AAUP heralds ITHAKA S+R's publication of 'The Costs of Publishing Monographs: Towards a Transparent Methodology.' The study, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and conducted by Nancy Maron and Kimberly Schmelzinger, developed a ground-up, activity-based methodology for understanding the full cost of publishing high-quality university press monographs. ITHAKA worked with twenty members of the Association of American University Presses to examine in detail the direct and indirect costs associated with producing the first digital copy of nearly 400 scholarly monographs.
This is a foundational report, of great value across the AAUP community and in conversations with authors, funders, universities, libraries, and policy makers. Not only is its relevance to institutional financial support for scholarly communications apparent, it also will bring clarity to individual presses' operations, and provide critical intelligence in decision-making.
Too often, the range of activities that go into publishing a monograph at a university press has been poorly understood in conversations surrounding questions of funding and pricing. This study shines needed light on those activities, uncovering empirically the variables that can push those figures up or down. By detailing the current activity-based costs of publishing high-quality monographs in the humanities and social sciences, this study should create a common base of understanding as the academy considers new models of financial support for this mode of scholarship.
One of the key findings that the ITHAKA report demonstrates is the extraordinary investment that university presses put into acquisitions of their monograph titles. This work, described by one acquiring editor as 'a 24/7 job,' is the heart and soul of university presses and the investment pays off for presses, authors, universities, and future researchers. The report also addresses the invaluable contributions of marketing activities to the discovery and dissemination—whether by open access or sale—of monographs.
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