Are Economic Pressures on University Press Acquisitions Quietly Changing the Shape of the Scholarly Record?

The monograph remains central to humanities and qualitative social science (HSS) research as the form most suitable for the long-form argument and, crucially, as foundational to the tenure process in these fields. University and other scholarly presses have played a vital role in supporting the publication of scholarly monographs where such narrow research is not seen as being as commercially viable as, for example, journals. While there appears to be an erosion of traditional revenue streams, new funding models are not yet recuperating costs for scholarly monographs. Library budgets continue to tighten, with new collection strategies taking hold, putting strain on monograph purchasing where libraries were central supporters of the form. We wanted to know what these economic pressures meant for the ways in which editors at university and other scholarly presses choose to acquire books. Recent research has addressed the impact of cooperative library purchasing, the role of American university presses in shaping the monograph, effects of new business models and approaches to access, and the costs of producing scholarly monographs. But there has been little exploration into editorial practices as a part of this larger ecosystem. This paper presents preliminary results from a pilot study exploring the connection between revenue, the economics of publishing scholarly monographs, and the behaviors and choices of acquisitions editors