1.2 Participants  (Page 2/4)

Ad 3 . Scholars across the board are shouldering increasing costs associated with publishing monographsand journal articles. These costs are almost exclusively due to the illustration programs required in art history publication. Aseditors confirm, scholars bear the lion’s share of the costs of image acquisitions and reproduction permission fees. Assuming amodest average of $25 per black-and-white illustration, a book with 100 figures would cost the author $2,500. Most illustrationprograms easily double that figure, as discussed in Part II of this report.

Color plates tend to command higher permission fees, and their production is significantly more costly topublishers. Scholars are often asked to contribute subventions for color illustrations, and sometimes for larger-than-average imageprograms. Subventions for illustrations are frequently sought from the scholars’ home institutions, professional organizations,foundations, and private philanthropists. Scholars would welcome a clear guide to such opportunities.

Apart from direct costs, scholars incur opportunity costs in the time-consuming navigation of the image andpermission request system. They find the complexities of copyright law opaque and the request process cumbersome, and wish for a morestreamlined procedure across institutions owning works of art, photographs of works of art, and copyrights. Part II of this report addresses these questions more fully.

Ad 4 . Senior scholars consulted throughout the study suggested that university and foundation leaders address thechallenges facing art history publication in a systemic manner. They acknowledged that a simple recommitment to the scholarlymonograph or increase in subventions will not yield long-term solutions that will sustain the discipline and ensure theprofessional advancement of their students. Scholars note that a comprehensive approach should allow for the continued publicationof the kinds of knowledge the monograph has traditionally produced:the book-length argument as well as the detailed reconstitution of art historical objects of study by archival, archaeological,connoisseurial, and iconographic techniques. There is widespread recognition that not all of this work needs to appear in thetraditional form of the university press monograph.

Scholars are generally open to the potential of electronic publishing and of print publications with electronicadditions, seeing such dissemination primarily as a way to circumvent the high costs and image-program limitations associatedwith print publication. While many scholars express reservations about the stability and prestige of the digital medium and aboutescalation of the image quality and copyright problems, others find that current electronic publications do not leverage sufficientlythe dynamic and dialogic potential of the digital space. Further thoughts about these transitional challenges and the specialpotential of electronic publication for art history are presented in Part III of this report.

University presses

The mission of North American university presses has traditionally been one of furthering scholarship atlarge, without direct regard for the particular work produced in the universities that bear their name. Those universities supportedtheir presses because of the intellectual and scholarly prestige associated with their publications. In the humanities, the presseshave long focused on publishing peer-reviewed monographs; over time, the monograph has become the primary criterion for tenure andpromotion in North American universities and colleges. University press editors expressed concerns that this development has putacademic review decisions too squarely in their court.