Editorial: Publishing problems

Recent financial difficulties plaguing university presses have caused them to cut back on the number of books they publish or even eliminate humanities publishing all together. The trend toward a reduction of and consolidation in publishing has the potential to adversely affect assistant professors seeking tenure, since most humanities departments require young scholars to publish at least one monograph.

The problem is that publishing is clearly essential, not just for tenure, but for all of academia. Although academic texts are not generally best-sellers and do not have large press runs, the work that goes into writing the texts and the results of academics' research are important, not only for others in the same field but for the advancement of knowledge. Society benefits tremendously from the increases in knowledge resulting from publishing new works.

Universities, including Duke, need to have some level of standards for who wins tenure, and the general requirement that tenured professors have at least one book under their belt seems like a natural one. However, if publishing at university presses becomes so crunched that there simply are not enough slots to go around, universities must consider changing their tenure standards. Obviously, a university needs a certain level of tenured professors to function, so if the amount of publishing going on is reduced significantly, then universities will need to alter their standards and perhaps stop requiring published monographs.

This publishing crunch should be less of an issue at Duke, since Duke is one of the nation's premier research institutions. While professors at universities with weaker programs will perhaps be squeezed out of the system, the publishing slots that remain should be going to Duke-caliber professors. Moreover, the publishing crunch will affect different departments in different ways. First, there is the divide between publishing in the humanities and publishing in the social sciences or natural sciences, all of which are very different publishing environments. Second, there are differences in quality between Duke's various departments, so that those departments at the top of their field should have less of an issue than worse departments.

Currently, the Duke administration's approach to the publishing and tenure problem is to wait and see, without altering standards before understanding the magnitude of the problem as it affects Duke professors. Additionally, Provost Peter Lange has said he will wait for more information, particularly a Modern Language Association study, on the problem before doing anything. This is a sensible approach.

But if the publishing problems are real, then universities need to look into other options. One promising option is e-publishing. Since much of the cost incurred by university presses is the expense of printing a work on paper, by publishing quality works electronically, presses would save money and would still continue their mission to disseminate valuable academic research.

Of course, there are shortcomings to e-publishing, but if one or several universities stepped forward to develop a peer review system and convenient access for electronic works, it could alleviate the publishing crunch and benefit academics and universities alike.