1.3 Trends

Our study was prompted by a widely shared perception that opportunities for publishing monographs have shrunkin recent years while the numbers of Ph.D. recipients have increased. Quantitative analysis of art history Ph.D. conferralsand of university press publishing in the field confirms both developments, and it shows that there has already been a modestdecline in monograph publication relative to the number of Ph.D. dissertations produced. This decrease is likely to become morenoticeable in the years immediately ahead, as Cambridge University Press, the second most productive publisher of art historymonographs in the past decade, contracted its art history line by more than 50 percent in 2006.

The summary findings on Art History Ph.D. Conferrals and Art History Publication by University Pressespresented below are explained in detail in Lawrence T. McGill's report The State of Scholarly Publishing in the History of Art and Architecture . The downward trend in publishing opportunities for art history monographs is also related in complexways to the rise of interdisciplinary investigation and new fields of inquiry such as visual studies. These developments are outlinedat the end of this section.

Art history ph.d. conferrals

From 1992-93 to 2002-03, the number of Ph.D.'s awarded annually in art history (and related fields, such as artcriticism and art studies, but not including architecture or archaeology) increased dramatically.

While the total number of doctoral degrees awarded (in all fields) has also increased since 1992-93, the fieldof art history has been producing Ph.D.'s at a far more rapid rate than the typical discipline. The average annual rate of increase ofPh.D.'s in all fields since 1992-93 has been just below 1 percent per year, while art history Ph.D.'s have increased at the rate ofmore than 8 percent per year.