Design expenditures are necessary in any illustrated publication, whether the format be book, journal oronline. Books, however, are especially expensive in part because each one gets a customized design whereas journals lower designcosts by imposing a design template to which all articles conform. The streamlined, formulaic approach of the journal is transferableto the electronic domain, and the development of so-called authoring tools, such as those devised by Gutenberg-e and theHistory E-Book Project, might capture further economies.
Another cost factor relates to distribution, print run, and audience. Our survey of art history editors revealedthat the average print run for a scholarly art history book in 2005 was 1,200 copies, down 33 percent from 1995 when the average printrun was 1,781. As indicated in Part II on the Image Economy, art history books are not yet able to capture the cost efficienciesafforded by digital, print-on-demand publication nor can they tap the benefits of expanding access to readers and prolonging thesales life of a book that publishers and authors in other fields are beginning to derive from the internet. The costly dynamicdriven by offset printing and inventory costs may be altered as print-on–demand becomes a viable alternative. In the current environment, however, economic factors mean that book publishingdoes not serve all types of scholarship, some of which by definition and in fulfillment of its purpose targets a limitedaudience of experts.
A virtue of journal publishing and its subscription system is that it distributes the cost of scholarlypublication across an entire field and does not penalize subfields with small audiences. When you subscribe to Art Bulletin , you support endangered and emerging fields with limited audiences aswell as large fields with popular appeal. One scholar reported that book editors were wary of titles in African art because of thelimited audience for this subject. This may be a rational criterion in the book business, but it is irrational in terms of scholarship,which should push into new areas where audiences have not yet formed. The journals are not oblivious to their audience, but theirscope is universal, their contents scholar-driven, and they can publish scholarship that book publishers cannot afford to do. Thesubscription base of the journals substantially exceeds the print run of the typical university press book. The average print run ofthe Art Bulletin is 11,000; JSAH is 4,000, compared to 1,200 copies of the scholarly art history book. These subscription lists offerthe basis for a self-sustaining business model, as the ACLS History E-Book Project has demonstrated.
It is true that CAA and SAH would have to reformulate the benefits of membership and adjust their budgets iftheir journals were made available through university subscriptions and did not require individual subscriptions, but this problem issoluble. As proposed here, the electronic issue would complement, not replace, the print journal. Surely scholars will continue tovalue the convenience of receiving a personal hardcopy. Both sponsoring societies offer a rich array of other membershipbenefits, including an annual conference, job listings, and scholar-led trips. Many other scholarly societies have made thistransition, and we can learn from their successful examples. And digital publication serves the scholarly mission of the societiesby extending access to the journal from the discipline-restricted circle of society members to university citizens at large as wellas other subscribers.
To summarize, the following factors recommend journals as portals of electronic publication.
- The high quality of the journals and rigorous, scholar-driven editorial process has value in tenure and promotiondecisions.
- As a shared resource of the discipline, the journals can provide better access to electronically generated work nowcontained in restricted websites.
- The journals offer a cost-effective method of scholarly publication and reach a wider audience than printedmonographs.