Code Orange: Career Fear and Publishing

At the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in March 2004, discussion at a workshop on "The Book" quickly jumped to a topic it never left: the crisis in publishing. The workshop was cosponsored by Cinema Journal and the SCMS Graduate Student Organization. While book publishing is less immediately relevant for graduate students since it is more a tenure and advancement issue, the messages came in loud and clear: "Things are only going to get worse, so start worrying now if you're not already" and "here's yet another curve ball to impact the direction you take in writing your dissertation." We graduate students are well aware of the ominous future, but publishing a book is not the only problem we get stressed about. Our concerns move in and out of the publishing arena but only within the larger frame of a troubled job market.

When asked to write from the "the graduate student" perspective, I was concerned that my outlook (a particularly dismal one) might not be representative. Through an informal e-mail survey, I asked other graduate students to think about publishing along specific axes: the job market, publishing venues, and publishing motivations.¹ But most important (and it paid off productively), I encouraged people to use the survey as a catalyst to discuss other concerns. I assured respondents total anonymity, as I anticipated that people would want to say things that they would rather not have attributed to them. A number of sensitive topics came up, particularly on matters having to do with advising. The comments offered were candid and reflected a wide array of attitudes, some vastly different from my own.

Graduate students encounter the publishing "crisis" at their campus libraries. While several respondents appreciated library Web sites and publishing hubs, a few bemoaned that Web counterparts do not provide the spatial and tactile experience of trolling the stacks. Thinking past institutionally organized databases, several discussed the challenges (and benefits) of the unorganized but limitless database of the Web, and the arduous and dizzying process of keyword searching for dependable gateways to legitimate resources. As an aside, and in homage to my favorite book title ever in the subgenre "bibliomystery," I have to ask: Is Dewey Decimated?

Most graduate students, however, celebrate the expansion and innovation of online publishing, or, in a more limited sense, the dissemination on the Web of print publications. Many students find access to online versions of print publications (through Project Muse, for example) critical to the research process. Digitization makes access to more resources easier and faster, significantly widening the breadth of research and resulting in more informed writing. The same is true of the slow but steady area of book publishing in electronic formats: "NetLibrary is a convenient pain in the neck. I like the access, but 24 hours [the loan period] is hardly enough time to read an entire book from a computer screen" (e-mail, May 4, 2004).

The impetus behind the digitization of scholarship is not clear to me: Is the crisis in publishing forcing libraries and presses into digitization? Is the development of a new medium saving scholarship from a slow and painful hard-copy death? Or is it both? Behind these questions sits a palpable feeling of reluctance. While we appreciate digital migration and publishing, however imperfect it still might be, we are justly concerned about how the various committees in our future will regard the scholarship we publish in digital formats.

Graduates know that publishing in prestigious journals is the only thing that matters, that dissertations are second to top-flight journal articles, that we should publish one article for each year we are in graduate school, that other published works (essays in anthologies, reviews, etc.) do not matter and can actually hinder one's job search, and (in diametric opposition) that one should publish a lot and include everything on the vita. Obviously, these fragments of advice are intended for students in a range of markets, including those seeking teaching jobs at research institutions, liberal arts colleges, and teaching-centered universities.

Contradictory career...