[HN Gopher] Universities have disinvested from their presses jus...
___________________________________________________________________
Universities have disinvested from their presses just as much as
their libraries
Author : theoldlove
Score : 134 points
Date : 2023-09-28 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.publicbooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.publicbooks.org)
| sheepshear wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to say they've disinvested from
| libraries.
|
| Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach.
| Books that cannot be digitized yet due to copyright are held in
| storage until they enter public domain, and you can request
| chapter scans in the meantime or even check out the physical
| book. Separate special collections are kept for items whose
| physical existence is significant. Libraries are being repurposed
| as study spaces, which campuses otherwise tend to lack. Reference
| librarians are available online with extended hours.
|
| The overall trend seems positive.
|
| Similar arguments about presses. Mixed media is the future. Some
| schools invest in various learning platforms and knowledge hubs,
| sometimes collaboratively. A building doesn't facilitate such
| variety very well.
| tw4l wrote:
| Former academic librarian and archivist here. It's true that
| university libraries are changing their shape, as you say. More
| study space, fewer physical collections and book purchases
| (and, in some areas, universities moving toward sharing their
| physical collections in remote offsite storage and only calling
| back materials when requested), and much more investment in
| electronic resources like journal and database access.
|
| It's a complicated issue, but in general library budgets have
| been consistently shrinking for years/decades, even as the
| subscription costs for journal access from big for-profit like
| Elsevier skyrockets. It's even gotten to the point where
| universities with endowments larger than many nations' GDPs are
| struggling to afford publisher prices (see
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-
| univ...).
|
| Decreasing library budgets plays into this, but at its heart I
| think that there's a crisis of purpose as well. By not
| investing in open access publishing infrastructure themselves
| and not modifying the incentives for faculty review and tenure,
| universities have put themselves at the mercy of these for-
| profit publishers and are suffering for it. It's hard to blame
| faculty who are vying for one of the ever-diminishing tenured
| spots for publishing their articles in the best journals they
| can, regardless of whether they'll be behind a paywall,
| especially when the bar for tenure keeps getting higher and
| higher.
|
| So we find ourselves in a situation where universities and
| public funding agencies are paying academics to conduct
| research and do peer review, then faculty are giving the
| results to a for-profit publisher, who then sells access to the
| work right back to them at an astronomical fee.
|
| I'm hopeful if not optimistic that at some point, universities
| might choose to break out of the cat-and-mouse game they're in
| by investing in open access publishing and incentivizing their
| faculty to use it rather than continuing to feed for-profit
| publishers' wild profits. I've seen some (too limited) action
| on the first part of that but pretty much none on
| incentivization part. Certain funding agencies are starting to
| require open access publication as a condition of some grants,
| but the change has been slow.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| For open access journals, why don't professional associations
| (e.g., of history/physics/etc researchers/professors/etc)
| organize it, and declare that starting 01 Jan 2026, the Open
| Journal of Nanoscience will be the prestige publication, and
| Open Nanoscience Letters will be the second rank (or whatever
| roles are needed). Would anyone in the professional
| assocation have reason to object? Would support be
| widespread?
|
| University presses could handle the implementation (I know,
| more easily said than done, but they have the expertise).
| Cost reduction would appeal to university administrations.
|
| People do organize themselves and accomplish things, and with
| (guaranteed?) savings, (no?) opposition, (wide?) support,
| this one seems like low-hanging fruit - from my very outside
| perspective.
| [deleted]
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach.
|
| Previously, when university libraries had books and paper
| journals, anyone could read them. Now, members of the general
| public are not licensed to read electronic content there.
|
| So digitization has reduced the reach of the content, not
| increased it.
| sheepshear wrote:
| Many libraries have computers for accessing the catalog,
| which now includes all the digital media. You make a good
| argument for why they should if they don't already.
| atrettel wrote:
| I have spent a lot of time in university libraries and the
| disinvestment is often difficult to see unless you are doing
| deep research or in the weeds.
|
| I should note that I am writing this response as somebody who
| is a professional researcher and scientist, not as an
| undergraduate student who needs to find a few references for a
| term paper. My needs are quite different than others and the
| library needs to cater to a wide range of people at all levels
| of research.
|
| Many universities are in fact repurposing libraries as "study
| spaces" or as "learning centers". This often means dedicating
| more space to meeting rooms and desks, etc. To get that space,
| libraries either put the books in storage or quite frankly sell
| the books, especially books that are not checked out that
| often. Many of the technical books that I own are former
| library books. Moreover, even well-resourced government labs
| (like DOE national laboratories) are selling their books. I
| know because I have bought some (albeit through a third party).
| Putting books in storage is the better option, because at least
| the books are available, but it removes the ability to browse
| the shelf for adjacent books (a highly underrated research
| method) and often requires preparation to request books and
| then wait for them to arrive in a reading room. That said, it
| is far better to put the books in storage.
|
| The availability of reference librarians is often greatly
| overstated. A library like the Library of Congress still has
| excellent reference librarians who often can perform apparent
| miracles to find difficult to locate information, but at
| university libraries, if I ask for a reference librarian, I
| often end up with an undergraduate assistant who does not
| really know much and cannot help you if you have a specific
| question to ask about locating something in a particular
| collection or how to use certain equipment like microfilm
| readers. Perhaps the undergrad can help other undergrads out,
| but when I was in grad school I never found this practice
| helpful when I needed specific information that I was already
| having difficulty finding.
|
| To summarize, this trend may benefit some people, but it comes
| at the expense of in-depth researchers and their needs.
|
| I will end by quibbling with that notion that "most of the
| information is digitized". The problem is that the Internet is
| so large that you can easily spend your whole life without ever
| realizing how shallow it really is in a single subject. Only
| once you go deep in that subject do you realize how much is not
| yet digitized in the first place. Yes, much information is
| digitized, but based on my experience, it is not "most". Some
| day that may change, but for the time being, physical libraries
| still play an important role here.
| sheepshear wrote:
| With respect, I think I already addressed your quibble. I
| acknowledged the backlog of materials yet to be digitized and
| explained how to expedite it on an as-needed basis.
|
| It's no more burdensome than it would be with more library
| funding. Storage is always necessary because big universities
| own several times more books than they could ever hope to
| shelve in their increasingly crowded campuses. Digging deep
| into a subject's history can require materials that don't
| exist in sufficient quantities for every interested library
| to have one, necessitating inter-library loans at a minimum.
|
| FYI Every online library catalog I've seen has a "browse
| shelf" feature.
|
| And how many times do you need to be shown how to use the
| microfilm machine?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > FYI Every online library catalog I've seen has a "browse
| shelf" feature.
|
| As someone who works in the field, I'm not actually sure
| what you mean, and am curious. can you point me to an
| example of a "browse shelf feature" in a library catalog
| you have used and found helpful? I'm just curious to see
| what you are finding, and liking.
| atrettel wrote:
| This is a feature of some online catalogs where it lists
| adjacent books on the shelf. This is usually done by the
| call number, so it basically just lets you see what the
| previous and next call numbers are. Given that the call
| numbers are usually within some sort of classification
| scheme, this is a quick way to find related material.
|
| For example, consider this book at the University of
| Maryland's library:
|
| https://umaryland.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1594752
|
| Scroll down to the bottom to see "Browse the Shelf".
| Notice that the call numbers are sequential.
|
| The Library of Congress has a similar feature even though
| only librarians are able to access the stacks:
|
| https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchBrowse
|
| I don't mean to come off as dismissive of the feature. It
| is pretty useful! But I also value shelf access and just
| being able to dig into a book at a moment's notice.
| atrettel wrote:
| Fair points, I was just trying to give an alternative
| perspective, especially since my needs are likely different
| than others on here. I appreciate the feedback.
|
| I tend to agree that storage is not a bad option, but so
| many libraries just cannot be bothered and would rather
| discard or sell materials.
|
| Fair point about the "browse shelf" feature of online
| catalogs, but I was talking about the ability to just open
| an adjacent book and just browse through the book itself.
| Instant access in other words. This is much more difficult
| if requesting things from storage, though the trick is to
| request several dozen books at once from storage. That is
| reasonable at some libraries but others will be greatly
| annoyed if you do that, due to limited shelf space for
| holds/requests.
|
| You are right that _I_ do not need to be shown how to use a
| microfilm machine, but often different libraries or
| archives have different practices and conventions about how
| to use their machines, especially for the purpose of
| preserving the microfilm. Being shown how to use it is more
| about learning their conventions and practices so that you
| can continue to have access to their collections later, and
| also to learn any issues with the machines themselves. For
| example, some institutions like the Smithsonian require you
| to wear special gloves when handling microfilm and limits
| where you can save any scans. Other places are completely
| free-form, but different machines have different quirks or
| could be down at the moment. Quirks include blurry images,
| need to wind the reels in a certain way, slow fast-forward
| (problem for longer reels), missing parts, susceptibility
| to nearby vibration, etc. If the undergrad helping you
| doesn 't even know what a microfilm machine is, I doubt
| they can truly help you figure out how to get this
| particular machine working right. I ended up figuring this
| stuff out myself, but I would have preferred some
| assistance from a professional to be honest.
| ahi wrote:
| University expenditures on libraries have been stagnant at best
| for decades. This includes those "various learning platforms
| and knowledge hubs." The digitization of collections and
| repurposing of facilities is driven by cost cutting as well as
| hampered by it. Archival storage is not cheap (the conditions
| for special collections drive many librarians to drink) and
| renovating century old stacks into usable people space requires
| capital expenditures few libraries can scrape together.
|
| At the same time, Elsevier et al take larger and larger bites
| out of the budget for those digitized collections. The failure
| to invest in University presses will only exacerbate this in
| the long term. Attempts to provide an alternative to the for-
| profit parasites, e.g. open access platforms, wallow in grant
| funded misery with budgets considered laughable in the private
| sector.
| sheepshear wrote:
| Let's take nanohub.org as an example. It's funded by an NSF
| grant and everyone can access it for free. A university
| doesn't need to make any expenditures for their students to
| benefit from it.
|
| Researchers choose to publish in Elsevier's journals, not for
| lack of a university press.
| echelon wrote:
| They need to disinvest from new buildings, "lifestyle" dorms,
| expensive gyms and amenities, and sports programs (except for
| schools well-regarded for this).
|
| Tuition inflation is absurd. The goal is to grow learners, not
| set them back.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > ... and sports programs (except for schools well-regarded for
| this)
|
| Those shouldn't be called "universities", then.
| trgn wrote:
| A healthy mind in a healthy body. We should all aspire to it.
| It's a beautiful thing, to have institutions nurture both
| athletes and scholars.
| whyenot wrote:
| Maybe it's a "beautiful thing" for some sports, but for
| contact sports like football, it doesn't lead to a "healthy
| mind." Instead, it leads to brain damage. CTEs didn't go
| away just because we stopped talking about them.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Your comment seems sarcastic, but the athletes aren't
| getting much of the beautiful mind part, few students get
| the athletic experience, and the institutions are nuturing
| their TV revenue.
|
| Good intramural sports would serve far more students.
| trgn wrote:
| I wasn't sarcastic!
|
| point taken though, maybe the choice of sports does not
| fit the ideal.
| AmericanOP wrote:
| Parents can't afford to send kids to summer camp so they can
| save for college which is four years of summer camp.
| [deleted]
| Georgelemental wrote:
| [flagged]
| silenced_trope wrote:
| Yes, I may be in favor of loan forgiveness if it was for
| appropriate degrees that the nation actually needs.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I don't know if grievance studies is a cause of tuition
| bloat. Most of the departments I know to be labeled as
| grievance studies were founded well before tuition increased,
| so it makes not much sense to attribute them to increased
| tuition. The increase in tuition hews much more closely with
| the decrease in government funding to these institutions,
| which requires more tuition from students, which means
| students desires must be catered to... so increased lifestyle
| luxuries makes sense there...
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Were they the same size upon founding as they are now? A
| few activists get their foot in the door, push to hire
| friendly administrators, who push for more activists, who
| push for more administrators... Eventually everything is
| taken over
| cycomanic wrote:
| In what world do academics have power over which
| administrators can be hired? If you really think that
| some professor in CRT could take over a department, then
| you just show that you don't have a clue.
| Clubber wrote:
| When I went to college in the 90s, the gave us a breakdown
| of tuition costs. Half the cost was crap the student
| government wanted.
| BeetleB wrote:
| That's because tuition was cheap in the 90's.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It might be naive but I imagine training students to make
| improvements to weapons systems increases government
| support of universities and training students to criticize
| the government decreases it.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| Like I said, the founding of such studies predates the
| increases in tuition. Trying to argue that specific
| academic studies causes tuition increases by making
| students mistrustful of government, but only several
| decades later, needs a lot of evidence for that kind of
| claim. There are far more direct, closely related
| situations, like the federal and state governments
| decreasing funding or the inverted proportion of funds
| coming from govt/grants vs student-paid tuition via the
| loan system.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Trying to argue that specific academic studies causes
| tuition increases by making students mistrustful of
| government, but only several decades later, needs a lot
| of evidence for that kind of claim._
|
| Right-leaning politicians are citing "grievance studies"
| as their reason for not liking universities, so the only
| stretch in this hypothesis is to think it might have been
| happening for decades before bubbling to the surface.
| It's not that it makes students distrustful of the
| government, it's that it makes politicians ask, "why are
| we paying them if they're going to make our goals harder
| to achieve?" I would not be surprised if the protests
| against the Vietnam war turned the inner view that many
| held about university faculty, but few expressed it
| because of the esteem the public held them in at the
| time.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is a totally different claim than what was obviously
| meant by the first post.
|
| "We are wasting money on these fields" and "these fields
| piss off reactionaries so they cut our budgets, despite
| being a tiny portion of the overall budget and not hiring
| new lines in years" are just totally different.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Whose first post do you mean? My two posts mean the same
| thing, doing what legislators want would tend to increase
| funding and doing what they don't like would do the
| opposite. I guess you could read my first post as being
| about wasting money if you think criticizing the
| government is not useful... I guess there are some
| countries like Singapore out there where that is the
| case.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Also, the history and English departments don't have big
| budgets to start with.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Maybe not the departments directly, but the nonsense they
| push certainly does. e.g. University of Michigan has 163
| full time DEI employees.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Like many other things now, from healthcare to midtown
| Manhattan, it's by the wealthy, for the wealthy, of the
| wealthy.
|
| The wealthy want beautiful new buildings and a good football
| team, and a high-touch experience for their kids. They are
| happy to pay administrators lots of money to deliver on those
| things.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| nah, we just need the government to not back student loans and
| allow it to be discharged in bankruptcy. the system will sort
| it out from there.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we just need the government to not back student loans and
| allow it to be discharged in bankruptcy_
|
| Honestly, start with the latter. See what happens. Maybe
| include a first-loss provision for schools with an endowment.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| How is this going to solve anything? Unless the school itself
| has skin in the loan, currently the only impact of bankruptcy
| discharge would be on private loan operators (who would
| probably go under) or on taxpayers who would absorb the loan
| losses. The schools are getting paid their tuition from the
| loans immediately, they won't even notice.
| morsch wrote:
| Presumably the idea is that guaranteed student debt is what
| enables US tuition levels. The schools will already have
| been paid, but the next generation of students won't be
| able to get loans for tens of thousands of dollars -- the
| lenders will have gone under and nobody else will want to
| be in that business, so universities will have to lower
| prices.
|
| I think that's the idea. It sounds rather painful to me?
| But the status quo is also very weird?
| Racing0461 wrote:
| > taxpayers who would absorb the loan losses
|
| that's no different than what we have no. we don't need
| everyone going to college especially to major in history of
| tampons type degrees.
|
| the end goal is for loan companies to decline people who
| won't be able to repay their loans given the expected value
| of their degrees. (Your future earning potential is the
| collatoral for your loan).
|
| For people that want to "expand their horizons", they can
| go watch khanacademy on youtube.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Your mentality is why so much of the world is set back
| centuries from the USA.
|
| That's the old Brit way of thinking, and we sent that
| packing over a century ago.
|
| I'd thank you to not return us to the 'good old days.'
| silenced_trope wrote:
| This is what really gets me about loan forgiveness.
|
| I'd be in favor if it was only for people who pursue certain
| degrees that we need. But going to party schools? Going for
| the cliche "underwater basket weaving" degree? The money
| being funneled into building a new pool and rock climbing
| wall for one of the dorms?
|
| No, no, and no!
| throwing_away wrote:
| > The goal is to grow, not set back.
|
| If you're a university, the goal is to fill up your university
| with satisfied customers and increase revenue.
|
| If you're a student, the goal is to form social networks that
| you can later use to help in business.
|
| If you're a politician, the goal is to increase college
| attendance rates.
|
| If you're a hard-line right winger, the goal is actually to set
| undesirable groups back, but that's a pretty fringe position.
|
| If you just want to learn and grow, you should avoid the
| university system entirely.
| krapp wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted, every word of your
| comment is the truth.
|
| The purpose of higher education in the US to create a market
| for student loan debt and generate revenue for states. The US
| is a capitalist society, and education is not a right, it's a
| privilege, and student loan debt is a billion dollar
| industry. We saw how the states nearly rioted over the
| possibility of being denied the revenue from student loan
| interest if it was forgiven. Believing education is about
| educating people is about as naive as believing hospitals are
| about healthcare, or houses about shelter. All of it is
| entirely about profit, debt and tax revenue.
|
| So much of how the US works (or doesn't work) makes perfect
| sense when you realize this. Education, business, tech,
| government, the media, pop culture - it's all grift, top to
| bottom. It's all carnies and frauds and sociopaths working
| angles and trying to squeeze you just a little harder to wet
| their lips with one more drop of your lifeblood.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _If you 're a hard-line right winger, the goal is actually to
| set undesirable groups back, but that's a pretty fringe
| position._
|
| Based in recent history, most recently on spending cuts in
| the proposed house spending bill, this appears to be well
| within the mainstream of the Republican party.
| Clubber wrote:
| I'm not supporting the GOP, but we are $33T in debt with
| interest rates rising dramatically. We're probably in a
| perilous position. We need to cut back and raise taxes.
|
| FWIW, I'm well aware the GOP has also contributed greatly
| to that debt.
|
| https://www.usdebtclock.org
| vehemenz wrote:
| It's a shame you didn't learn about the teleological fallacy
| in your philosophy classes when you attended university.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I went to school to learn what they were teaching in class
| and I did actually learn it.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| > If you just want to learn and grow, you should avoid the
| university system entirely.
|
| I disagree with this. The university system is really good
| for exposure, assuming that people who are attending the
| system actually take advantage of the exposure. e.g. I was
| able to take dedicated lessons in multiple languages,
| artistic mediums, theories in various fields, by experts in
| each field. Many of these experts were presenting their work
| for free outside of lessons, and often times provided free
| food and drink to boot! Also, because my institution was
| larger, we often had scholars travel here to present their
| various works and even little get-togethers where multiple
| scholars from multiple fields collaborated and presented
| work. For free! With free food and drink!
|
| I can't get a single dedicated language instructor for my
| life nowadays, it's bullshit apps or stuff oriented towards
| children only. Same if I wanted to learn the basics of, say,
| a performance art, or painting. The best system I have
| nowadays for learning is mostly hacker spaces and maker
| spaces, but they're specialized in what they can teach me and
| don't often have the kind of dedicated experts "office hours"
| or anything like that.
| bombcar wrote:
| You may find it worthwhile to reach out to local community
| colleges, because once you're "in the group" you can find
| people doing various things, and they're often not
| advertising, but will be willing to take a bit of cash on
| the side.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I'm sorry for derailing this thread, but am curious. Have
| any of you used services (e.g. classes, study groups) at
| the local community college? How does it work out when
| you're a decade beyond your graduate program? I miss a
| lot of aspects of the university system but have a full-
| time job and a life now (sadly.) I've been thinking of
| taking classes and networking at some of our really well-
| rated community colleges but I'm not sure what the
| experience is like.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm sure it heavily depends on local circumstances, but
| for whatever it's worth, I badly fucked up my first
| attempt at going to four-year right out of high school
| due to mental health reasons and ended up doing two years
| at LA City College before going back. It may have been
| mostly the Biology and Chemistry departments, but the
| quality of student there was still the highest of any
| school I've ever taken classes at, and that includes
| Georgia Tech, which is typically regarded as a top 10
| engineering school. The reasons were somewhat peculiar
| and specific, but the fall of the Soviet Union in the
| late 80s left a whole lot of immigrants from former
| Soviet Republics fleeing the collapse and most of them
| ended up in LA. We had a whole lot of former engineers,
| scientists, and medical doctors who came to the US only
| to find their foreign credentials were not honored by US
| institutions and they had to start completely over. They
| utterly destroyed our curves thanks to all of the
| knowledge, dedication, and discipline they already had
| compared to an average 19 year-old.
|
| Heck, even my Bio 101 professor was abnormally brilliant.
| She'd been a researcher at Harvard Medical School who
| worked on highly experimental treatments in a ward full
| of terminal patients and just finally burned out from
| being around so much death all the time, so there she was
| in Los Feliz three blocks from Scientology world
| headquarters teaching at a community college, probably
| the hardest class I've ever had to take.
| bombcar wrote:
| As the other said, it really depends on the college. The
| one near me is more technical oriented and has a number
| of programs basically designed to train people for
| employment at local factories.
|
| If you avoid the standard college classes, you get a
| pretty wide cross-section of the people in the community.
| Math 101 is mostly going to be college-age kids.
| mlyle wrote:
| It really depends upon the community college and class.
|
| You tend to have some younger screw-up, unmotivated
| students, especially at entry level classes; some younger
| students that are there for economic or other reasons;
| some older students going back to school for life
| reasons; and then some older students who are
| intellectually curious and doing it for enrichment.
|
| What the make-up of a class, and the resultant culture
| is, is a crapshoot. But it can be outstanding.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I do, but I would argue that local community colleges is
| still most certainly in the "university system", just
| another tier/flavor of it. I would consider participating
| in community college activities to be participating in
| academic institution style activities that also happen at
| universities.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah- I don't think they're disagreeing with you, but just
| suggesting that CCs and other adult education may be a
| practical way to scratch the itch that you described.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > I can't get a single dedicated language instructor for my
| life nowadays, it's bullshit apps or stuff oriented towards
| children only. Same if I wanted to learn the basics of,
| say, a performance art, or painting. The best system I have
| nowadays for learning is mostly hacker spaces and maker
| spaces, but they're specialized in what they can teach me
| and don't often have the kind of dedicated experts "office
| hours" or anything like that.
|
| Exactly. I'm fairly knowledgeable about my STEM
| specialization but in university I had access to great
| language learning and exchange programs, top-notch
| political science and philosophy departments, architecture
| departments, etc. I remember bumming around in philosophy
| seminars not because I was a philosophy student (though I
| did take some philosophy classes) but because I found it so
| interesting. As long as I didn't increase the grading
| burden on any of the grad students/professors, everyone was
| happy and the quality of instruction I received was
| fantastic. In the real world the closest I have is books I
| read or MOOCs where a lot of people are in it to get a
| certification or a badge of completion rather than just
| marinate in ideas.
| [deleted]
| slyall wrote:
| A press can be one way for a smaller University to have an
| outsized impact. For example I read books about Spaceflight and
| the University of Nebraska Press has a great series called
| "Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight" which I have
| read many of:
|
| https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/series/outward-odyssey-a-p...
|
| If you look here they have many other series on all sorts of
| topics:
|
| https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/series/
|
| I also often end up read books by other University presses.
| gamepsys wrote:
| I just went through my bookshelf. While there were many authors
| that were professors, there were few books published by a
| university press. Are university presses a professors' first
| choice when it comes to publishing?
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Most of my technical books are from a University press. Random
| examples:
|
| * SICP: MIT Press
|
| * Modern Compiler Implementation in ML: Cambridge University
| Press
|
| * Creating Symmetry: Princeton University Press (https://press.
| princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691161730/cr...)
|
| It really depends on the nature of the book. If it's a first-
| year undergrad text that is likely to be purchased by thousands
| of students, a publisher like Addison-Wesley will be
| interested. If it's solidly mass market applied tech, like
| "Master Javascript in 32 Seconds" or something, someone like
| O'Reilly or Manning will probably take it. If it's more niche
| and technical it's likely to be a University press.
|
| University presses do publish some absolute bangers. Creating
| Symmetry, for example, is an absolutely beautiful book
| combining maths and art. MIT has a great series on game design.
| Cambridge is very strong in machine learning and maths.
| IKantRead wrote:
| Wow, that's interesting because some of my favorite books are
| from university presses, often smaller ones (but MIT Press,
| Cambridge and Princeton are pretty well represented).
|
| I do find that my philosophy and critical theory books are the
| ones that more heavily come from university presses. In general
| the humanities tend to have stronger presence in the university
| presses (largely because books, not papers, are the publication
| format of choice for those areas).
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Well, if you go to grad school in humanities, or otherwise have
| more professional academic pursuits, you slowly end up
| submitting your home bookshelf to a huge takeover of very plain
| spines with small font.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| The market for university presses is almost entirely other
| university libraries, potentially other professors, and the
| exceedingly rare specialist.
|
| But when you need tenure, and you need to get published,
| they're the 1000x more willing to publish you than one of the
| major popular presses.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Plus textbooks. Some of which sell in volume, like SICP
| mentioned above.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| They also do academic reviews in ways that popular presses
| don't. If you are a history professor, a book published by
| Penguin isn't going to look as good in your tenure packet as
| a book published by Oxford.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| It really depends on the field. On my shelf, things are pretty
| much just Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press,
| Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, Routledge
| or De Gruyters. Oxford is very prestigious in the field of
| these books, and a professor seeking to publish a book would
| likely prefer Oxford.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Yeah, OUP and Harvard are all over my shelves, among others.
|
| It's a lot easier than many folks suppose to reach the bottom
| of what the Internet has on a lot of topics--people toss
| around phrases like "all the world's knowledge" and, oh boy,
| is that ever not true--and IME the next step is very often a
| few books from university presses.
| gamepsys wrote:
| I wish there was a better way to search all of the
| published books for relevant information.
| allturtles wrote:
| University presses have less reach than a popular press, but
| the flip side of that is that they are willing to publish works
| only of interest to an academic audience. If you want to reach
| a wide audience, then, no, you don't want to publish in a
| university press. However if you want to publish a detailed
| study on a niche subject, no popular press will want to touch
| that. That's what the university presses are for. e.g., here's
| a title I came across at Princeton University Press, "A Velvet
| Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century."
| Just based on the title, there's no way some place like Penguin
| Random House is going to even look at that manuscript.
|
| The same author may approach different publishers depending on
| their intended audience. e.g. Daron Acemoglu published
| "Introduction to Modern Economic Growth" with Princeton but
| "Why Nations Fail" with Crown (a division of Penguin
| RandomHouse).
| specialist wrote:
| The production of scholarship is table stakes for any org
| claiming to be a university.
| bell-cot wrote:
| In modern America... `sed 's/production of scholarship is table
| stakes/production of passably-competitive NCAA football and
| basketball teams is table stakes/'`
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It is so strange that donors and alumni can put pressure on
| schools to fire coaching staff in athletics programs to make
| schools perform better. Yet when it comes to the administrative
| bloat and waste alumni don't hold their schools to the same
| standard. Like academic degradation is something no one cares
| about.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Athletic programs can make serious money for a school
| manicennui wrote:
| Why does this matter if most of the money is going to the
| sports program and tuition remains unaffordable?
| fragmede wrote:
| Serious, _directly measurable_ money for the school. If I
| graduate with a degree and that degree gets me a career that
| goes exceedingly well and I become a 10 or 100-millionaire,
| and donate money for a lab to the university, that 's not
| exactly trackable to that one really good professor.
| Meanwhile, the coach who won the big game is well known.
| solardev wrote:
| This is so silly. We make our educators beholden to
| businesspeople who run sporting arenas so we can still
| charge our kids tens of thousands of dollars to spend 4+
| years of their life on something that has maybe a 50%
| chance of paying itself back over time.
|
| Meanwhile other countries just fund public education and
| subsidize tuition. _shrug_
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Sadly, several persons in non-US countries are rubbing
| their hands with jealousy, thinking about the US system.
| To some, it's a thing to be admired.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Automatic comment whenever univerity athletic programs are
| brought up. "It makes money", with the implication
| "..therefore it is all good" not even spelled out.
|
| The original intent was to offer a well-rounded education
| that includes physical activity. Healthy body healthy mind.
| Nerds who are also in shape. This concept is lost by creating
| a pro athlete caste within a school, students more respected
| for their success on the field than in the classroom. Maybe
| sports is truly subsidizing academics, but then again if 280
| Million are spent on this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQIGwxsVv1E, is there enough
| institutional focus on academics?
|
| Ok correct me if I'm ignorant on this topic but give me more
| than that oneliner that I've read a couple times before.
| bombcar wrote:
| When you're working as a donor, administrative bloat is who
| you're working with.
|
| But many big donors only care about how the school does
| athletically. They don't care about the education side - and in
| fact, if they could figure a way to ditch that "cost center"
| they would.
| internet101010 wrote:
| A lot of people misinterpret the term "cost center" mean an
| area of a business that only spends money (e.g. marketing
| department) but that isn't what it is at all. Probably
| because it has the word "cost" in it.
|
| A cost center is simply a vessel through which money moves.
| Revenue, expenses, inventory, etc. all go through cost
| centers. Sure, the professors' salaries go through a cost
| center. So does tuition and royalties from TV networks.
| blindhippo wrote:
| This is true in an accounting sense, but generally speaking
| most people are referring to the definition of "cost-
| center" as a business unit that does not generate revenue
| directly, in contrast to a "profit-center" which does.
|
| This isn't a misinterpretation, it's just a different
| definition of the term based on context.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Is marketing a good example? I feel like the whole point of
| marketing is to generate revenue for the business, albeit
| indirectly.
|
| Maintenance on your building, IT infrastructure, etc. are
| more of what I think of. The "cost of doing business".
|
| Basically, things you need to have for the business to
| function but spending more on them won't generate you more
| revenue, sales, etc.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > the whole point of marketing is to generate revenue for
| the business, albeit indirectly
|
| With varying levels of indirection that's true of nearly
| all things a company does, though. When IT fixes some
| sale person's laptop that will have a direct positive
| impact on that person's sales, and thus on revenue.
| Spending too little on those IT people would have lost
| you revenue, conversely spending more might lead to more
| revenue.
|
| In the end it's all a framework any company can apply as
| they want. You are right that a marketing department is
| much more likely to be judged by the company's revenue
| (attributed by department as much as possible), while
| maintenance or IT support is unlikely to be judged by
| that criteria. But imho that's mostly because it's really
| difficult to judge building maintenance by their
| contribution to revenue, not because it doesn't make
| sense to do so if you had the data.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Profit centers directly produce profit. Cost centers may
| indirectly produce profit but the administration has a
| fundamentally different view of the assets. To wit: the
| leadership of a profit center could molest children and
| the administration would not notice (this is literally
| the source of countless headlines), while the leadership
| of a cost center could get staffing slashed if they use
| too many post-it notes (this is the source of no
| headlines ever).
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Sports are very heavily reported on, for many reasons. In some
| states, a university football coach is the highest paid public
| sector employee.
|
| Do we _really_ know what else goes on behind closed doors in
| terms of donor pressure?
| scythe wrote:
| If you think it's so easy to measure academic bloat, why not go
| do it? Someone should start an index of wasteful spending by
| university or something.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Give me the access to the books and I'll do it.
| callalex wrote:
| I applied pressure by refusing to donate, and citing
| administrative bloat as the reason. I know I'm not alone. I
| doubt they'll listen because the absence of dollars is hard to
| quantify.
| [deleted]
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Do I understand this correctly? Since universities pay through
| their nose for journal and publisher subscriptions, they don't
| have money to actually publish books themselves. Is that right?
| operatingthetan wrote:
| Seems like universities have enough power that they could
| jailbreak themselves from this situation, right?
| tw4l wrote:
| They could! They'd have to also change how faculty review and
| tenure work, to incentivize faculty to publish in alternative
| open access journals instead of the top (paywalled) journals
| in their field. Otherwise, faculty will continue publishing
| with the for-profit publishers even if there's alternatives
| available.
| elashri wrote:
| There are a for proft open access journals. In most open
| access journals, the payment system is just reversed. The
| author/s pay a huge amount of money as publication fees
| (usually a couple of thousands) instead of readers (or
| their institutions) paying for the article or the journal
| subscription.
| zx8080 wrote:
| Why would any researcher want to pay it?
| elashri wrote:
| Most of the time, it is not even up to the researchers to
| decide that. Open access is usually a requirement by the
| funding agencies. For example, in the US all federally
| funded research will be required to be published on open
| access journals and will be enforced at the end of
| 2025[1]
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-
| updates/2022/08/25/ostp...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Heck, even the widely hated publishing companies offer
| open access. It just costs thousands of dollars for an
| article and tens of thousands of dollars for a book.
| ahi wrote:
| It's a massive coordination problem. Few universities have
| the resources, even if central admin had a clue. Even UC
| Berkeley's fight with Elsevier was a huge undertaking:
| https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/16/ucs-deal-with-
| elsevier-...
|
| For most, that means collaborating with others. UC system and
| B1G academic alliance are making moves, but it's herding
| cats. Even within universities, it's a nightmare of competing
| interests. How do you convince your faculty to publish
| through your own press or consortium instead of the higher
| impact factor journal owned by Elsevier?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This sounds like an incredibly easy problem to solve if
| some people felt like solving it. I imagine that it's some
| administrators near the top that would block anyone from
| saying "let's have no-one publish to Elsevier any more"
| because John from Elsevier takes them on such lovely days
| out in bespoke locations, staying in boutique hotels.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Telling tenured professors where to publish is not going
| to happen. You might entice them with good contracts, but
| the revenue from most books and articles is very small.
| The satisfaction and credibility of an Oxford or MIT
| Press book is worth more than a few thousand bucks to
| many people.
| _jal wrote:
| Some people seem to believe that all the world's problems
| are easily solvable if only someone would yell at a lot
| of other people.
|
| To bring this back to HN topics, anyone have tips on
| trying to suss out that trait in hiring managers during
| interviews?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't know why you mentioned yelling. No one is
| yelling. Undesirable hiring managers are easy to spot:
| they have poor reading comprehension.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| > This sounds like an incredibly easy problem to solve if
| some people felt like solving it
|
| If you ignore the hardest part of the problem; getting
| everyone to agree and coordinate, then yes it's a simple
| problem to solve! You can simplify any problem like this,
| just ignore the hard part!
|
| :D
| deepsun wrote:
| What if a paper was a collaboration between 3
| universities across the world?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "If you don't let our faculty publish in these journals,
| their publication stats will suffer (fewer citations,
| lower impact factor) and that will translate into lower
| rankings for our university."
|
| Bigwigs at universities care about rankings, even if they
| are basically garbage.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Publishing in high impact factor journals is a big deal.
| At the very least, I think that the powers that be would
| have to implement guarantees that publishing in a lower
| impact factor campus publication wouldn't hurt a
| researcher's chances of receiving tenure.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > At the very least, I think that the powers that be
| would have to implement guarantees that publishing in a
| lower impact factor campus publication wouldn't hurt a
| researcher's chances of receiving tenure.
|
| This honestly sounds like something that should be doable
| by the university.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Remember that many of the decision-makers are academics
| with great publishing records. They succeeded at the game
| and don't want to rules to be changed.
|
| Also, just practically, the journals help a lot in
| assessing candidates. Even in fields just adjacent to
| mine, I might trust an endorsement by a good journal over
| my own judgments. Often I know the work of the editors
| there and value their judgment. Chasing after highest
| impact factor journal publications has its problems, but
| I haven't seen better proposals.
| tiahura wrote:
| Seems right up the AAU's alley.
| tivert wrote:
| > It's a massive coordination problem. Few universities
| have the resources, even if central admin had a clue.
|
| We should all just mercilessly mock Harvard and its ilk,
| because they have the resources to do pretty much
| _anything_.
|
| https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-
| lis...
| ahi wrote:
| Yes, and it's a death spiral since the university presses
| could, in theory, provide some competition. Can't/Won't invest
| in alternatives => lower competition for the parasites =>
| higher subscription costs => less resources to invest in
| alternatives.
|
| Academic libraries and publishing are effectively being
| privatized and will be dominated by ever more rent-seeking. I
| don't see this getting turned around unless universities
| dictate to their faculty where they can publish, i.e. stop
| subsidizing their competition.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't think the major universities - the ones that could
| have publishing houses that matter - are too broke to be able
| to keep the publishing house running.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| So wait, if that's true, is the article at hand here
| mistaken, or in bad faith?
|
| Also, isn't the case that it is mostly the "major"
| universities that have their own presses in the first
| place?
| Finnucane wrote:
| This is the current membership roster of the AUP:
|
| https://aupresses.org/membership/membership-list/
| jhbadger wrote:
| Depends on what you call major. But it certainly isn't
| just Oxford, Harvard, and the like. Pretty much all US
| "University of X" (where X is a state) have their own
| presses.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yeah, and see, I'm not claiming that the University of,
| say, Wyoming, has the money to keep their own press
| running. But the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, and the
| like... they definitely do.
| hiddencost wrote:
| They usually cap the number of books they publish a year.
| Artificial scarcity makes their imprimatur more
| desirable.
| Finnucane wrote:
| From a bugeting perspective that is not quite how it works.
| Journal subscriptions come out of the libraries' budgets. I am
| a production editor at a uni press, and our budget is a
| separate item that is not affected directly by the library's
| problems. But we do have our own budget that we are expected to
| make. There is some endowment money--we have a fund
| specifically earmarked to help offset production expenses. We
| use it to subsidize some titles that we want to be able to
| offer at something like 'trade' prices but would otherwise be
| too expensive. Otherwise we are expected to cover our expenses
| through sales and other income streams like subrights. Heck,
| the university even expects us to pay for maintenance on our
| building.
| j45 wrote:
| I wonder how much this is related to incoming revenue changes
| from books or publications of their own.
| I_am_uncreative wrote:
| I'm a PhD Candidate and was very disappointed to find out that my
| university no longer does printed copies of dissertations. I
| really wish they did.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| You can get it printed and bound yourself for your bookshelf,
| plus one for your mom and one for your advisor if they are
| interested. At my grad school we had to arrange that ourselves
| using the prescribed service, and deliver the finished books to
| the university. I don't recall it being super expensive.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I wonder if we'll live to a time when you have to go to
| Staples for your diploma...
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| Libraries need to change. most people go to the library to use
| the computers. what if we expanded the role of libraries to be
| places for autodidacts to learn and practice new skills? imagine
| a library full of maker equipment. 3d printers, sewing supplies,
| wood/metal working equipment. the modest government investment
| would be paid back 10 fold in the amount of innovation an
| individual would be able to accoplish.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think libraries function well in their original purpose. When
| I visit the library the computers are mostly empty and there
| are lot of people there - reading and browsing books. I think
| the death of the book is overhyped by people with a vested
| interest in technology. (Disclaimer: I have a vested interest
| in technology)
| trgn wrote:
| That's already the model for a lot of libraries. They are all
| "learnings commons" now. Sometimes there are "maker spaces" or
| whatever attached to it, for tool use. They can be next to each
| other but don't have to me (who wants to study next to a table
| saw anyway)
|
| I think libraries are adjusting fine to accommodate these
| needs. Really, the most important building in any educational
| institution is still the library, even in 2023. What libraries
| fail (start failing (?)) at is their archival responsibilities.
| And apparently, from the article, their publishing
| responsibilities too.
| [deleted]
| Finnucane wrote:
| The problem for academic libraries is they hold a lot of
| material that is not readily available online. There is some
| effort being made to fix that, but it takes time, effort, and
| money to get archival material online (I've worked on a couple
| of these projects myself).
| jkaptur wrote:
| My local library is already exactly this. It's great, but they
| get no credit for it.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| That's a good description of what my library does these days.
| Did a big doubletake at the row of printers the first time I
| saw 'em. They also lease out bigger tools (I borrowed a leaf
| blower and a string trimmer) and WiFi hotspots. I borrowed an
| cheap electronic drum kit (which convinced me to buy my own),
| and I'm on the waitlist for a steel tongue drum.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that our local library has a 3d printer.
| They are definitely trying to take on different ways for people
| to learn and gather information, but wood/metal working
| equipment seems like it would be a liability nightmare.
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