3.1 Focused discussion with mid-career and senior scholars  (Page 6/7)

One of the mid-career scholars characterized the current situation in art history publishing as like being“in a bit of a holding pattern. It’s a vicious circle: If opportunities [for publication]are so rare or the process is so difficult, it’s a bit discouraging for those who want to be first-time authors. Ifopportunities are of a particular nature, [scholars will] tailortheir efforts to whatever the circumstances are. If we could pinpoint the interventions [that would allow greater opportunitiesfor scholarly publication], we [the field]could have more book-length publications of higher quality.”

While publishers might appear to be at the epicenter of the“crisis in scholarly publication,”there was consensus among mid-career scholars that there was no single orprimary cause which, if addressed, would solve the problem. Rather, said one scholar,“[publishing] is part of a bigger web thatinvolves museums, university structures, assumptions on the part of administration, practices of advisors, etc. [Because of thecomplexity of the situation,] it might make more sense to ask whatwe’d ideally like to see and then ask ourselves, how do we get there? We need a multi-headed strategy. The products [of arthistory scholarship] would be heterogeneous, rather than thinkingin terms of one [publishing] model like 20 years ago. Plus, we needto put pressure on museums to cut down fees for young scholars to get in there.

“We need to think in terms of at least three options: the traditional university press, trade publishers, anddigital. All have problems of vetting and quality control. If there’s going to be an initiative, it needs to promote better standards all around. If it’s a multiformat initiative, it needs to address what would make it possible for a trade book or a digitalpublication that might be a dissertation, to be on the same level as a university press book. I think we need to create some venuebetween UMI/ProQuest [the Dissertation Abstracts database] and thepublished monograph that is prestigious. The only way to do this is through tight vetting, and I think the alternative is electronicpublishing. This could only be good for the discipline.”

Another scholar said that“our primary objective should be to ensure top quality scholarship, itspublication and its visibility. I think that’s a more productive way to characterize our challenge. Not only do we need to beconcerned about how to get people through tenure review, but we also need to help younger authors publish their research because ithelps to revive, refresh, and animate the subfield. And that, hopefully, will have larger ramifications for art history as awhole.”

The challenge of creating a scholarly publishing system that integrates electronic options with existingtraditional options is tricky. Could such a system be“medium-blind”? Or would it become, in effect, a way of sorting students into tiers?

One scholar said,“If there is a third way to produce the equivalent of a first book, it won’t be pursued unless there is some indication that [universities]will respond positively. We can’t have two-tiered system where some people get to publish books and some do these other [digital]things. The problem is also that we don’t just want more books, but we want them to be better. If that means the timeframe [for tenure]has to change, that’s institutional.”