Art history publishing  (Page 3/3)

Data for 2005 indicate that the total number of art history titles published by university presses actually roseslightly to 410 (up 5% from the 2000-04 average). Again, Yale led the field with 62 titles published (16% of all art history titlespublished by university presses in 2005). The top six publishers in 2005–namely Yale (62), Cambridge (38), Oxford (24), California (23), MIT (23), and Princeton (18)–accounted for 48% of all art history titles published, compared to 52% in 2004. Nine pressespublished ten or more art history books in 2005–the aforementioned six, plus the University Press of New England (13),the University of Washington (13), and Penn State (11). Seventeen presses published five or more art history titles in 2005.Altogether, 86 university presses published in the field in 2005.

As of late 2005, the Bowker database identified the following publishers as the most prolific universitypresses, historically, in the field of art history (based on the entire database, across all years):

• Yale University Press–1,092 titles (13.4% of total)
• Cambridge University Press–713 titles (8.8%)
• Oxford University Press–685 titles (8.4%)
• MIT Press–488 titles (6.0%)
• University of Washington Press–461 titles (5.7%)
• University of California Press–429 titles (5.3%)
• University of Chicago Press–402 titles (4.9%)
• Princeton University Press–379 titles (4.7%)

These eight presses account for about 57% of all art history titles (estimated at 8,143) published by universitypresses since the late 1960s. As of 2005, all eight remained among the top ten university-based publishers in the field (althoughCambridge University Press announced in 2005 that it will be contracting its art history publications by 50 percent ormore).

Single-author works. As noted before, a major concern of this project is to assess current opportunities for arthistorians to publish single-author scholarly monographs, especially first books. In order to gauge how such opportunitiesmay be changing, more than 3,000 art history-related titles published by eight key university presses between 1985 and 2004were reviewed on a title-by-title basis in order to track the number of single-author works published by these presses over time.The university presses included in this analysis (and where they ranked in terms of total output of art history titles in 2005) wereYale University Press (1), Cambridge University Press (2), the University of California Press (3), MIT Press (4), PrincetonUniversity Press (5), the University of Washington Press (8), Penn State University Press (9t) and the University of Chicago Press(9t).

[It should be noted that titles were coded simply as either "single-author works" or not. Since the coderswere not specialists in art history, it cannot be assumed that all titles coded as single-author works are specifically "single-authorscholarly monographs." Most are, but a number of them would probably not have qualified as such had the analysis been carriedout at a deeper level. While the overall trends revealed by this analysis (that is, the relative upward or downward changes in thenumber of titles published over time) are not likely to be affected by this lack of precision in the data, the total numbers of"single-author works" reported will tend to be higher than the actual number of "single-author scholarly monographs" published bythese presses.]

The total number of art history-related titles (both single-author works and otherwise) published by these eightpresses between 1985 and 2004 grew steadily from 1985 through 1999, but leveled off between 2000 and 2005 (as shown by the middlecolumns in the chart below). Between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the average annual output of art history titles at thesepresses doubled, rising from an average of 95 titles per year to 191 titles per year. Between 2000 and 2004, the average number ofart history titles published by these presses was 199 per year, an increase of just 4% from the period 1995-99.

The number of single-author works published by these presses over the past 20 years followed a similar pattern (asshown by the right-most columns in the chart). These presses produced an average of 63 single-author works per year in arthistory during the late 1980s, compared to an average of 121 such works per year during the late 1990s, an increase in output of 92%.But the average number of single-author works published by these presses during 2000 to 2004 dropped to 117 per year, a decrease inoutput of 3%.

So, while the overall pattern of single-author works published over time looks generally the same as the overallpattern of art history titles published over time, it has actually lagged slightly behind the pace at which art history titles ingeneral have been produced at these presses. Between 1985 and 1989, single-author works represented about two-thirds (68%) of all arthistory titles published by these presses. By the late 1990s (1995-99), that number had dropped to 64%. And between 2000 and2004, they accounted for 59% of all art history titles published by these presses.

One hypothesis that might be advanced to explain this change in publishing practices at these eight pressesis that they may be publishing a larger percentage of museum-related works now than they used to. But while the absolutenumber of museum-related works published by these eight presses has increased over time, from about 7 per year between 1985 and 1989 toabout 19 per year between 2000 and 2004 (driven almost entirely by Yale), museum-related titles account for about the same percentageof all art history titles published today (9%) as they did back in the late 1980s (7%).

According to our analysis, the top producer of "single-author works" in art history over the past 20 years(1985-2004) has been Yale University Press, accounting for 487 of the 1,990 single-author works produced by these eight publishers.Cambridge University Press published 367 single-author works over that period, followed by MIT Press (253) and the University ofChicago Press (221). The University of Washington Press also published more than 200 single-author works during this 20-yearperiod (206).

With the anticipated retrenchment of Cambridge University Press as a publisher of art history-related titles, thefield stands to forego the publication of about a dozen single-author works per year (based on Cambridge's average annualoutput since 1995), unless another press steps forward to pick up the slack.