Getting published: the acquisitions process at University Presses

Publishers stand at the crossroads of intellectual discovery and the "public consumption of that discovery. Rather than being neutral intermediaries in the process, publishers help determine what is 'in' and what is 'out' in the marketplace of ideas. By choosing to publish some works and by choosing not to publish others, they play a vital gatekeeping role in the transmission of knowledge within a culture. University presses serve a prominent gatekeeping role in scholarly publishing because they, unlike commercial presses, can select knowledge for distribution without being captive to financial success. Because a press is one flesh with the parent university, its purpose is to advance knowledge rather than to make a profit.

This study investigated how university presses select the manuscripts they publish. The study relied on several methodological tools: an extended on-site study of a single university press, in-person interviews with personnel representing more than 30 other university presses, and a mail survey of leading university presses.

The study found that university presses publish primarily in the humanities and social sciences, with history and literary studies the leading list-building areas. Fewer than a third of the presses publish in the natural sciences. The acquisitions process itself is evolving. Editors no longer sit in their offices and wait each day for the mail to bring them manuscripts worth publishing. Some published manuscripts still come over the transom and others are initiated by author query. But the largest percentage of books are actively acquired by editors who go to scholarly conventions, browse through academic journals, visit campuses, and write letters of solicitation to prospective authors. The study found that roughly one of every 50 over-the-transom submissions and author queries resulted in a published book, while better than one in five manuscripts acquired by the editors proceeded successfully through the three-stage process of editor review, scholarly peer review and editorial board approval. How a manuscript comes to the attention of an editor, then, plays a significant role in decision-making. The acquisitions process is not egalitarian. Yet university presses do exhibit a commitment to intellectual discovery, and this commitment pervades the acquisitions process.