Join the University Library and Georgetown University Press for the annual Fall Scholarly Communication Symposium, The Future of First Books: Open Access Monograph Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
The program will feature panelists Brett Bobley, CIO of the National Endowment for the Humanities and director of the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities; Rikk Mulligan, Program Officer for Scholarly Publishing at the Association of Research Libraries and ACLS Public Fellow; and Greg Britton, editorial director of Johns Hopkins University Press; and will be chaired by Richard Brown, director of Georgetown University Press.
Program Description
Declining monograph sales to research libraries have made first books an endangered species.
And if the market cannot accommodate these publications, what will become of them? How will scholars in the humanities and social sciences receive the credentialing they need to earn tenure and move forward with their careers? Recent initiatives offer signs of hope. The Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Task Force on Scholarly Communication recently issued a prospectus for an institutionally funded first-book subvention program focused on open access (OA) digital books. This past spring the Andrew Mellon W. Foundation issued a request for proposals to university presses soliciting ideas for collaborative, openly accessible digital publications. In addition, Knowledge Unlatched has run a successful pilot project for OA monographs that has been greeted enthusiastically by librarians and scholars.
These programs seem promising but they also raise questions:
- Is funding sustainable?
- How will promotion and tenure committees view these subvented first books?
- Will digital-only publications achieve the kind of circulation that print books now receive, and will they succeed in the classroom?
- How will librarians respond?
The aim of this symposium is to identify current initiatives supporting the publication of first books in the humanities and social sciences and to analyze and assess which initiatives hold promise and why.
Panelists
Brett Bobley is the Chief Information Officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He also serves as the Director of the Office of Digital Humanities. Brett has a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and an M.S. in computer science from the Johns Hopkins University. In 2006 Brett received a Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council Leadership Award from the Office of Management and Budget. In 2007 he received a Presidential Rank Award from the President of the United States in recognition of his exceptional long-term accomplishments, such as cofounding the federal government’s Small Agency CIO Council and establishing the NEH Office of Digital Humanities.
Gregory M. Britton is Editorial Director of Johns Hopkins University Press and a senior member of the Press’s executive committee. He oversees the acquisition and publishing of the press’s approximately 200 new books annually. Prior to his appointment at Hopkins, Britton directed Getty Publications where he expanded Getty’s publishing partnerships with European museums, launched the Getty Research Journal and created an ambitious digital initiatives plan. Britton is a graduate of Wabash College, and was working on a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, when he began his career in publishing.
Rikk Mulligan is the Program Officer for Scholarly Publishing at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), a two-year fellowship funded by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) through their Public Fellows Program. He is working with a joint task force of ARL and the Association of American Universities (AAU) to promote the use of the enhanced capabilities of digital technology to move the academy towards new, sustainable, affordable, innovative forms of scholarship. He is assisting the initiation and development of the ARL/AAU task force work within ARL member libraries and facilitating the task force’s consultations with key sectors of higher education.
Richard Brown began his work in publishing as an editor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a research institute studying international affairs and the presidency. He then spent nine years in religion publishing, first as an editor at Pilgrim Press and then as director of Westminster John Knox Press. In 2001, he began his tenure as director of Georgetown University Press. He was a member of the board of the Association of American University Presses for five years, and president of that organization in 2010-2011. He was also president of the Washington Book Publishers in 2003-2004.
The Scholarly Communication Symposium is presented annually by the Scholarly Communication Committee. Learn more about scholarly communication at Georgetown on the Library’s Scholarly Communication website.
This program is part of a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Georgetown University Press. Learn more about the Press and other anniversary events on the GU Press website.