1.1 Genres of scholarly publication  (Page 3/3)

Nevertheless, the market for most of these books is not especially vigorous, and production values are usuallykept lower than for monographs and museum publications. Peer review tends to be minimal, and usually happens at the stage of thecommissioned prospectus rather than for the completed manuscript. In many cases, the genre may not be so different in scholarlycontent and rigor from that of the time-pressured, surveying exhibition catalogue. Not surprisingly, concerns about originalityand scholarly weight of chapters in edited volumes arise in promotion and tenure review, even though the genre incorporates awide range of scholarly activity. The editorship of volumes with contributions from leading scholars or with sharp new perspectivestends to carry greater prestige.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

For many art historians, a peer-reviewed journal article was and is the first step from Ph.D. dissertationto monograph. Before the establishment of the university press monograph as the sine qua non for tenure in leading universitiesand colleges, sometime in the 1970s, a series of such articles could suffice to establish a scholar's academic credentials. It iseasy to see why. The all-field journals of record in the discipline, as well as many field-specific journals, havetraditionally been edited by leading scholars in the field and supported by editorial boards of similar caliber. Many have parentorganizations that lend professional weight to the publication. The journals maintain high standards of multiple, double-blind peerreview and academic copy-editing. Given the continuous vigor of these editorial practices, peer-reviewed journal publication couldagain play a much more central role in academic credentialing, as such articles do in the sciences and social sciences.

In their present formats, however, even journals with the most liberal word counts, footnote policies, andillustration programs, are unlikely to support publications of monographic scope, depth, and density. Part III of this report gives further thought to the potential of the peer-reviewed journalfor the electronic publication of the kinds of extended argument, archival documentation, image programs, and referencing thatsustain the discipline.

Electronic publications

In principle, each of the publication genres of art history discussed so far could be issued electronically. In the sciences, and increasingly the social sciences, electronic publication has become the standard mode of scholarly communication. The humanities have been slow to follow, particularly art history and other disciplines traditionally dependent on sustained, linear argumentation that stands in an ostensive relation to illustrations. The discipline-wide journals of record do not appear in electronic form, born-digital journals are rare, and few such initiatives appear to be in the pipeline (welcome exceptions include 19th-Century Art Worldwide , caa.reviews , and the Smithsonian Institution's American Art ).

Extant electronic publications in art history and visual culture are still based on print forms, rather thanfully exploiting the analytic and dialogic potential of electronic media. Such traditional forms do not communicate scholarship in away optimally suited to the kinds of reading done well on desktop or handheld monitors. In its length and sequential form, themonograph may always be more suited to print, but, as the sciences have found, more compartmentalized and collaborative kinds ofscholarship such as catalogues and documentary publications might be more useful to readers as networked publications that allowsearching and non-sequential accessing of the parts.