Patrick Alexander, editor-in-chief at Penn State University Press…
“I think the most pressing challenge facing Penn State or any university publisher is the changing face of scholarly communications and the rising costs associated with that,” Alexander said. “I think old models for publishing are becoming increasingly not viable, [and] it’s up to the scholarly community to come up with some new models for publishing.”
That’s just one interesting comment in this interesting article about the rising costs faced by university presses. Apparently, their profitability is being dragged down by the requirements that come with the tenure process. Academic institutions require that candidates publish books as a part of being awarded lifetime employment. The university presses are almost always the publisher of works such as these. Problem is, they aren’t the most interesting books in the world, and the presses are taking the hit.