CONTENTS
How Going to the AAUP Meeting Paid Off
University of Pittsburgh Press Offers Open Access to Select Digital Backlist
Developing Professionals: The Iowa Press-English Honors Internship
Hot Demand for Cool Digital Content: Results from the National Academies Press Online Pricing Study
2007 Whiting Week-in-Residence Program
The Charleston Conference 2007
International Exchange: Guadalajara 2007
Miscellany:
Presidential Records Access
FOIA Legislation
NIH Open Access Policy Now Law
“Books for Understanding” Voting and Elections list updated
New “Books of Note” Features
News of the Caravan Project
AAUP Central Office Staff news
Calendar: see Calendar on AAUPnet.org
By Ann Wendland
Marketing and Sales Manager, University Press of Colorado
Why I chose not to go to AAUP 2007 (and got to go anyway)
Chances are, if you’re in sales and marketing, no-one from your department went to the AAUP meeting in 2007—less than half of the presses represented sent sales and marketing staff. Perhaps you felt that you just couldn’t allocate the time and money. That’s why I chose not to go.
Like yours, my schedule is maxed. A department of one, I’m responsible for every aspect of sales and marketing for the University Press of Colorado. A hundred good causes vie for every minute, and, worse, they tear apart every dollar. AAUP 2007 appeared in my draft budgets, but in the end I felt that I had to reallocate the money.
Questia, which awards three full-ride fellowships to the meeting for employees of small to midsize presses, gave me a grant, so I went after all.
To my surprise, I found that attendance would have paid for itself in directly related net sales within a month. The meeting also helped me free up time and will have long-term sales benefits. Colleagues offered information that contextualized my decisions and lent experience that helped me shape efforts in quickly changing parts of the field and areas in which I’m less knowledgeable.
Free time
Just before the meeting, I’d made a time-dictated change to advertising and exhibit planning that I wasn’t certain would benefit sales. I had been planning ads and exhibits on a book-by-book basis that required extensive research and laborious scheduling. This year, I dedicated 90% of ad and exhibit budgets to recurring venues—journals in which we would advertise regularly and exhibits in our niche subjects. Long-term agreements with ad reps, recurring deadlines, and templates for journal and program ads saved a lot of time, but I felt concerned about narrowing our focus.
]At AAUP 2007, speakers emphasized that in the current climate for university presses, publishing in niches and regularly touching base with target audiences in those niches is the best route to strong sales. The venues I’d chosen for ads and exhibits matched the lists that the director would highlight in the next strategic plan, so I set my concerns aside. Had I not attended, I might have continued to doubt my choice. Now, I can spin it as a shrewd marketing decision to brand the press through repetitive exposure and visual consistency. Really!
Other panelists also freed up time. I cheered (internally) when publicity panelists mentioned that we should just tuck materials into books because press kits get tossed. When colleagues shared their runs of review copies and galleys, which I’d assumed were higher than mine, it turned out that I could stand to trim. Time and money saved.
Free money
Ideas and information from AAUP 2007 gave a quick boost to our sales through bookstores and online vendors, helped me market the press back to member institutions (Colorado is a consortial press), and gave me key information that will support long-term projects.
The quickest boost came from conversations emphasizing the importance of promoting backlist. On returning home, I reviewed our sales with Barnes & Noble, alerting buyers to perennial sellers that B&N had dropped or sold an abnormally low percentage of. They immediately bought hundreds of books for a net sales boost of several thousand dollars. (It’s not much, but it would cover a conference and it took one day.) I worked with sales representatives to develop a backlist promotion offer for independent booksellers.
Several sessions reinforced the value of robust book pages online, especially at Amazon.com. At home, I confirmed that Amazon.com sales have grown since we improved our pages recently. I stepped up efforts, incorporating uploads of reviews and blurbs into regular routines and initiating participation in Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book.” I gave Dial-a-Book the OK to post excerpts on prominent sales sites and ensured that our books turn up in Google BookSearch. These projects might have languished if AAUP 2007 sessions hadn’t reinforced their importance.
For an easy basket, I adopted a speaker’s suggestion to include names of supporting institutions in ads, promoting our member universities to thousands of people. Board members can use that information when they advocate for increased subsidies. Time required: three minutes.
Two long-term priorities for the press—increasing foreign sales and gaining course adoptions through direct mail—require me to build certain knowledge and skills. Related sessions offered the expertise of some of the most successful presses in each area, allowing me to take advantage of what they’d learned over years.
Profitable Conversations
Sales results of serendipitous conversations at AAUP 2007 would be hard to quantify, except to say that the meeting crowds were studded with the very wholesalers and review editors that we allocate significant time and money to meet.
Writers from six book reviews attended. I enjoyed broader conversations with a couple of them than typically occur in publicity meetings. The sessions helped me make more of their reviews, too. Now, I’m quickly posting them online and using them in e-marketing. As suggested by Blackwell’s AAUP delegate, I emailed new Choice and Library Journal reviews to Blackwell and received an immediate response.
A spirit of collaboration drove the meeting: people shared detailed, useful information both in and out of sessions. At every turn, I found a happy chance to meet or reconnect with colleagues from other presses, wholesaler honchos, industry associates, AAUP staff, sales representatives, and consultants with coveted expertise.
In the hotel bar, consultant and former Oxford University Press U.S.A. director Laura Brown sat beside me and we chatted about library sales (a conversation with the co-author of the Ithaka Report on university presses and libraries that I certainly couldn’t have budgeted). Here’s my favorite of her suggestions: take a librarian out to lunch. She had lamented how few publishers talk one-on-one with librarians. The head acquisitions librarians of our public and university libraries were delighted to meet with me and each offered valuable information about recent and upcoming changes in buying methods.
See you next year?
Quick corrections and opportunities that came up at AAUP 2007 saved our press enough and earned enough to pay for the meeting. Long-term benefits of streamlined work and increases in sales will come from key information that people shared in sessions and casual conversations. If, like me, you chose not to go to the 2007 meeting (and if no-one handed you a free pass that made it impossible to resist), I hope I’ll see you in Montréal this June.
Up-to-date information on the 2008 AAUP Meeting can be found at http://aaupnet.org/programs/annualmeeting/
By Shaun Manning
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Though debate over digital publishing and open access is still far from resolved, university presses are beginning to take bold steps in the hope of innovation. Perhaps out of necessity, and certainly driven by mission statements promoting the dissemination of scholarly research, academic publishers have taken the lead in exploring the implications of open access and the real and perceived differences between web-based and print publications.
Recently, the University of Pittsburgh Press has announced that it is working to make selected backlist titles available online, free of charge, through Pitt’s University Library System (ULS). The first of the Pitt Press collections to be made available online is the Latin American Series, with thirty-nine titles already presented for open access. Readers of the digital editions can click on any chapter or article from the table of contents, and then browse through the entire book. It is also possible to download individual pages as PDF documents, perform a full-text search of the book, and skip to any page using a drop-down menu.
A product of shared objectives between University of Pittsburgh’s press and libraries, this collaboration follows a trend of increasing cooperation between such custodians of research. “This pilot project emerged from a series of discussions which addressed areas of common concern regarding emerging technologies, the dissemination of scholarship, trends in both the sales and usage patterns of various forms of media, and the appropriate roles of both the library and the Press in the scholarly communication system,” said Peter Kracht, Editorial Director and Director of Electronic Publishing at University of Pittsburgh Press.
The partnership benefits the libraries by offering additional content for their electronic catalog, while providing the press with an opportunity to enter the digital arena with a more robust presence than it could otherwise achieve. ULS will be responsible for all costs associated with the program, and will also employ its technology assets and infrastructure toward digitizing the press’s backlist. “As a smaller university press, frankly Pittsburgh lacked the independent capacity to launch a major digital publishing initiative on our own. The Pitt library, which has long held substantial collections of public-domain materials in a number of subject areas, had already invested in the equipment and staff to provide a scanning as well as digital storage and search capabilities to access this material,” Kracht said. “It was not hard for both sides to see the advantages of cooperating on a initiative such as this.”
D-Scribe, ULS’s digital archive, already has a formidable database of open-access digital content. Drawing on resources from the University of Pittsburgh Library system, the university’s digital thesis program, and other cultural institutions, D-Scribe’s archive includes more than sixty collections of photography, archival documents, theses and dissertations, and electronic journals. But with the addition of the press’s Digital Editions, the University Library System may eventually acquire up to five hundred titles.
As with other digital publishing ventures that make commercially available material accessible for free online, University of Pittsburgh Press will be tracking the effects of the D-Scribe project on sales of printed books during this experimental phase. But this will only be one factor in determining how the initiative progresses. According to Kracht, the launch of UPP’s Digital Editions has been coordinated so as to highlight factors beyond sales and revenue, by selecting titles and a list that would be less vulnerable to cannibalization and to which the press has undisputed claims to the electronic rights. “
Inherent in this process is an exploration of the changing role of university presses and evaluating the options available to presses in a digital environment. “It may be that the lessons we learn suggest the need for some rethinking about the best ways to underwrite the dissemination of scholarship than the traditional consumer-pays-for-print-edition system,” Kracht said. He suggested that what may eventually emerge is a system by which print and digital media complement each other across markets, and this assertion has been supported by research into electronic publishing carried out by other member presses. Certainly, the benefits of having digital editions exist side by side with print publications would include increased access to scholarly research and the option of a format of presentation that is convenient for different users.
Like other university presses that have entered into digital publishing endeavors, the University of Pittsburgh Press has needed to make a series of decision as to format and access. Its publishing model is similar to University of Michigan’s digitalculturebooks site, in which the university’s press and library joined to create online versions of new media publications. (See “dcbooks Tests the Digital Waters,” The Exchange, Winter/Spring 2007). But unlike another project, put forth by the National Academies Press, Pittsburgh does not allow users to download the entire book or individual chapters as PDF documents. NAP charges a fee for this format and offers full-text browsing on the site for free, while Pitt maintains only the free browsing model.
Though the landscape of digital publishing is always shifting and the research of various organizations is constantly adjusting publisher strategies, Kracht sees online content as a necessary component of Pitt’s mission-based publishing program. “The combination of digital format with open access allows us to provide a genuine service to the international scholarly community by making this material readily available in the region and beyond.”
The University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions can be found at: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/p/pittpress/
The ULS Digital Library homepage is http://www.library.pitt.edu/
By Michael McCutcheon
The University of Iowa Press had considered developing an internship program for several years—thinking of what the Press wanted and could offer, planning the logistics of recruitment, and researching other internship programs on and off campus. Yet it wasn’t until the spring semester of 2005 that the idea took root.
Having been invited to give a talk about a career in publishing to the undergraduate students enrolled in the university’s English Honors Program, Holly Carver, the Press Director, met her counterpart, Mary Anne Rasmussen, the Director of the undergraduate English program. The two quickly found themselves on the same page regarding a formal internship program. “It’s the sort of thing everybody loves,” said Carver. In part, it provides the kind of hands-on experience for undergrads that leads to jobs, while pushing the university to further recognize the advantages of having a press.
The relationship between the press and the English Honors Program imparts prestige to the internship and ensures that the Press receives high-aptitude students. “Publishing has become more and more professionalized, it’s become much more of a career,” said Joe Parsons, Acquisitions Editor, University of Iowa Press. “We are reflecting that professionalization.”
Several of the students who attended Carver’s talk would later become some of the first interns in the program. “The point of the talk was to introduce English students to what they could do,” remembered Sarah Remington (‘06). “Holly spoke, and her words, I’ll never forget them, ‘Publishing is an excellent place for high performing introverts.’ That struck a chord…. The first feeling, in a long time, that there was a place for me in the professional world.”
Applying to become an intern at the Iowa Press is the same as applying for any other job. Prospective interns fill out a general application, and a few are then chosen for in-person interviews. The last hurdle is a difficult copyediting test. Once chosen, interns are asked to work 10-15 hours per week on top of their regular course-load. Students register for the internship each semester with the university’s registrar. Although they don’t receive course credit for the experience, the registration ensures that the experience shows up on their transcript, providing the student with an incentive to work for free. “I knew publishing was a competitive field—all those English majors that don’t go to grad school,” said Laura Avey (’06). “I wanted the experience before I tried to get the job.”
In Iowa’s program, intern tasks are standardized in the form of a checklist. The intern meets with the director and editors twice a year to go over the duties they’ve been given. These can include evaluating manuscripts, finding readers for a manuscript, filling out Library of Congress forms, writing rejection letters, and fact-checking, among other tasks. The program culminates in a final project that often tests the intern’s abilities—a book launch. “I hand off the project to each of the students,” says Parsons, “and they launch the book, running the agenda at the launch meeting. Some find that task very intimidating. They come into the meeting and get unanticipated questions.” But it is their chance to stand at the “head of a conference table and present the material to colleagues.”
Bringing along interns at this speed does require significant time from the staff. Asked what her duties are when it comes to the interns, Charlotte Wright, Managing Editor, responds, “I help interview and then choose the interns, work with them to set up their work schedules, introduce them to the primary reference books…teach them the various procedures necessary for the work that comes out of my office, check their completed projects, and make myself available to answer any questions they have about publishing.” The natural follow-up question was, “Is it worth it?” To which Wright’s reply was, “Definitely.”
The interns bring a number of intangibles that go beyond the completion of office tasks. Parsons remarked enthusiastically that, “the interns are enthusiastic, everything is new to them…. It forces us to think again about the jobs we do. It keeps the job fresh for us. In the process, we reconsider the way we do things.” Wright complemented this view with the observation that, “We get to meet the young, motivated individuals who are in all likelihood the future of university press publishing. Often, we are their first contact with the publishing world, so we have an incredible opportunity to influence their philosophy and work ethic.”
For the interns’ part, they enjoy the experience of working at the Press and being involved in the workflow. “I spoke with Joe every day and Charlotte almost every day,” Avey remarked. “Joe would come down to the kitchen and tell me about a manuscript, about his sales pitches to get an author to publish with Iowa…but it wasn’t all work. We would also talk about politics, local events, and sports.” Sarah Remington added that, when the internship was over, “I felt comfortable operating in a work environment. That was something I couldn’t learn from school. Something I could have only learned from [the Press]. Little things, like when to ‘cc’ people…what to say in a meeting, what things are helpful, how to ask colleagues to do something for you.”
So far, the program has been a success. Of the four interns to go through the Iowa program, “one is at Chicago, two are at Michigan, and one hasn’t graduated yet,” remarked Carver, “We’re batting 1.000.” And whether it is setting up informational meetings between interns and potential employers at the AAUP Annual Meeting, or other general lobbying on their behalf, the Iowa Press graduates top interns that find their way back into scholarly publishing.
“At Iowa, Joe, Holly, and Charlotte realized that even though we were ‘just interns,’ we were intelligent people who could handle difficult tasks,” said Avey, who now works at the University of Chicago Press. When asked about any tasks she didn’t like, she responded, “making copies. But alas, that is part of the point of having interns. I have a student now that I have make copies. I’ve learned to delegate.”
By Barbara Kline Pope
Executive Director, National Academies Press
Originally published in the Exchange, Summer 2003. Look for an article about NAP’s follow-up study of their digital publishing model in the Winter 2008 Exchange.
The National Academies Press (NAP) has been a leader in the electronic book publishing industry since launching its web site (www.nap.edu) in 1994. With annual sales revenue from all distribution channels of more than $7 million, NAP is one of the larger mid-size publishers within the university press community. NAP is the publisher for the National Academies: National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. The Press’s dual mission is to disseminate the works of the National Academies to the greatest possible extent while fully supporting the cost of its own operation without subsidy from its parent institution.
NAP posts the text of all of its titles on the web in page-by-page image format free for anyone to browse, search, and read. A couple of years ago, it became clear that many within the leadership of the National Academies felt that NAP should begin giving away PDF versions of their books in order to enhance the dissemination mission. The bulk of this group hypothesized that NAP would not suffer financially from this action. However, others worried about the fiscal viability of this new model, postulating that posting free PDFs might erode a significant amount of revenue from print sales. Neither side had any data to support its views.
It was at this juncture that NAP decided that measuring customer behavior toward electronic content was of utmost importance to the future. The Press also felt that a serious study of these issues might help other scholarly publishers more efficiently find their way through the maze of options for presenting books to their readers. So, NAP, in conjunction with the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, set forth a successful proposal for a study of potential digital publishing business models to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The study focused on four research objectives: (1) to compare NAP’s offline and online customers on attitudes and behavior toward electronic content, (2) to measure the effectiveness of free online browsing and its impact on the purchase of printed and electronic formats, (3) to determine the optimal design and pricing of NAP’s e-content (specifically the PDF format), and (4) to study the demand for unbundled e-content (delivering electronic chapters of books). The study used a mix of survey-based descriptive research and experiment-based causal research in order to answer the research questions.
A unique online experiment that allowed NAP to measure actual purchase behavior rather than only gather purchase intentions via surveys formed the core of the research undertaken. During two months of intensive data gathering, customers were given experimental treatments as they interacted with NAP’s web site. For example, if a customer came to the site and placed a printed book in their shopping cart, they were presented with a pop-up box that explained that the particular book in question was available in PDF format. They then had the choice of sticking with their printed book, exchanging it for a PDF, or taking both versions. The prices of PDFs were randomized across the entire 500 books in the experiment from 0%-110% of the printed price. In our example, let’s say that the price of the printed book was $40 and the PDF was randomly assigned a zero price. If the customer jettisoned their printed book for a PDF, it was logged as a $40 loss.
In another segment of the experiment, NAP measured potential market expansion. If a customer was only browsing through the free content and then decided to purchase a PDF, that was logged as additional revenue. After the customers completed the experimental section of their Web experience, they were asked to complete a survey designed to get at why they did or did not purchase a PDF, about their perceptions of quality the of the PDF vs. print, and demographics.
The study illuminated the continued strength of demand for printed books. Even when customers were offered a PDF for free, more than half opted to pay for the printed book instead. On the other hand, slightly less than half took the free PDF rather than purchasing a book—behavior that could mean great losses in print revenue.
Comparing customers who order online with those who purchase books offline, the study revealed, not surprisingly, that NAP’s online customers are much more enthusiastic about e-content than customers who typically order via offline methods. Offline customers generally have poorer perceptions of the quality of e-content and most likely will need more experience with high-quality online content to change their perceptions.
Among online customers, the study showed that there exist specific segments of customers, some with strong preferences for print and some with equally strong predilection for PDF format. Surprisingly, the research showed that there is a segment of customers who are willing to pay a premium for access to downloadable and printable digital content.
In general, however, the NAP results indicate that customers are less willing to pay for e-content than for print—and they believe that PDFs should be cheaper than print. The study also illustrates that, as customers interact with e-content more—in terms of browsing and downloading content, and sampling PDFs—they are more likely to improve their perceptions of PDF and might be more likely to buy e-content.
The findings also indicate that unbundling content (selling books by the chapter) can result in higher market expansion than offering only the entire book. But, a strategy of bundling the PDF with print can fill demand for customers who view PDF and print as complements rather than direct substitutes. Capitalizing on these groups with attractive pricing strategies can help to mitigate losses. NAP’s customers tend to be quite price-inelastic in regard to chapter prices as compared to full PDF prices in the ranges of prices studied. In the case of the full PDF, once the assigned price was higher than zero, the study showed that demand did not change dramatically with price variations. NAP’s study also demonstrated that Internet speed has an impact on the purchase of the PDF format, but only in the case of the full PDF.
Overall, results suggested that the time is ripe for NAP and perhaps other scholarly book publishers to begin selling PDF format e-content to take advantage of customers’ demand for digital books. The National Academies Press has already begun.
The results and the full report from this study are available online at: http://aaupnet.org/resources/mellon/nap/index.html
by Shaun Manning
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Participants in this year’s Whiting Week-in-Residence program often found themselves taking a “big picture” approach to professional development. The program, sponsored by the AAUP and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, allows mid- and upper-level staff of member presses to spend one week observing another press’s operations. While the 2007 residents traveled to larger university presses seeking a greater understanding of marketing, rights management, acquisitions, and production, in many cases they were treated to a more complete picture of the publishing process—a view which might not be possible during the course of one’s day-to-day responsibilities.
John P. Hussey, Sales Manager at University of Kentucky Press, visited Columbia University Press, where he worked with Marketing and Sales Director Brad Hebel. Hussey was interested in Columbia’s practice of consulting the marketing department early in the acquisition process. He also took notes on Columbia’s international sales initiatives and database structure, which led to ideas which he hopes can be implemented on a scale appropriate for Kentucky’s operations. “I’m not embarrassed to say that we should think of Columbia as a fantastic model for us to follow and as an ultimate end goal,” Hussey said. “Both in terms of productivity and inter-office relationships, Columbia exceeded any expectation I may have had.”
University Press of Florida also had the chance to share its marketing expertise, as Sales and Marketing Director Dennis Lloyd played host to Iowa’s Associate Marketing Manager, Allison Thomas. Thomas had the opportunity to sit in on marketing meetings, discuss business strategies, and speak with members of the design and production team to gain a greater understanding of the overall publishing process. “My main goal was to come away with a better understanding of the press as a whole entity and my role in it,” she said, “and because I was able to talk to the managers of different departments and attend so many meetings, I took away a very solid look at the bigger picture.” Thomas also enjoyed visiting her host press’s warehouse. “This was especially interesting because I haven’t been to our warehouse, the Chicago Distribution Center, yet,” she said.
Susan Petrie, Publicist for SUNY Press, visited University of Minnesota Press to learn more about “how a well-established publicity program functions.” Heather Skinner, Minnesota’s publicist, provided Petrie with examples of promotional materials and marketing plans that may be employed for various campaigns. Petrie also paid a brief visit to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, where she gained further advice on publicity strategies. “This week in residency came at a very valuable time for both me and for SUNY Press as we prepare to transition to a new director,” Petrie said. “I made an in-house presentation already to staff here, and there is a lot of enthusiasm to hone and improve our current systems.”
Alan G. Thomas, Editorial Director (Humanities and Sciences), and Gretchen Linder, Foreign Rights Manager, at University of Chicago Press hosted University of British Columbia Press’s Darcy Cullen. Cullen, an editor at UBC, reports that she was sent materials in advance of her residency, which “were not only informative but also served to make me feel welcome.” Though she was able to observe many aspects of the editorial acquisition process, Cullen was most intrigued by the thinking that goes into acquiring foreign-language books for translation. Related to this, Cullen also gained a more informed perspective on rights and permissions, including those related to translated works, collections, and monographs.
A focus on rights management also benefited Mollika Basu, former Acquisitions/Permissions Assistant at Wayne State University Press. Basu traveled to Temple University Press, where she shadowed Rights and Contracts Manager Matt Kull. Kull showed Basu Temple’s process for organizing and tracking rights and permissions, as well as the intense preparation necessary for a successful appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Basu also learned about the costs and benefits of various e-publishing initiatives, and was able to meet with other members of the press to discuss overall workflow, database, and marketing issues.
Making the most of her week-in-residence, University of Washington Press’s Ashley Saleeba witnessed the inner workings of two university presses, a book packager, a compositor, and a letterpress printing and design shop. Co-hosted by Deb Wong at Duke University Press and Rich Hendel of University of North Carolina Press, Saleeba, Washington’s Senior Designer, spent two days at each university press while also making time to visit BW&A Books, Tseng Information Systems, and Horse and Buggy Press, all conveniently located in the Chapel Hill/Durham area. “My plan was to interview as many people as possible whose responsibilities mirrored or intersected my own,” Saleeba said. She was interested to see that Duke’s editorial and production teams were part of the same department, while the organization at UNC more closely mirrored her home press, with Production and Design separated into its own department. The two host presses, however, did show similarities that may inform the future of University of Washington Press. “I was surprised to learn that UNC, like Duke, reviews only one round of interior proofs,” Saleeba said. “Because both Duke and UNC are confident in this workflow, we are now considering eliminating first text proofs from our workflow, particularly for monographs. A change of this magnitude could mean a significant savings in time and shipping costs.”
The Week-in-Residence program is one of AAUP’s most successful professional development initiatives. Sharing knowledge between member presses has provided for new perspectives on how to best achieve the goals of small and larger scholarly publishers, and observing colleagues in action proves an exceptional experience for the program’s residents. Applications for the 2008 Whiting Week-in-Residence program will be available at http://aaupnet.org/programs/ in March.
By Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
Long lauded for bringing librarian and publisher partners together to work through common “Issues in Book and Serials Acquisition,” as the subtitle goes, the Charleston Conference has grown in its 27 years from an intimate group of 24 colleagues to a sprawling gathering of more than 1000. Librarians, publishers, and vendors crowded the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, making their ways to more than 140 sessions in 5 locations. Session topics ranged from presentations of case studies of approval plans to conceptual discussions of “structured serendipity” in content management and everything in between.
E-books were a hot topic at the 2007 conference. It seems as though the matter of e-books is finally coming to a boil; which sales models work for libraries and publishers, how patrons use e-books, and how expanding e-book collections affect print book acquisition are now all matters that can be discussed from experience. Andrew Albanese, reporting for Library Journal Academic Newswire, wrote an interesting summary of this side of Charleston: http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6501604.html?nid=2673#news4
While e-books are now plainly a technology of today, a fascinating look at tomorrow came up in sessions about the problems of authority in online and networked scholarly communications. Michael Jensen’s concept of “Authority 3.0” , how the measure of scholarly authority may be computed in the future, was at the base of sessions titled “Authoritative? What’s That? And Who Says?” and “Who Shall Review the Reviewer?” In the former, Laura Cohen, Web Support Librarian at the University at Albany, and Leigh Dodds, Chief Technology Officer for Ingenta, took a close look at how traditional processes of peer review and new forms of user-generated content and approval might be adapted to each other. (See http://del.icio.us/ldodds/charleston-2007-11 for background reading to Dodds’ talk, and http://www.slideshare.net/lcohen/the-promise-of-authority-in-social-scholarship/ for Cohen’s presentation slides.)
Dodds was joined by Geoffrey Bilder, Director of Strategic Initiatives at CrossRef, for the latter session, where they proposed several ideas for laying the foundations of an “Authority 3.0” version of scholarly communications. Bilder labeled one such idea an “author DOI.” Like the DOI (digital object identifiers) that can permanently track a chunk of content (be it book, article, chapter, graph, etc.), a similar author ID would trace an individual scholar across all of his or her work—be it as a primary author of a text, a peer reviewer, or an authoritative commenter. Dodds presented the concept of an overlay “kitemark” to track “Versions of Record” in a world where digital pre-print, post-print, revised, copied, and re-published versions abound. The kitemark (named for the UK’s British Standards Institution certification schemes for indicating quality and adherence to standards) could contain metadata ranging from what type of peer review an article underwent, to whether any citations in the article have been retracted or revised. (For more information of the Author ID project, see http://www.crossref.org/CrossTech/2007/02/crossref_author_id_meeting.html.)
A striking aspect of the Charleston Conference was the relatively small number of university press representatives attending and presenting. While university presses, particularly those with journals programs, were a noticeable and successful presence at the pre-conference vendors showcase, the majority of presenting (and thus conversation-defining) publishers came from the commercial sector. There is plainly room for more active non-profit and university press participation—issues that the AAUP community deals with on a daily basis are of central interest to the many other librarian and vendor attendees.
While the Charleston Conference may be losing its identity as an intimate gathering of colleagues, it remains one of the best magnets for knowledgeable people who care about working through the problems facing scholarly communications. The 2008 Conference will be held November 5-8, so there is plenty of time for the AAUP community to plan to attend and even get involved. Despite Charleston’s growth, the conference directors maintain an open welcome for suggestions for session topics and panelists. Go to http://www.katina.info/conference/ for more information about contacting the conference organizers and complete 2007 program details
By Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
A delegation of AAUP representatives attended the 2007 Guadalajara International Book Fair for the fourth year in a row. The fair, known as FIL (Feria Internacional del Libro), is the largest book industry event in Latin America. FIL brings more than 17,000 book professionals from 40 countries, and more than half a million visitors, to the Expo Guadalajara each November.
AAUP again had a booth presence, shared with three member presses (the University of California Press, University of Chicago Press, and Temple University Press), where we distributed directories and other informational materials about AAUP’s publishers. AAUP attends at the invitation of the University of Guadalajara Press (Editorial Universitaria) and Red Nacional Altexto, the new association of Mexican university presses formed at the 2006 FIL.
Red Altexto’s first year has been very productive. The group has organized a number of hands-on publishing workshops on such issues as marketing and rights, and, with the Editorial Universitaria, overseen the publication of Gerardo Kloss Fernández del Castillo’s Entre el oficio y el beneficio: el papel del editor, a master’s guide to the business of being an editor and publisher.
FIL 2008 will also be host to the third International Forum of University Presses, a conference held every two years. AAUP representatives have spoken at both previous forums, and are expected to be invited speakers in 2008. Continued exchange with the university press associations of Latin America and Spain broadens AAUP’s international role, as individual press contacts heighten the global profile of university publishing. We hope to see some of our Latin American colleagues at the June 2008 AAUP Annual Meeting in Montréal.
Executive Order 13233, which includes provisions to allow former and current U.S. presidents to withhold federal records from the public and extends certain executive privileges to the vice president, continues to face challenges in the courts and in Congress. On October 1, a federal judge struck down the section of the order that allows a former president to indefinitely delay the release of his records. The Bush administration has decided not to appeal.
Legislation (H.R. 1255) to overturn Executive Order 13233 overwhelmingly passed the House by a vote of 333-93 in March. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) had placed a hold on bringing the bill to the Senate floor in September, but relented without comment in mid-December. However, now an unnamed senator has placed a new hold on advancing the bill. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill if it comes to his desk.
More information on the federal court’s decision is available at the National Coalition for History’s web site here, with the follow-up regarding Sen. Bunning’s dropping his objections here.
On December 31, President Bush signed a bill strengthening the Freedom of Information Act. This bill, S. 2488, will create a system for tracking FOIA requests and compels government agencies to release information unless such information can be shown to do real harm. The legislation seeks to remedy complaints by journalists, researchers, and others who depend upon access to information by facilitating a more efficient and transparent process for FOIA requests. The Washington Post carried news of the bill’s approval in Congress, while an AP report on President Bush’s signing appears at the First Amendment Center website, http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19502
Omnibus spending bill H.R. 2764, which includes a passage requiring that research funded by the National Institutes of Health be made available on an open-access basis, has been signed into law. The legislation mandates that “peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication [are] to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.” The manuscripts will then be posted electronically on the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central.
The NIH policy has been previously covered in the Fall 2004 issue of the Exchange, available as a pdf: http://aaupnet.org/programs/publications/exchange/2004_fall.pdf
Resources relating to Open Access, including AAUP’s statement on OA, can be found at http://aaupnet.org/aboutup/issues/oa/index.html
The Washington Post’s coverage of the signing can be seen here.
In time for the primary season, AAUP has recently updated its Voting and Elections list on the “Books for Understanding” site. The list will undergo further additions before the general election in November. “Books for Understanding,” which also includes publications by member presses on topics such as Pakistan, Global Climate Change, and Iraq, is linked from AAUP’s homepage or accessible directly at this link: http://aaupnet.org/booksforunderstanding.html
Voting and Elections: http://aaupnet.org/news/bfu/vote/list.html
In Canada, questionable dealings between former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and a German businessman relating to the sale of Airbus jets continues to receive significant media attention. The Airbus scandal, or Mulroney-Schreiber affair, was the subject of 2003’s A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney, Stevie Cameron, and the Public Trust by William Kaplan, published by member press McGill-Queen. The book was an early examination of the scandal, and Kaplan is now regularly consulted as expert on this developing situation. A Secret Trial is available from McGill-Queen’s website, http://mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1759
Gail Pool’s Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (University of Missouri Press) was itself the subject of Powell’s Book’s “Review-a-Day” on December 6. The review, written by James Wolcott, is available at: http://www.powells.com/review/2007_12_06.html
The Caravan Project, an ongoing test distribute books in a variety of
digital and non-standard formats, has received a $25,000 grant from the
NACS Foundation, the charitable branch of the National Association of
College Stores, to sell Caravan’s titles through NACS stores. The
Caravan Project’s homepage is http://www.caravanbooks.org/, and news of the grant was featured on Publishers Weekly.
Shaun Manning has recently joined the staff of AAUP as Communications Coordinator. He now serves as editor of the Exchange and bulletin, and maintains daily updates to the Association’s web site, including the press news and prize announcements sections.
Before joining AAUP, Shaun had recently completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. During his time in Glasgow, he developed and edited a literary e-magazine dedicated to promoting fiction and poetry from the postgraduate course. Prior to this, Shaun worked as a production and web assistant in the Art Institute of Chicago’s publications department. He has also written for several web sites covering books and graphic novels, and has had short stories published in small-press anthologies.