<< Jane Austen and Comedy | Front Page | Gojira 1954 >>
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
University Publishing in the Digital Age: the Ithaka Report
I meant to link to this a couple weeks ago. The good folks at the Institute for the Future of the Book are showcasing their snazzy new CommentPress software with a version of the Ithaka Report on University Publishing in the Digital Age. First bit of the executive summary:
This report began as a review of U.S. university presses and their role in scholarly publishing. It has evolved into a broader assessment of the importance of publishing to universities. By publishing we mean simply the communication and broad dissemination of knowledge, a function that has become both more complex and more important with the introduction and rapid evolution of digital and networking technologies. There is a seeming limitless range of opportunities for a faculty member to distribute his or her work, from setting up a web page or blog, to posting an article to a working paper website or institutional repository, to including it in a peer-reviewed journal or book. In American colleges and universities, access to the internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous; consequently nearly all intellectual effort results in some form of “publishing”. Yet universities do not treat the publishing function as an important, mission-centric endeavor. Publishing generally receives little attention from senior leadership at universities and the result has been a scholarly publishing industry that many in the university community find to be increasingly out of step with the important values of the academy.
That is misleadingly written but the point is right. Yes, universities value publishing in that they demand it. The report is focused on the fact that universities aren’t doing enough to support it. One bit that gave me pause:
We heard a pervasive view that one of the key factors behind the difficulties of university presses is scale. They lack the scale to compete effectively with commercial presses, to take risks with new business models, and even to have the bandwidth to think strategically and boldly about how to deal with the forces of change. One librarian commented: “What’s missing is experiments at scale. Presses cannot remain competitive in the electronic environment given their small size. It is possible to imagine many little presses going out of business and a few large ones getting big enough and sophisticated enough to compete.”
Experiments must be conducted at sufficient scale to demonstrate their potential value. In the online environment, the value of certain resources rises exponentially with scale due to the network effect. To cite a common example of this phenomenon, fax machines became useful as they became pervasive. Or think of JSTOR, where the full value of the aggregation would not have been evident with a prototype of ten journals. By bringing together a critical mass of both content and users, platforms such as HighWire Press, Wiley InterScience, ScienceDirect, and Project Muse have been able to create great value for both sides. Most presses lack the technological infrastructure for creating, loading, storing, preserving, and distributing dynamic electronic content. They also lack the capacity to market this content effectively. No single U.S. university press (at least at their current size) can justify building this capacity internally, nor would this be desirable from a user perspective. Without a compelling framework for cross-institutional collaboration, most have been stuck in a mode where they can only put a limited amount of content online, and that content is not extensive enough to form a destination in itself, or to justify enhancement through deep linking or interoperability, or to spark excitement that would lead to substantial investment.
This seems wrong to me. It seems as though micropublishing ought to work in a lot of ways. Then again, I have admittedly had a bit of trouble getting my bold Glassbead projects humming along the assembly-line. We’ve got a few in the pipe. Our Theory’s Empire book event is going to come out as a book very shortly; just putting the last touches on; I’m proud of that. I think it will do us proud. The Moretti event is crawling past the starting line, book-wise. I’ve got some stuff perking along. Making some nice editions of public domain stuff. But, as editor/layout guy/graphic designer, I’ve learned that publishing is a lot of work and you have to send endless cajoling email, get people to sign forms, and compel lots of small units of labor. Which is laborious and, to repeat, not as quick as you would think this computer stuff is from watching, say, Hackers. I’m hoping to do more stuff with the Future of the Book folks, who have cool toys. One thing making books has taught me is that organizing book events is easier and quicker than making books. And the book events are really good. Looking up and down our sidebar, I feel we’ve accomplished stuff, in the reviewing department. Good on us, eh? Gotta do more of that.
Here’s something I’ve been mulling: e-book formats. I’m sort of a paper fetishist, except where academic functionality is concerned. A lot of things are just more convenient to have onscreen, with the capacity to cut&paste and post, and you don’t really want to curl up with them on the sofa for 2 hours anyway. The Glassbead ideal I’ve stumped for is, basically, CC + free PDF + you can buy the paper. Which seems ok, for now. (Certainly lots better than just plain vanilla: you can buy the paper.) But I do believe that in 10 years we’ll all be reading stuff on our flashy new iPhones, whatever. The screens will get as easy on the eyes as paper and that will be all she wrote, unless you are taking it to the beach and don’t want to worry whether it gets wet. (Then again, the paperless office never showed up either. But I think that’s a different problem.) Where do you think e-books will be in 10 years? Ben, over at if:book, has an interesting post on the subject:
... But blech… enough about ebook readers. The Times also reports (though does little to differentiate between the two rather dissimilar bits of news) on Google’s plans to begin selling full online access to certain titles in Book Search. Works scanned from library collections, still the bone of contention in two major lawsuits, won’t be included here. Only titles formally sanctioned through publisher deals. The implications here are rather different from the Amazon news since Google has no disclosed plans for developing its own reading hardware. The online access model seems to be geared more as a reference and research tool — a powerful supplement to print reading.
But project forward a few years… this could develop into a huge money-maker for Google: paid access (licensed through publishers) not only on a per-title basis, but to the whole collection—all the world’s books. Royalties could be distributed from subscription revenues in proportion to access. Each time a book is opened, a penny could drop in the cup of that publisher or author. By then a good reading device will almost certainly exist (more likely a next generation iPhone than a Kindle) and people may actually be reading books through this system, directly on the network. Google and Amazon will then in effect be the digital infrastructure for the publishing industry, perhaps even taking on what remains of the print market through on-demand services purveyed through their digital stores. What will publishers then be? Disembodied imprints, free-floating editorial organs, publicity directors...?
I like the small-is-the-new-big-ness of it: “The prospect of atomization here (a million publishing tribes and sub-tribes) is no doubt troubling, but the thought of renewed diversity in publishing after decades of shrinking horizons through corporate consolidation is just as, if not more, exciting.” Yes. Academia really ought to be more abuzz with these sorts of thoughts. The future of the book really is a key tipping point, hence a very proper name for an institute. At some point e-books are going to happen. The future will be now. And a good thing, one trusts.
Comments
Academic publishing is fucked.
Setting aside issues of practicality and the whole “growing the intellectual community” around specific issues thing, in the UK there’s a major issue that a lot of research is state funded and yet the lay public can’t gain access to the fruits of this research without paying absurd and exploitative prices.
The problem tends to be that the kind of people who have an interest in the internet tend not to be the kind of people who wind up being professional researchers. I don’t mean that academia is actively hostile to online publishing and the free spirit of the commons, I just mean that it doesn’t occur to most people.
I think that it’s safe to say that the people starting out in academia NOW might well have some interest, but in order for them to bring about a culture shift, you’ll need to wait maybe 5-10 years where the people getting their PhDs NOW are starting to work their ways into positions of authority and influence.
So, free online publishing of articles? making books available for free to download? I’d say minimum 10 years from now and even then only in certain disciplines.
There are not only vested interests barring the way but also intense laziness and a lack of interest in changing the way research is done.
"At some point e-books are going to happen. The future will be now.”
"But, as editor/layout guy/graphic designer, I’ve learned that publishing is a lot of work and you have to send endless cajoling email, get people to sign forms, and compel lots of small units of labor. Which is laborious and, to repeat, not as quick as you would think this computer stuff is from watching, say, Hackers.”
This part is so right. I (as you know, but others don’t) put together a Lulu.com book of poems and pictures for my children. The time spent was approximately: writing poems, 1 week of vacation (though with pictures I’d taken over 2 years), putting together book into Microsoft Word, months and months of making a little progress, stretching out to more than a year as I got discouraged and bored, finally publishing book, indefinite (I’ve sent copies to people, but I’m still dithering about whether I should try to get the picture quality better before letting people who’ve said they want to buy it buy it). Laying out books is a really annoying, boring, picky, time-consuming job.
Laying out books is a really annoying, boring, picky, time-consuming job.
Amen. I actually was happy with my self-publishing layout, but no one else was because of the arial type. But the proofreading was hat killed me, and I didn’t do a good job of it.
"But the proofreading was hat killed me”
Truer worbs.
By teh by, I got the book. Thanks for sending it. I like it. I’ve read a good 50 page chunk. I’ll flog it publicly soon. You are a clever fellow, despite the lack of serifs.