Welcome to Feeding the Elephant, a place for conversations about scholarly communications in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This is a place for anyone from the worlds of publishing, libraries, academic organizations, and academia, early career or established, affiliated or independent, who is deeply interested in the questions shaping scholarly communications today. |
Libraries
The Editorial Board, Opinion: The Golden Age of Public Libraries Dawns Again, The Washington Post, January 1, 2022.
by Sean Guynes, acquiring editor, Lever Press
A guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
by Stephen Shapiro, acquisitions editor, University of Toronto Press
A monthly newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Academic Authority and Academic Freedom
Jeffrey C. Isaac, Florida Is a Five-Alarm Fire for Academic Freedom, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 31, 2021.
Efforts continue to transform academic book publishing in the humanities and social sciences from a user-pays to an open-access, stakeholder-funded business model.
A guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
By Fred Nachbaur, director, Fordham University Press
A guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
by Victoria Smolkin, associate professor of history, Wesleyan University
A monthly newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Conferences After COVID-19
Dylan Ruediger and Danielle Cooper, COVID-19 and the Future of the Annual Meeting, Ithaka S+R, October 18, 2021.
In this series of historical perspectives on scholarly communications, we engage with literary scholars, historians, and others who think about publishing and scholarly communications in other times and places, under different political and economic conditions, and through various technological media of print and distribution.
Guest post by Katie Lee, acquisitions editor, Gallaudet University Press, and Jennifer Nelson, professor, Gallaudet University
Content Notice: [ableism, audism]
A monthly newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
It’s Banned Books Week (September 26 – October 2, 2021)
The Elephant has assembled a #PeerReviewSyllabus in conjunction with Peer Review Week. The theme for the 2021 Peer Review Week is “Identity in Peer Review.” You can follow or join the conversations online with the hashtags #PeerReviewWeek21 and #IdentityInPeerReview, or our own #FeedingtheElephant hashtag.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
By the Feeding the Elephant Editorial Collective
Two years ago, we launched Feeding the Elephant, a forum on scholarly communications in the arts, humanities, and social sciences with a mission to bring together stakeholders in libraries, publishing, and academe around conversations of common interest.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Guest post by Rachael Levay, acquisitions editor, University Press of Colorado and Utah State University Press
Guest post by Becca Bostock, associate editor and subventions coordinator, Ohio State University Press and Dominique J. Moore, acquisitions editor, University of Illinois Press
Guest post by Amy Sherman, managing editor, University of Pittsburgh Press
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Guest post by Rachel Fleming-May, associate professor in the University of Tennessee’s School of Information Sciences
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Guest post by Rachel Fleming-May, associate professor in the University of Tennessee’s School of Information Sciences
An occasional newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
First Person
Guest post by Jenny Tan, Associate Editor, University of Pennsylvania Press
An occasional newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Publishing Models
Rick Anderson “Pluralism vs. Monoculture in Scholarly Communication, Part 2,” Scholarly Kitchen, July 8, 2021, https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/07/08/pluralism-vs-monoculture-in-scholarly-commu...
In the spring of 2021, the National Humanities Alliance published “Public Humanities and Publication: A Working Paper,” the product of a team of scholars and editors convened by Kath Burton (Taylor and Francis) and Daniel Fisher (National Humanities Alliance and Hebrew Union College). Two members of the team, Barry M.
In this series of reports, members of the Elephant editorial collective recap selected panels from the 2021 AUPresses Virtual Annual Meeting held June 7–18, 2021.
In this series of reports, members of the Elephant editorial collective recap selected panels from the 2021 AUPresses Virtual Annual Meeting held June 7-18, 2021. We welcome further discussion of issues raised by the panelists via the Reply box below each post.
Moderator:
Caitlin Tyler-Richards, Acquisitions Editor, Michigan State University Press
In this series of reports, members of the Elephant editorial collective recap selected panels from the 2021 AUPresses Virtual Annual Meeting held June 7-18, 2021. We welcome further discussion of issues raised by the panelists via the Reply box below each post.
In this series of reports, members of the Elephant editorial collective recap selected panels from the 2021 AUPresses Virtual Annual Meeting held June 7-18, 2021. We welcome further discussion of issues raised by the panelists via the Reply box below each post.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
In Feeding the Elephant’s [1:3] series, we pose 1 question to a librarian, a publisher, and a scholar—the 3 main stakeholders in the scholarly communications ecosystem—to get each perspective on a particular issue. Here, we posed the question:
What is the value of popular culture to scholarly discussions?
An occasional newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
A guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Preparing and submitting illustrations for your book can be a daunting process. What size should the image be? How do you determine the resolution? What file type should you submit? How should the file be labeled?
Guest post by Sharon Ince, Digital Services Librarian/Associate Professor, Seton Hall University Libraries and Christopher Hoadley, Associate Professor, New York University
A newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors (2021). Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/reviewheuristic
As more scholars start developing multimedia digital projects, librarians and acquisitions editors both play key roles in supporting them and making these projects available to readers. In the following post, a librarian and an acquisitions editor who have collaborated on digital projects talk about how they think about this work and what they’d like to see more of.
This Feeding the Elephant post was developed from a panel conversation that took place at the Modern Language Association 2021 virtual meeting in January, organized by Samuel Cohen and Rebecca Colesworthy. Remarks have been condensed for circulation.
Samuel Cohen, University of Missouri
In February, the College Art Association (CAA) held its 109th Annual Conference, bringing together art historians, artists, and designers to share research and discuss issues of professional interest.
From Feeding the Elephant, a forum for scholarly communications
An occasional newsletter from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Virtual Conferences
Roger C. Schonfeld and Laura Brown, "A Framework for the Future of Conferences," Scholarly Kitchen, March 1, 2021, https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/03/01/framework-future-conferences/
An occasional newsletter from the editors of Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Financial Health of Colleges & Universities
Kelly Grotke, “Are Endowments Damaging Colleges and Universities?,” The American Prospect, https://prospect.org/education/are-endowments-damaging-colleges-and-universities/
Guest post by Amanda Frost and Anastasia Wraight, Project Editors, Michigan State University Press
A guest post by Kathleen O’Brien-Nicholson, Associate Director and Marketing & Sales Director, Fordham University Press
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Note: This post grew out of a presentation the authors gave at the 2020 National Humanities Conference, and that presentation in turn grew out a working group on publishing publicly engaged humanities projects. A white paper on the topic will be published in spring 2021.
Guest post by Barry Goldenberg and Dave Tell
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Authors often ask publishers, “Why is my book so expensive?” The short answer: it really isn’t that expensive. The long answer: your scholarly book might cost more than commercially published nonacademic books because academic presses are spreading the cost of producing a title across a smaller number of print units. Each unit therefore has to be priced higher to enable the press to recoup the cost of production.
A guest post by Megan Kate Nelson, writer and historian
Once you’ve turned in your page proofs to the press, you may think it’s time to relax. NO, IT IS NOT.
Or you may think that promotion is untoward, and besmirches the intellectual purity of your book.
NO, IT IS/DOES NOT.
So what do you do now to start the promotion process?
An occasional newsletter from the editors of Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Here's where we share links to news stories, updates, and announcements of interest to Feeding the Elephant readers.
Libraries & Librarianship
by the Feeding the Elephant Editorial Collective
Before we start, we need to acknowledge something: 2020 was a year. If you are reading this in December, you have our deepest gratitude and respect for sticking with us. Here’s to making it through! If you are reading this from the future, let’s just say, we hope things got better.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Last week John Vsetecka offered his perspective on the impact of COVID-19 on early-career scholars. In today's post, we learn what's been like for early-career librarians from Laura Rocco, outreach and engagement librarian at California State University, Stanislaus.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us all to change the way we work and what we hoped to achieve in this very long year. In this post, history graduate student John Vsetecka talks about the short- and potential long-term impact of COVID-19 on early-career scholars. We'll follow up next week with a similar piece from an early-career librarian.
An occasional newsletter from the editors of Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
A guest post by Erin Benay, Associate Professor of Early Modern Art and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies, Case Western Reserve University
A guest post by Eliot Borenstein, Professor of Russian, New York University
An occasional newsletter from the editors of Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
A guest post by Ann Bingham, Exhibits and Awards Coordinator, UNC Press
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications. This is the first of a series on how scholarly societies, publishers, and attendees are coping with the challenges of the virtual conference.
A guest post by Hajni G. Selby, Director of Programming and Conferences, Organization of American Historians
A guest post by Kurt Milberger, Coordinating Editor, Michigan State University Press
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
A guest post by Siobhan McMenemy, senior editor, Wilfrid Laurier University Press
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Guest post by Robert Cassanello, associate professor of history, University of Central Florida
As we wrap-up Peer Review Week 2020, we wanted to share some practical advice with early career scholars being asked to review for the first time. I spoke with three scholars, including a journal editor, about how to approach this potentially daunting task—and why it's important to do so.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Check out two new resources from the Association of University Presses:
Guest post by Michael Chibnik, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Iowa
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
As Peer Review Week approaches, I wanted to share answers to some of the questions I get asked most often. The theme of #PeerReviewWk20 is trust. I hope these answers contribute to trust in peer review by fostering candid conversations about publishing in general and helping to demystify the peer review process specifically.
COPE guidelines (pdf)
Feeding the Elephant is pleased to introduce our [1:3] series. In this series, we pose 1 question to a librarian, a publisher, and a scholar—the 3 main stakeholders in the scholarly communications ecosystem—to get each perspective on a particular issue. Here, we posed the question:
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Guest post by Sara R. Benson, Interim Head of the Scholarly Commons and Copyright Librarian, University of Illinois Library
To suggest a resource, email us feeding.the.elephant [at] h-net.org or tweet us @HNetBookChannel using the hashtag #FeedingTheElephant.
General Guides & Additional Resources
Copyright Chat Podcast (Sara Benson, Copyright Librarian)
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Getting permission to reproduce copyrighted material in your own work can be intimidating and frustrating, and most scholars don’t get much, if any, training in how to do it. You won’t be surprised to learn there is no one simple trick, but the following tips aim to demystify the process and make it easier to manage.
Guest Post by Johanna Schuster-Craig, Assistant Professor of German and Global Studies, Michigan State University
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Note: This was the third panel of the P2L conference held July 22. A recap of the first two panels can be found here.
Lisa Bayer, Director, University of Georgia Press, sent us this summary.
Guest Post by Laura Portwood-Stacer, Manuscript Works
P2L4, a conference sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), brought together a group of publishers and librarians via Zoom on July 22 to talk about scholarly publishing.
Guest post by Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief, University of Pennsylvania Press
On June 11, 2020, Inside Higher Ed ran a short piece reporting that the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries just launched VCU Publishing, an initiative to publish scholarship by the university’s faculty and students in digital form.
Liz Murice Alexander is Mellon Editorial Fellow at Northwestern University Press. She was one of the participants of the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellows conversation at the AUPresses 2020 virtual conference, which we previously covered here.
Friday afternoon three booksellers—Kim Hooyboer of Seattle’s Third Place Books (Seward Park), Jeff Deutsch of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, and David Goldberg of the MIT Press Bookstore—joined with Andrew Berzanskis, senior acquisitions editor at the University of Washington Press, to talk about what university press folks ought to know about the realities of retail book sales.
The Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program, the result of a four-year, $1,205,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aims to diversify the university press acquisitions pipeline by offering highly competitive fourteen-month apprenticeships in the acquisitions departments of six university presses.
The Association of University Presses opened its annual meeting on Monday, June 15, with trenchant and inspiring plenary presentations from Cutcha Risling Baldy and Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair under the title of “Give It Back: Publishing and Native Sovereignty.”
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications
Acquiring editors play many roles in the publication process, and because the publishing process is entwined with the tenure and promotion process, editors are often asked to provide supporting documentation to their authors to share with tenure and promotion committees. This can be as simple as a paragraph confirming a book is under contract or in production, or as detailed as explaining a press’s acceptance rate and review process.
In light of the ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Feeding the Elephant has compiled a list of resources (many freely accessible) from libraries, university presses, and scholars on the subjects of racism, racial justice, police brutality, and protest.
In light of the ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Feeding the Elephant has compiled a list of resources (many freely accessible) from libraries, university presses, and scholars on the subjects of racism, racial justice, police brutality, and protest. At this time of anger and mourning, we would like to highlight efforts by the scholarly communications and publishing communities to reflect on how our work can contribute to understanding the present moment and encourage transformational change.
Editorial Collective
University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing, U-M’s academic publishing division, and part of the University Library.
In the fall of 2019, Disney launched its new streaming service, Disney+. Disney opened its famed Vault to lovers of classic Disney, fans of newer Disney-affiliated producers, and stans for Baby Yoda. All at once, several decades’ worth of content became available—for a price. And, all at once, Disney earned massive revenue for content that it already owned.
In addition to our open access resources, we have compiled a list of publisher offerings that can help
One of the characteristics of workplaces where sexual harassment and gender discrimination are common is a predominantly male staff, where the few women present may be seen as challenging gender norms just by being there.
Feeding the Elephant readers may be interested in a recent guest post from the Scholarly Kitchen called "Managing Your Career in Publishing," focusing on identifying and developing skills and professional networking through organizations like the Association of University Presses, the Association of American
Hello everyone,
The Open Access Resource List has been updated with additional resources. Please check it out and if you have anything else add, reply to this post to let us know!
Thank you!
--Feeding the Elephant team
The theme of the 2019 Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute was equity in scholarly communications. In addition to the summary on the website, check out #TriangleSCI on Twitter.
By Tony Sanfilippo
University presses were established to publish scholarly books—that’s our chief mission. But it’s not all we do. In this guest post, Ohio State University Press director Tony Sanfilippo talks about when and why university presses publish trade books—those intended for a general, non-specialist readership. --Catherine Cocks
Please see below for a list of publisher-produced and publishing-related podcasts. Feel free to reply in the comments with any additional publisher podcast information.
Fifteeneightyfour, Cambridge University Press Podcasts:
1869, The Cornell University Press Podcasts:
Greeting everyone!
On behalf of Catherine Cocks, Yelena Kalinsky, myself, and Feeding the Elephant, we would like to share an Open Access Resource list. This list is organized by category: Publishers and Open Access, Reports, Op-Eds, and Digital Initiatives.
Below is a list of resources regarding open access. This list is meant to supplement the posts and discussions taking place on Feeding the Elephant. Readers, please help us grow this list by joining the Feeding the Elephant discussions or Tweeting us using the hashtag #FeedingTheElephant.
Continuing our coverage of University Press Week, readers may be interested in a recent conversation between Kathryn Conrad, president of the Association of University Presses and founder and editor of the New Books Network, Marshall Poe, about (what else?) university presses.
University Press Week hits YouTube: check out five short videos on this year’s theme, Read. Think. Act:
Readers can visit Feeding the Elephant online, where it is hosted on the H-Net Book Channel.
To join the conversation and to receive new Feeding the Elephant posts:
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications
Recently, four pieces of news about publishing came to my attention. The conjuncture struck me as illuminating some of the key problems besetting the current scholarly publishing ecosystem.
A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications
A few weeks ago, we wrote about the importance of diversity and equity in peer review, but concerns about who gets to create, curate, distribute, and preserve knowledge extend far beyond the moment of peer review.
A Conversation with Amy Brand (Director of MIT Press) and Jessica Polka (Executive Director of ASAPBio) by Catherine Cocks (Editor-in-Chief at Michigan State University Press)
Greeting all!
Welcome to the inaugural posts of Feeding the Elephant, a forum for conversations about scholarly communications in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. We begin by looking at one of the elements that makes academic publishing distinctive: peer review. Scholars who want to have their research taken seriously by their discipline have to publish it in a peer-reviewed form, whether that’s a journal article or a monograph or something else.
Discussions: |
Feeding the Elephant readers will be interested in this public conversation about "quality" in peer review, taking place this Thursday, September 19, at 4 p.m., EDT. Announcement and details below.
Quality in Peer Review: An AUPresses Conversation
This is the first post of a new series on the H-Net Book Channel dedicated to scholarly communications called Feeding the Elephant. For the rest of September, we'll be sharing interviews, blog posts, and links to further resources related to the topic of peer review. Subscribers are invited to take part in the conversation by posting replies, questions, links to projects, or ideas for future posts. --Eds.
Below is a list of resources for peer review meant to supplement the posts and discussions taking place on Feeding the Elephant. Readers, please help us grow this list by joining the Feeding the Elephant discussions or Tweeting us using the hashtag #FeedingTheElephant.
Introductions to Peer Review
