It's a Hard World in Academic Publishing: Publishing

Z !IBRARlES iontmurdfrom pagtl) I am fond of repeating for graduate classes an exercise I had many years ago, when I was a graduate student. I was asked to read through the entire run of the William and Mary Quarterly and use this perusal as the basis for a fivepage essay about changes and trends in scholarship about colonial and early national America. To complete this task, I spent a week sitting on the floor of my university library, pulling William andMary Quarterly volumes off the shelf, reading through tables of contents, indexes, even the occasional article. What ifa student were assigned this task today? How different could the exercise be? Using Journal Storage (JSTOR), the student could skim tables ofcontents, just as I did with the paper copies many years ago. The student could also do what I could not do, and that's search for themes, words, authors. The student could even expand beyond the William and Mary Quarterly to other journals on JSTOR, such as the American Historical Review or the Journal ofAmerican History. With ambition and time, current journals could be searched: are there related themes in recent on-line issues of Social Science History? In Journal ofthe History ofldeas'The possibilities are enormous, and the five-page essay ofa quarter century ago has become something much, much more. Keeping in mind these broad thoughts about new and different ways to do historical research, I invite the readership to comment on libraries and library-related issues. Please contact me at historic@bu.edu. Hopefully, your comments can be the basis for an ongoing column about libraries and historians. Harriet Lightman is the bibliographerfor History, Economics, and Philosophy at the Northwestern University Library in Evanston, Illinois. It's a Hard World in AcademicPublishing PUBLISHING By MichaelJabara Carley Veteran authors seem togo through thepublishingprocess without too much difficulty, apartfrom the usualproblems: unwarrantedauthor self-esteem; author sensitivity about revisions; editors'failings to appreciate an author'sprose;poor copy-editing; slowness topublish. There areproblems on both sides ofthe divide. Ajournai editor once told me that "author-editor rehtions are like war:full oftension and the unexpected. " New historians face greater obstacles in publishing their first work. "Publish or Perish," an old epigram, still governs North American academia, especially in an endlessly tight job market. The job market was supposed to loosen up in the 1990s, but it never did. Even ifa new scholar wins a position, they must prepare lectures, endure a heavy teaching load, and find precious time to devote to research and writing. Teaching has a way ofdevouring one's time, which is good for students, but not for a new assistant professor, who must make the time to do additional research, write, and publish. "I don't have the time to write," a young colleague recently told me: "We know we have to publish because the tenure clock is running." There is a general sense of frustration and pervasive worry about finding a publisher. And there is also that fear of rejection—never easy to take—but harder still for a young, not-yet-hardened ego. Even published scholars can forget that they were once unpublished. They need to sympathize, but sympathy will not add those important citations to an assistant professor's c.v. But publish what and where? There are possibilities, if the new scholar's advisor or thesis committee has not steered him or her onto a hopelessly esoteric and narrow topic, or encouraged that graduate student to write incomprehensibly. A revised thesis may be publishable, or chapters from the thesis may be suitable for publication as articles in learned journals. The new scholar needs to get good advice from a friend or mentor on how to proceed. Complimentary lines such as "This is really great work, outstanding," may be good for an easily fed ego, but they're no help to serious authors trying to improve their work and find a publisher. Good advice means reading critically and taking the time to analyze a text and to suggest constructive revisions. Real help is hard to get. Mentoring in graduate school has broken down. The professor no longer feels responsible for his or her...