A study released last Thursday evaluates the impact of the digital revolution on university presses and concludes that “the university-based publishing enterprise of the future must look very different from that of the past.” The study, “University Publishing in a Digital Age,” is a collaboration between Laura Brown, former president of Oxford University Press USA, and Ithaka, a nonprofit research and consulting organization focused on higher education and technology.

The study examines the complex issues facing university presses in the changing publishing environment, from marginalization within their parent institutions to shrinking library budgets and competition from open source publishing. Academic librarians, in particular, the authors say, are critical of the presses. One librarian said that university presses are “anachronisms—far behind in their understanding of what scholars need.”

A report at Insidehighered.com cites positive comments from several people at university presses. But two interviews by PW indicate the study could receive a mixed response. While there's agreement that the report addresses the central issues facing university presses and makes useful recommendations, there is skepticism about the report's larger vision of the future of scholarly publishing.

Brown and coauthors Rebecca Griffiths and Matthew Rascoff predicted that the future will involve greater collaboration among a university's press, libraries and academic departments. While monographs in book form will continue to be published, the authors write, the future will bring innovations in electronic publishing formats and new distribution models, with the possibility of cost-saving collaboration among universities and a role for a “third-party enterprise or at least a catalytic force... to facilitate the investment of capital” and help reshape the “landscape” of scholarly communication. Other recommendations made by the study include the need for presses to emphasize the financial and scholarly contributions they can make to the university; create a five-year strategic plan aligned with the parent institutions' plan; and focus their publishing program on the areas they are strongest in.

The study—based on survey responses from directors of 53 American UPs and interviews with university, press and library administrators—was funded by Ithaka and JSTOR, a not-for-profit electronic archive of scholarly journals. According to Griffiths, the study was hatched after a number of conversations she and Kevin Guthrie, president of Ithaka and chairman of JSTOR, had with others in the community who are concerned with university publishing. A chief concern is the financial stability of presses; 70% of those that responded to the survey said they are operating in the red.

Peter Givler, executive director of the Association of American University Presses, said, “I think they did a good job of analyzing the problems that are facing the whole community.” But he also noted, “I do have a question in my mind about the degree to which the basic message of the paper—that scholarly communication as a whole is something people at a very senior [university] level need to take seriously and develop a strategy for—is realistic.”

Douglas Amato, director of the University of Minnesota Press and a former AAUP president, said, “It's putting some flesh on something a lot of us have sensed for a while—that university presses need to be integrated into the ambitions of their own home institutions. Where I find the report not quite satisfying is the tricky point of exactly how you get there financially.”

Amato also notes that the study overstates how dependent presses are on academic libraries: “Our second biggest customer—and I think this is true for most university presses—is Amazon, after Baker &Taylor. We are the long tail.”

The report can be downloaded at www.ithaka.org.