Phoenix rising: new models for the research monograph?

There is significant evidence that traditional university presses are continuing to face financial crises. Outlets for research monographs are drying up, print runs are being reduced and monograph costs are increasing. The combination of the digital networked environment and openarchive initiatives may, however, provide the opportunity, through institutional repositories, to rethink the role and nature of the distribution of research monographs in a university setting. The adoption of new models, untrammelled by the structures of the past, while still retaining editorial and refereeing standards, could revolutionize the access and distribution patterns of research knowledge within university frameworks. Ultimate success will depend, however, on programmes of scholarly advocacy in scholarly communication with the academic author as both creator and as consumer. Learned Publishing (2003)16, 111–122 Colin Steele Phoenix rising: new models for the research monograph? 111 L E A R N E D P U B L I S H I N G V O L . 1 6 N O . 2 A P R I L 2 0 0 3 and I mean anything’ but now there is ‘no way I can make the numbers work . . . I can’t charge $100 for a 260 page book’. A US$100 price ends up in Australia as being A$170–200. It has been estimated that the purchase of monographs by Australian university libraries declined by 50% in the period 1988–98. Similar studies with lesser percentage declines exist for the USA (Case, 1997). The landed price of overseas monographs in Australia is often significantly marked up by the publisher, which is not a problem initially for the libraries, which largely purchase from overseas suppliers, but it is for the individual academic who can find research monographs costing between $80 and $250 per book, with texts of around 200 pages or less. Student purchasing of research monographs has become almost totally out of the question except for essential textbooks. It has been quoted that the average sale of a social science/humanities monograph worldwide is between 250 and 350 copies with ‘x’ copies being remaindered. This is far from an efficient distribution mechanism in the new global networked environments. The Academic Remainders and Daedalus warehouses in Canberra, Australia and Columbia, MD, respectively are physical testimony to the remaindering of the academic output of the Western world. Why not charge lower prices in the first instance, if a significant component of the print run is going to be remaindered? Another phenomenon that has recently occurred, at least in Australia, is that of pre-remainder remaindering of books. Bookshops are now returning books to publishers on a sale-or-return basis quicker than ever. Publishers accept the returned books but then decide not to actually move these books to warehouses because of the costs involved. They simply delete them from their automated stocklists and sell the books cheaply to remainder middlemen, who then sell by the pallet-load to selected retail remainder outlets. As a consequence, books are being remaindered from major publishers in lots of 1–50 copies per title, sometimes within 6–8 weeks of their original publication, and on average within three months. Examples have been as varied as Cambridge University Press on the one hand and the Library of Congress on the other at one local Australian outlet. With the more academic titles, this particularly affects independent bookshops who are more likely to retain titles on their shelves after three months at the original price. Many commentators affirm that traditional university press publishing is currently in a state of crisis (e.g. Cooper, 2000; Ruark, 2001; Litchfield, 2002; McLemee, 2002). A rebuttal came from Niko Pfund (2002), Academic Publisher of Oxford University Press, New York, but even he admits that presses ‘struggle to keep up with galloping technology and to devise long term strategies in response to an ever changing market place’. University presses are now between a rock and a hard place: the rock of declining sales and the hard place of university financial accountability. The recent debate on the restructuring of Melbourne University Press (MUP) has attracted wide publicity in the Australian national media in 2003. In 2002 a vicechancellorial review of MUP was carried out which highlighted the economic problems facing scholarly publishing, citing the decline of publication in ‘conventional book form’. As a result, the publishing and retail arms have been separated in 2003 and the intent is to operate, at least in the short term, separate print and electronically delivered scholarly lists, the latter able to be downloaded and printed on demand. The Australian newspaper at the time stated, ‘despite being heavily subsidised by the University and its authors, MUP seems to many to be dying a slow death’. Academic publishing was quoted by one writer as becoming ‘vanity publishing’ as only those with financial subsidies could get to first base. This issue is, of course, not restricted to MUP. The greatest call on the funds of the Australian Academy of Humanities is to subsidize publications by its Fellows. It should be noted the Academy Fellows are widely recognized scholars and submit manuscripts to respected presses around the world. The issue here is that leading Australian scholars, in a number of fields in the humanities, require financial subsidies to be put on the table in order for their research to be pubuniversity presses are now between a rock and a hard place 112 Colin Steele L E A R N E D P U B L I S H I N G V O L . 1 6 N O . 2 A P R I L 2 0 0 3 lished. Such a situation did not exist to such an extent, say, 20–30 years ago. The whole process here is a cyclical one in which authors, publishers, distributors and readers cannot be viewed except as in one single process, yet the mechanisms rarely come together. The role of a university press Some of the tensions seen individually in the MUP restructure can be seen in the analyses produced by the Committee on Institutional Co-operation (CIC) – the consortial group of 12 major research universities in the Mid-West of the USA. Here existing presses and libraries have examined issues and tried to identify new models. The CIC report on university presses issued in Nov 2002 is a clear strategy for forward planning. It concludes that scholarly publishing is in a ‘transitional phase characterised by fluctuations, new economic pressures, technological shifts and new perspectives’ (CIC, 2002). The guidelines issued by the American Association of University Presses stand as a benchmark for university press publishing (AAUP, 2002). AAUP cites the role of presses in expressing the variety and diversity of cultural expression but many presses have moved into general publishing because of perceived larger revenue returns. The AAUP guidelines reflect the cultural mission of the university presses, although as Litchfield has pointed out, their penetration of their target cultural markets is often very limited. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in July 2002 that the University of North Carolina Press budget was saved in the previous year by the publication of Mama Dip’s Kitchen by a Chapel Hill Restaurant owner. Is this what scholars want from their university presses? Is this moving away from their original purpose of disseminating the academic output of their institution or related academia? In the process some presses have become indistinguishable from some of the general trade publishers who regularly commission books from academic authors. International aggregators Much of the debate to date in scholarly communication arenas has focused on serials. This is understandable given the rapidly rising cost of serials to institutions, particularly university libraries, in the last two decades, and the increasing globalization/ monopolization power of several major firms. The purchase in 2002 of Kluwer Scientific Publishing by an investment bank provides a microcosm of the current state of thinking in terms of returns on the distribution of academic, scientific, medical and legal knowledge. At the time of writing, Bertelsmann Springer is on the market with the ‘usual suspects’ circling the publishing carcass. In this context serial publishing at this multinational level is essentially a commercial investment, with an expansive role in the dissemination of academic information being very much a secondary consideration. International academic publishing conglomerates are increasingly offering large bonuses to executive staff if profit margins are increased. Recent comments on publishing lists highlight the fact that acquisitions of smaller academic publishers by larger conglomerates will see an immediate return on investment. Anecdotally the comment has been made that the major commercial publishers have no problems with monograph publishing and if allowed to take over ailing university presses could turn them into profit-making operations through absorption into larger structures. Such assertions need to be debated, but certainly if one tracks the serial subscription price of journals through particular publishing mergers, e.g. the current Taylor & Francis organization, the rises have been significant, although nowhere near the Elsevier price level rises of the 1990s. The need for investment in electronic infrastructures is recognized but the size of the price rises often cannot be directly linked. Academic advisory boards/editors often receive the poorest remuneration in this process, while referees are expected, by and large, to give their services for free due to a misguided allegiance to academic collegiality. There are indications that this philanthropy is breaking down. As mentioned earlier, another factor that has significantly impinged on the production and purchase of research monographs globally is the move by major international acquisitions of smaller academic publishers by larger conglomerates will see an immediate return on investment Phoenix rising: new models for the research monograph? 113 L E A R N E D P U B L I S H I N G V O L . 1 6 N O . 2 A P R I L 2 0 0 3 publishers to offer aggregated packages (‘the Big Deal’) to university libraries. Packages from firms such as Elsevier have taken up an increasing proportion of library acquisition budgets. In 2002 the Elsevier Science Direct’s aggregated subscription charge to the Australian National University (ANU) Library took about one-sixth of the entire acquisition budget. This has the effect, not only of reducing available monograph funds, but squeezing out the offerings of the smaller publishers which are not aggregators. The question of whether aggregated packages are a good or bad option for libraries is a matter of major debate elsewhere (Kohl, 2003).