University Press Meeting Dominated by Donor Proposal and Digital Publishing

Autor/in	Howard, Jennifer
Titel	University Press Meeting Dominated by Donor Proposal and Digital Publishing
Quelle	In: Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (2007) 43, (1 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0009-5982
Schlagwörter	University Presses; Humanities; Private Financial Support; Philanthropic Foundations; Reports; Conferences; Electronic Publishing + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Geisteswissenschaften; Humanwissenschaften; Private Investition; Philanthropismus; Abschlussbericht; Berichten; Elektronisches Publizieren
Abstract	A surprise request for proposals from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a forthcoming report on university publishing in the digital age were among topics discussed at the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses. The offer from the Mellon Foundation concerns support for collaborative, monograph-centered projects in underserved areas of the humanities, a program intended by Mellon to encourage "the publication of excellent scholarly monographs (typically first books by younger scholars in the humanities) which are important but fail to attract sufficient numbers of buyers to make publication feasible." The foundation expects to select five to seven proposals and to provide them with an unspecified amount of financial support for three years. Press directors and editors exchanged ideas about what might catch Mellon's eye, although many expressed frustration at how little time they had to come up with ideas, uncertainty about what Mellon really wanted, and skepticism about the foundation's broader intentions. Others noted appeals of the proposal, including its focus on monographs and its appeal to smaller and midsized presses, noting that the proposal is not aimed at just the top tier of presses and may reflect a new will at the foundation to support the work of smaller presses. In addition to the Mellon proposal, panelists and speakers at the conference continued to wrestle with many questions of digital publishing, including: (1) What does it mean to publish books in a digital age?; (2) What about journals, open access, fair use, libraries? and (3) What business models and partnerships really stand a chance of working? General resistance to digital publishing by the overall field of humanities was cited by Rice University vice provost and university librarian Charles Henry, and Stanford University press associate director and editor in chief Alan Harvey. Penelope J. Kaiserlian, director of the University of Virginia Press, underscored the significance of several major reports touching on the scholarly publishing world that came out over the past year, including the Modern Language Association's look at tenure and promotion and the "tyranny of the monograph" in that process, the American Council of Learned Societies report on cyberinfrastructure in the humanities, and a Mellon-supported report on the state of art-history publishing. In an interview, Sanford G. Thatcher, director of Penn State University Press, pointed to another upcoming report that he expects will make waves among university-press personnel. Intended for administrators and librarians as well as press directors, the report is said to invite university presses to "rethink how they're going to make this jump into the digital age" and to think harder about how they fit into their university's research activities. Taken with the Mellon call for proposals, Mr. Thatcher said, "The Ithaka report is a wake-up call." (ERIC).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10