1.3 Trends  (Page 2/4)

Art history publication by university presses

To quantify trends in art history publishing, data were collected on the number of art history works publishedannually by university presses since 1980.

The number of art history books published annually by university presses climbed significantly from the early1990s to the late 1990s, but has grown at a much slower rate since 2000.(It is important to note that this includes all titlesclassified as art history, including single-author monographs, multiple-author works, edited volumes, exhibition catalogues, etc.)During the early 1990s (1990-94), university presses published 1,356 art history books, according to the Bowker Global Books inPrint database, or an average of about 269 art history titles per year.

During the second half of the 1990s (1995-99), the number of art history books published by university pressesincreased 37 percent to 1,844, or an average of 369 per year (i.e., 100 more titles per year).

During the next five-year period (2000-04), the number of art history books published by university pressesincreased once again, but at a much slower rate. Between 2000 and 2004, university presses published 1,949 art history books (anaverage of 390 art history titles per year), an increase of 6 percent (or 21 more books per year) over the previous five-yearperiod.

As of late 2005, the Bowker database identified the following publishers as the most prolific universitypresses, historically, in the field of art history (based on the entire database, across all years):

• Yale University Press–1,092 titles (13.4 percent of total)
• Cambridge University Press–713 titles (8.8 percent)
• Oxford University Press–685 titles (8.4 percent)
• MIT Press–488 titles (6.0 percent)
• University of Washington Press–461 titles (5.7 percent)
• University of California Press–429 titles (5.3 percent)
• University of Chicago Press–402 titles (4.9 percent)
• Princeton University Press–379 titles (4.7 percent)

These eight presses account for about 57percent of all art history titles (estimated at 8,143) published by university presses since the late 1960s. As of 2005, all eightremained among the top ten university-based publishers in the field; however, Cambridge University Press announced in 2005 thatit would be contracting its art history monograph publications by more than 50%, and limit its coverage to ancient, medieval, andRenaissance topics.

The number of single-author works in art history increased significantly from the early 1990s to the late1990s, but declined somewhat during the most recent five-year period for which data are available (2000-04). A title by title analysis of art history books at eight university pressesconsidered to be key publishers in the field of art history shows that the number of single-author works in art history published bythese presses increased from an average of 63 per year during the late 1980s to 121 per year during the late 1990s (a 92 percentincrease). Between 2000 and 2004, however, the average number of single-author works in art history published by these pressesdeclined to about 117 per year, a 3 percent drop.