embedded into the university, whilst others may be set up as a Foundation or a Limited company, sometimes with the academic partner occupying the Board or as the main shareholder and still others operate independent from their academic partner. Therefore it is apparent that it is our strong relationship with, and our commitment to the academic community in order to pursue our common goal: the dissemination of scholarly knowledge.
The world of scholarly publishing is changing rapidly. Electronic media is challenging classic business models of selling paper content and the internet opens up many exciting ways of distributing and acquiring information. Academics and researchers are now in constant contact with their peers, exchanging ideas and information. Funding organisations more and more request that publicly funded research is publicly accessible, for free. Open access has become a serious alternative to traditional publishing models and libraries are looking for these alternatives to expensive packet deals. The internet seems to have the answer to many of our problems, but at the same time it may seem to make the intervention of a publisher somewhat redundant. What is the added value of a publisher if every person with access to the web can publish whatever he wants online and expects to get his information for free? And it is a good question? One we will have to find an answer to if we are to stay in business. Any publisher, scholarly or other, will have to [re]invent its role in future decades. Will people even continue to read books or will we all have an iPad in our suitcases by next year’s holiday?
More than ever, University Presses need to work with their parent institutions to confirm and underline their value in the process of disseminating scholarly knowledge. They need to prove their added value as quality controllers and help their readers, the academic community, to distinguish serious, innovative and valuable scholarly content from all the rest that is out there.
In a time where the internet has become the largest and most democratic distributor of information, the university press’ commitment to peer review and the assessment of new manuscripts is more important than ever.”
In my new role as a Board member of the Association of European University Presses, I am fully committed to using this new avenue to share information and best practices and work together to increase our presence on a European level. By joining forces we can improve the visibility of our university presses and make sure our commitment to scholarly publishing is recognised by academic institutions, potential authors, readers and buyers alike. This may include shared stands – Europe-wide and doing joint promotion of our publishing programmes and our titles to academics and libraries.
What Marike has described above is not an idealistic view, but a serious statement about the classical role of a university press. Peer reviews and editorial boards feature heavily in the activities of a classical UP but NUP must consider carefully its role and also consider the commercial applications presently enjoyed. Currently this includes corporate involvement and books which contain scientific content from outside the academic community.
We should also consider membership of the OAPEN access initiative:
More information on OAPEN and the Library is available at www.oapen.org (OAPEN Library) or http://www.oapen.org/project (background information).
Ros Webb
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