The Canary in the Coal Mine?
Education, TechnologyA story that broke last week, from Inside Higher Ed:
SMU Suspends Its University Press
Southern Methodist University is suspending the operations of its university press — a move that has angered faculty members and other supporters of the institution’s publishing arm.
The current economic downturn has forced many presses to economize by trimming staff and titles, and those at Louisiana State University and Utah State University were at risk of being closed last year, but both survived. Part of the reason for anger at SMU is that advocates for the press said they never had a chance to propose alternative cuts or to defend the necessity of a university press.
The article goes on to explain the various political and economic factors caught up in this decision, but the thing that caught me about this was the surprise factor: little warning, no input from faculty. Imagine all of the potential authors caught up in this melee, thinking that they might have been well on their way to press, only to find the rug yanked out from under them (and if some of those writers happen to be pursuing tenure, well, good luck to them).
Given news like this (and so far, this strikes me as the most dramatic example, but university presses are in a bind across the nation), projects like Harlot become all-the-more important in our related fields (rhetoric, composition, communication, digital media studies). Not only do they help give academics new venues in which to publish, collectively such offerings will likely lead to a tipping point in the not-too-distant future where the academic publishing ecology will shift in their direction. With the SMU Press case, we may be witnessing higher ed’s realization that the university press model of scholarship is no longer tenable; while this is perhaps ultimately in the best interest of the field, no one said it wouldn’t be painful.
May 21st, 2010 at 6:14 am
The Chronicle just published an update on this situation: “Ray of Hope Shines on Southern Methodist U. Press”:
(http://chronicle.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/article/Ray-of-Hope-Shines-on-Southern/65628/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en)
As regards Provost Ludden’s response, I find most curious (and hopeful, actually) the third point, that, “any publishing decision must reflect the consideration of the marketplace response to the publication.” This may _finally_ mean a serious conversation within academic circles about the *audience* for academic scholarship. It’s well known that university presses operated off of one of the most defunct business models around; to ask questions about the marketplace is to ask questions about who is consuming the “products” of scholarship. The current answers are terrifying, of course, but there’s good reason to see this as a kairotic moment for a significant restructuring of publishing priorities. (And I would argue that it reaffirms the exigency of Harlot’s mission.)