University Presses Facing "Enormous Tectonic Shift
See - Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Lincoln in a Three-Car Garage,”
The Wall Street Journal, Jan.
University Presses Facing "Enormous Tectonic Shift " in Publishing
Nancy K . Herther 0
0 University of Minnesota Libraries , USA
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by Nancy K. Herther (University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities Campus) <>
Doug Armato, University of
Minnesota Press Director
Uto establish their reputation for
highniversity presses have worked hard
quality, scholarly monographic and
journal publication. In 2011, these presses
were poised at the forefront of the transition to
eBooks in the research sector. Even then, press
directors were quick to point to “enormous
tectonic shifts” yet to come in the transition to
21st-century scholarly publishing.
The past three years have seen major
changes and challenges to these presses, with
potentially competing publishing initiatives
from campus libraries and efforts by many
universities to re-evaluate the role and
organizational structure of their university presses.
University presses are still reeling from
efforts of the University of Missouri to close
their press in 2012. In the past few years, more
than 20 University presses have been moved
administratively to positions under the
leadership of campus libraries. Others have faced
serious financial and survival issues.
Further, the
relationships between
these presses and
academic libraries
have been strained
by the ongoing
lawsuit brought by three
academic
publishers against Georgia
S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y
Library over fair
use and electronic course reserves. Finding
pathways for cooperation and collaboration
would appear to be a major issue facing both
academic libraries and presses today.
Missouri Learns the Perils of
Academic Publishing
Just as higher education is experiencing
radical change, so too are many of the
institutions — from research libraries to college
sports to scholarly presses — that have been
pillars of these institutions for years. In May
2012, the University of Missouri Press was
officially closed, in order to save the University
its $400,000 annual subsidy. Three months
later, saved by an aggressive PR campaign to
fight the perception of irrelevance of the
institution in local newspapers and on campus, the
press was reorganized and now reports to the
University’s main Columbia campus instead of
the University system as a whole.
The story of this press, as Greg Britton,
Editorial Director, Johns Hopkins University
Press, described it, “in crisis and how it acted
to save itself” became a major plenary session
at the 2013 Association
of American
University Publishers (AAUP)
meeting. Was this a
random incident or the
first volley in a process
of reassessing the role and value of university
presses for the 21st century?
“As, essentially, small businesses, presses
are an odd fit on university org
charts,”University of Minnesota Press Director Doug
Armato explains to ATG readers, “the ‘comfort’ level
really depends on the individual administrator
to whom you are reporting, whether President,
Provost, Vice President, Dean, or
University Librarian. There are an
increasing number of strong presses
reporting to libraries, and I think the
key to success has been a recognition
that presses have a different mission
— outward-facing rather than
campus-facing — and need a degree of
operational flexibility and latitude to
take risks. Presses are often moved
around
administratively. The library reporting
line is certainly at least a
modest ‘trend’ now, but
university structures and
traditions vary widely, and
I’m not sure that trend will
become a norm. If it does, nothing
I’ve seen suggests it would be a
categorical threat to presses.”
University Presses Take on
Libraries Over Fair Use
The Georgia State University Libraries
lawsuit, Cambridge U. Press et al. v. Mark P.
Becker et al., was filed in April of 2008 by three
academic publishers, Cambridge University
Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage (supported by the Association of American
Publishers and with costs partially covered
by the Copyright Clearance Center) and
judgment made in May 2012; yet an appeal
is still pending. The case involved charges
that the university had violated copyright by
making unlicensed course content available
to students without getting special permission
to do so from publishers.
Brandon Butler of the Association of
Research Libraries noted that, “not only did
the CCC and AAP fail to stomp out fair use
in the electronic arena, but they wasted a lot of
time and resources over what turns out to have
been pocket change in terms of actual harm in a
typical semester…I’m baffled that the
publishers continue to claim that course reserves pose
some kind of existential threat to their business.
It was established at trial
that GSU’s practices are
in the mainstream, so
libraries (...truncated)