University Times

Publish or perish is a cliche in academia. But like many cliches, it is rooted in truth. Several participants at a recent workshop on balancing work and family conducted by Pitt's Faculty and Staff Assistance Program, for example, were faculty members overwhelmed by the need to publish their work while at the same time sustain a family.

The pressure to publish with a respectable publisher is very real, especially for young faculty members on a tenure track.

"We regard tenure as a major commitment on the part of the University to the faculty member," said Provost James Maher. "And we're very careful to give tenure only to faculty members whose work gives great promise of their teaching very well and remaining very knowledgeable about their field as it evolves through a long career." Consequently, when a faculty member is being evaluated for tenure, according to Maher, the administration looks very carefully at his or her scholarly work and does everything possible to assure itself that the person is likely to remain productive in his or her field.

"That does mean looking at their publications and having those evaluated," Maher said.

In the natural sciences, evaluators look mainly at articles published in refereed journals. In the humanities, the emphasis is more on books. It could be a book on a single subject or a collection of articles from refereed journals that taken together constitute a book.

Whether the book focuses on a single subject or is a collection of articles, though, it must be published by a respectable publisher, which is what has some tenure-track scholars around the country worried. A Nov. 18 front-page article in The New York Times told the story of an Oregon scholar on a tenure track who was stunned when Cornell University Press said it did not want to publish his doctoral dissertation because of its lack of marketability. The dissertation was on German sociologist and philosopher Theodor Adorno, a member of the Frankfort school of scholars, of whom Herbert Marcuse is the best known.

The article, "Publishers' Squeeze Making Tenure Elusive," includes a look at how cutbacks by financially strained libraries have forced university presses throughout the country to reduce, sometimes drastically, the number of specialized monographs, such as doctoral dissertations, that they publish.

"A result," the article concludes, "is a collision between the financial logic of the book market and the ground rules of academia. Some say the conflict is a serious threat to the future of new scholarship at American universities." While readily acknowledging that university presses are under financial pressure and have to be more selective about what they publish, University of Pittsburgh Press Director Cynthia Miller resists linking reduced funding with the chances of a faculty member obtaining tenure. She feels that implies university presses should favor individuals seeking tenure.

"My thinking has always been whether or not somebody is up for tenure really doesn't factor in to our consideration of a book at all. Nor should it," Miller said. "We evaluate a book on quality and contribution to the literature." Among the criteria used to evaluate a manuscript's contribution to a literature, however, is potential readers. "If nobody buys a book, nobody will read it," Miller noted. "It's a market decision [to publish a book], but not necessarily a financially driven market decision. But, if you can't publish everything, if you have to pick and choose, why wouldn't you choose the book that is going to make a bigger contribution and therefore be of more interest to more people? "If you have a choice between a book that 250 libraries and 350 individuals want, and a book that 250 libraries and 1,000 individuals want, which is making the more significant contribution?" she asked. "So, it is not just a financial decision when you are talking about numbers of readers." Miller said it worries her to equate the fact that university presses have less money, so young scholars who deserve tenure are not going to get tenure. She said there is "not a direct link. There are many more steps in the [tenure] process." Actually, the idea of publishing a dissertation in order to earn tenure is a relatively new idea, according to Miller. Thirty years ago, she pointed out, typescripts of dissertations were more often than not simply bound in some way and placed in libraries.

At the moment, Miller said, the University Press is seriously considering publishing several books that are revised doctoral dissertations and probably will sell 600 copies in the authors' lifetimes. Such a figure shows that Pitt's Press remains willing to publish certain books that won't earn it a cent. Since finances will remain a concern, however, one thing faculty advisers can do to improve the chances of their graduate students getting their dissertations published as books is to encourage them to approach their subjects with the idea of a book in mind from the start.

"Have them address a big enough, important enough question in their discipline that it is publishable in and of itself, something that is a book right from the beginning," Miller said.

As The New York Times article noted, cutbacks in purchases by libraries have put the pressure on all university presses to find other reasons beyond pure scholarship for publishing a book. According to Miller, university presses could once count on good scholarly books selling 800 copies to libraries and another 200 to 400 copies to scholars in a field. Cuts in subsidies, the costs of books, a shift of resources to computers and advances in inter-library loan methods that make it easier to borrow books from other libraries has cut the number of scholarly books purchased by libraries to 250-300 copies. More and more libraries also are forming consortiums to purchase books.

"Financial pressure means that you really do have to think about the books you publish in a different way," Miller said. "If there aren't enough individual scholars interested in a book to make up the difference [in library sales] it becomes a real question." Along with seeking scholarly books that appeal to a larger audience, many university presses are now trying to publish books that have some relevance for students in the hopes that they will be picked up and used in courses. That means many books are simultaneously coming out in cloth and paperback. "You can't just do cloth only and be able to sell them," Miller said. "If you do a split run, you've got a chance at getting the numbers to a point where it makes some sense to publish a book." Despite financial concerns and a need by university presses to publish more marketable books, the number of scholarly books published by university presses actually has risen over the past 15 years. The 1980s were a growth period for university presses, which may have contributed to the expectations of scholars when it comes to having their dissertations published.

"When we were all growing, I think a lot of presses were maybe more open to dissertations because there was pressure to fill up the list," Miller noted. "That has leveled off. I don't see presses cutting back, but a lot of them have stopped growing. And that kind of mirrors what has happened everywhere since the go-go 80s." A total of 74 presses were full or affiliate members of the Association of American University Presses in 1975. By 1994, that total had grown to 106.

University presses belonging to the Association of American University Presses published 3,338 new titles in 1975, a figure that grew to 4,601 in 1986 and 7,818 in 1994.

At Pitt, the scholarly side of the University Press over the past 15 years has grown in such areas as political science, composition and literacy, and Russian and Eastern European studies. Its annual total of books published has expanded from 35 to 50. And all of the 15 new books have been scholarly books. Although the list varies somewhat from year to year, Miller said, about two-thirds of the books published by most university presses are scholarly. Pitt's Press currently is at that point.

"I think that is probably where we should stay," Miller added. "That is a good breakdown. It allows us to do enough scholarly books in several different areas to really be able to compete for the best scholarship and to have enough of a list to be able to market them effectively, while as the same time being able to continue to do the regional books that we've always done." According to Provost Maher, Pitt has not encountered any problems with young tenure-track scholars in the humanities having their books published by good presses. "Our own experiences so far with the humanities has been good," he said.

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Peter Koehler added: "I cannot say that I am aware of any case where it [cutbacks by university presses] has harmed people [at Pitt]. For instance, where a university press would say, 'I would be delighted to take your book, but we've had this cutback and therefore we can't take it.' I am not aware of any such case." While noting that university presses nationwide are under financial pressure because universities are under financial pressure due to subsidy cuts, Maher said that Pitt has struggled to maintain its commitment to scholarly publishing. "We have not been able to protect the University Press entirely from the harsh fiscal climate that the University and all universities find themselves facing," Maher said. "But we have succeeded in keeping the activity of the University Press healthy. And we have a firm commitment to maintain that.

"Cynthia Miller has been working to position the Press to be able to maintain its scholarly contribution while coping with a constrained budget," he continued. "It is important for everybody to know that we recognize the importance of university presses to the maintenance of scholarship in some of the disciplines and we are doing our share." Although Dean Koehler is not aware of any young scholars at Pitt suffering because of cutbacks by university presses, he said frequently university presses want some level of financial support before they will publish scholarly books of very limited interest. To assist young, tenure-track scholars in such a position, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences maintains a small endowment. "If a faculty member has put in all of his work, has been properly reviewed and approved," Koehler explained, "and all they need is some contribution to make it go financially, I try to help faculty members do that. "

–Mike Sajna