“Future of Scholarly Communication”

November 10-16 marks University Press Week 2013! All week long, presses around the Web will be hosting special posts as part of a UP Week Blog Tour. The Digital Digest will be following the tour with a daily round up.

MONDAY | TUESDAY

Duke University Press: “Priscilla Wald on the Slow Future of Scholarly Publishing”
DUP author and editorial board chair Priscilla Wald finds promise for scholarly publishing in young authors’ return to manual typewriters, reading it as an appreciation of concentration, deliberation, and “the labor of writing.”

Harvard University Press: “What Is a Scholarly Book?”
Jeffrey Schnapp, HUP author and expert on the internet and networked culture, delves into the longstanding conventions of scholarly books and looks ahead to future possibilities—which he is currently experimenting himself—astutely noting that “revolutions in media are never reducible to the mere substitution of old media by the new.”

Stanford University Press: “The Future of Scholarly Communication”
SUP Director Alan Harvey recognizes innovative new efforts by university presses, while lamenting their likely lack of influence over key tenure and promotion decisions. Meanwhile, new modes of academic conversation continue to evolve, and will best be supported by collaboration and by continued reach beyond the academy.

Temple University Press: “The Future of Scholarly Communication”
Alex Holzman, Director at Temple, agrees that a broad audience is vital to university press—and library—sustainability. He explores how presses and libraries have worked together, and why they must continue to in the future.

University of Minnesota Press: “#UPweek: Announcing Forerunners”
UMP marks University Press Week in a big way: with the announcement of a new series, Forerunners, which will “focus on fresh ideas that often don’t have a traditional publishing outlet,” flipping sometime ephemeral, evasive online scholarly conversations into lasting but innovative peer-reviewed shorts.

University of Texas Press: “The Texas Bookshelf: New Ways to Share Scholarship”
UTP Assistant Editor-in-Chief Robert Devens puts his faith for the future in the “think globally, act locally” nature of the press’s new Texas Bookshelf program, which features local history and culture that, in turn, portray the broader movement of people, culture, and ideas beyond Texas borders.

University of Virginia Press: “The River of Change”
Holly Shulman edited UVAP’s first publication under its Rotunda e-imprint ten years ago. While she anticipates a scholarly world without even “magisterial” collections of historic letters and documents “in print on smooth creamy paper, heavy with text,” Shulman also celebrates the ability of platforms like Rotunda to trace “relationships and trends of a distant era in a way that no print publication could have.”