1.1 Genres of scholarly publication

Scholarly publication in art history takes several forms, each with specific goals, advantages, andlimitations. Their functions are well understood within the discipline, and they are reviewed here in the expectation thatcurrent pressures on monographic publication may require a rebalancing of these roles.

Monographs

An art historical monograph presents a tightly focused examination of a carefully framed topic, often an artist,group of artists, or a site, form, practice, or theme of artistic production within a given culture. A monograph is usually expectedto offer new analytic and critical perspectives on its historical material and to sustain its arguments by detailed research, be itarchival, stylistic, iconographic, technical, or socio-historical. Its structure tends to be sequential and linear, with anytranscriptions of documents and technical data gathered in appendices. Ph.D. dissertations have traditionally been a primarysource of monographs for academic publishers, but conversations with publishers and editors indicate that economic and intellectualimperatives toward broader themes of interdisciplinary appeal have reduced this role of dissertations in recent years.

For several decades, monographs published by North American university presses and their European counterpartshave set the gold standard for promotion and tenure, not only because of the thorough research on which they are based but alsobecause of the peer review built into the publication process. In the course of our study, the mechanisms and functions of the peerreview process appeared poorly understood by scholars and variously interpreted by editors. While scholars generally think peer reviewis aimed at improving as well as vetting manuscripts, for publishers and editors the process serves the function ofvalidating (or, more rarely, rejecting) manuscripts already considered worthy of publication.

Surveys

The survey offers a deliberately distanced perspective on a broader field of observation, with syntheticaccounts of themes and arguments rather than detailed new study. Although supported by broad and deep reading and knowledge, theytend to give extended bibliographies rather than a full scholarly apparatus. Surveys often serve as textbooks and as general interestintroductions to a field, and they have traditionally been the preserve of senior scholars. In recent years, however, several newseries of surveying "studies" rather than textbooks have also selected their authors from a younger pool of promising scholars.When seen as critical interventions as much as textbooks, these books are now sometimes accepted as significant contributionstoward tenure and promotion in their fields of study.