Communities of Practice: The Academic Book of the Future

The Academic Book of the Future has been a matter of intense concern and debate for the last 20 years. Monographs, collections of essays and critical editions are the cornerstone of scholarship in the humanities, and the careers of many rest on the production of books, and the credit given to them, through the regular Research Excellence Framework (REF). But they are uneconomic to produce, given that they sell in small numbers, and as libraries are squeezed in two directions (falling budgets and rising serials prices) a steadily decreasing number are bought into core collections. In the past, publishers accepted that academic books would not make profits, or indeed, often, cover their costs, but regarded them as vitally important loss leaders, with revenue generated to support their publication from other parts of their business. But all kinds of forces are operating in the publishing world which means that such trade-offs are no longer always possible. The advent, too, of digital technologies and social media has had a significant effect on publishing in all areas--print journalism is suffering under the onslaught of freely available internet information, and ebooks have risen in popularity. As John Thompson has said, "Academic publishing has become one of the terrains on which the logics of two different worlds - the world of publishing and the world of the academy - come together and clash, leading on occasion to tension, misunderstanding and mutual recriminations" (Thompson, 2005).

How, in this new world, is the academic of now and the near future to write and circulate their work? How are publishers to respond to the new challenges? How are libraries to curate, preserve, and disseminate the diverse forms and formats coming their way? What economic, political, social and intellectual challenges are we facing in the light of such mandates as the Finch report and HEFCE's recommendations regarding Open Access?

At the heart of our enquiries in responding to the research questions posed by the AHRC is the question posed by Jerome McGann in 2010: "What do scholars want?" Whether we work with digital or paper-based resources, or both, our basic needs are the same. We all want our cultural record to be comprehensive, stable, and accessible. And we all want to be able to augment that record with our own contributions." Traditional print formats and their e-versions are also increasingly limited in representing the breadth of arts and humanities scholarship. New technologies permit new forms of publication more suited to many disciplines: archaeology, art history, anthropology, film studies, paleography and manuscript studies, epigraphy and other areas where the non-textual is at least as important as the textual. But these bring their own problems, for instance, rights to publish images and time-based media, the costs of developing new forms of publication, sustainability. And Open Access still causes fear and suspicion in the minds of many academics (see, for example, the recent piece in the TLS by Jonathan Bate, http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1360491.ece).

There are a number of recent projects and publications seeking to address these questions: in 2011 the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) produced a report, Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses. In an age of information 'hyperabundance', publishing is within everyone's reach: rather than see this as a threat, however, the Report asserts that "The scholarly enterprise is in it for the long haul, not the next viral hit. As such, the scholarly ecosystem -- libraries, universities, scholarly publishers, scholars -- needs to ensure that the entire ecosystem remains strong over time, and that scholarship is well served by the systems we construct." These beliefs are at the core of this Project, which seeks to ensure our research is and will be set in robust and coherent communities of practice.

The core beneficiaries of this research will be professional academics seeking to publish their research and concerned about the long-form scholarly publication. Providing an evidence base of current practice and defining a clear future pathway for the academic book will help scholars to decide the most appropriate form of scholarly discourse. As such this will benefit all researchers - whether early career researchers by ensuring a better understanding of the benefits of the monograph to their academic aspirations, or more senior academics seeking to explore the new opportunities for dissemination of their research offered by digital production processes as these free research from the page. Many subject areas in the arts and humanities are deeply concerned about the future of scholarly publishing, and this Project will enable those somewhat understudied and underrepresented subjects to have their perspectives properly considered and to be consulted on their detailed future needs.

Academics will also benefit from close collaborations with the publishing sector, and intermediaries such as libraries, having a clearer evidence base of workable business models. With better information on future opportunities for the academic book then all parts of the value chain from creator, through publisher and intermediary to consumer can benefit from streamlining of processes, fresh economic models for publishing and consumption, innovative citation options and a clearer path to academic credit and reputation from long-form publications. This in turn will ensure that the general public, who consume many forms of scholarly publication, can benefit from the availability of new books to stimulate knowledge and understanding of arts and humanities subjects.

The Project has a wide and deep process of consultation and engagement built into its structure and methodology. In an area as complex as this, with a diverse, interlocking number of communities of practice in academia, in publishing, and in libraries and other intermediaries then the widest possible community consultation and engagement alongside a number of specifically focused groups and activities is necessary. To achieve this, the Project will establish key relationships with experts, influencers and key actors from the varied communities of practice (linking in professional networks and societies as well as academic societies, research Centres and Institutes, and ensuring engagement and support from across the UK.) These will be invited to join a Community Coalition that will act as both a consultative forum in the first instance and as a means of reaching out to and engaging with the diverse and complex communities of practice. The project will ensure open and equitable consultation and engagement across all the relevant communities.

The Project plan encompasses a range of interventions with the communities of practice to stimulate and provoke debate and enable information gathering. Using expert seminars, high impact keynotes and interviews, a formal consultation process and allowing further investigations from with these communities will allow the beneficiaries to have a direct input and to be directly affected by the project. Wide dissemination of results and active participation are key to ensuring the results of this project provoke change in the professional practices throughout the value chain of scholarly publishing.

Impact will be sought via different media - high visibility platforms such as the THES, the TLS, and The Bookseller, as well as direct interaction via social media feeds, while the opportunity to explore the creation of a new series of books via a new university press at UCL will generate its own reflective research practices.

The academic book is a key feature of a current publishing research landscape that has "Here be dragons" in every corner. This Project tackles those dragons head on: what's at stake is simply too important to do any other way.