Here's my summary of response which I anonymised even though respondent
hadn't asked for this. If anyone feels I should disclose anonymity, I'd be
happy to respond (after consultation, of course).
The situation in Bristol is that we don't get any money from the Faculty
and we can't even apply for support since, it is argued, this would allow
the publishers to demand anything they like. Personally I'm intrigued by my
university's position to demand evidence that any research being funded
locally has to have tangible outputs (i.e. publications) but then at the
same time refuse to pay for this. It's all very well saying that we simply
need to find the right publisher but when our target market is in Central
Europe - where subsidies are very common - surely there should be some
recognition that different markets have different conditions. And I don't
enjoy having to fork out hundreds of pounds of my own taxed income in order
to maximise the REF income of the company I work for. Maybe I'm just
old-fashioned.
Happy reading and thanks for replying to me!
Summary of questionnaire
1. Are academics generally supported (in whole or in part) by their
institutions? Or, do institutions expect their staff to be 'financially
independent' in relation to their publisher?
XXX still, I believe, has a budget for this and has certainly supported
publications in the recent past. It helps that the University of Wales
Press often requires them and that colleagues in Celtic Studies are used to
them too. Last year as (briefly) Director of Research for the School of
Arts (now defunct) I had a policy of up to £1000 per monograph in order to
give authors, I thought, some bargaining power. Alas, both publishers last
year (Boydell and Brewer in Hispanic Studies and Legenda in French)
insisted on the full subsidy and would not negotiate. (Legenda are out of
order because they have loads of their own cash!)There was a voice from
Applied Linguistics which spoke up against subsidies but he was crushed!
My own experience at XXX has been that the university (via the Research
Committee in the School of Arts) has been willing to subsidise publication
costs for Modern Languages staff (usually of around £1000 for a monograph
or edited volume), but that there have been mutterings from other
departments such as English, whose academics do not usually require a
subsidy, that we should be self-supporting.
My institution has helped in the past -- but haven't had any recent cases,
and our research support budget has been cut massively over the last 2
years.
At my college [?] publication subsidies are provided on a
rather ad hoc basis, usually by the department but sometimes by the
college. When I was head, they sometimes amounted to £1000. But those were
better times financially than now...
We do not normally get any financial support for publications.
It has been an extreme frustration to me that policy at XXX has been
to give aid for publication subsidies only in very exceptional
circumstances (so exceptional, that I don't know what they might be!) - but
I reckon this is a policy by no means confined to XXX, and merely reflects
lack of funds. On the other hand, of course, if we get uni money towards
organising conferences, then the uni wants to see an output - and in my
experience of producing two such conference vols recently, no matter how
un-conference-volume-like these are (i.e. seriously reworked and packaged
as coherent vols of essays), publishers will only consider taking
them on with a significant subsidy. In particular this is the case with
Camden House, in many ways a real saviour for academics trying to place
vols of German essays, but they certainly know their worth! And German
publishers are sowieso used to asking for a subsidy. I have had to finance
both projects (one with Camden House, one with Koenigshausen & Neumann)
from my own purse - quite a whack when the subsidies are several 1000s of
Euros / dollars.
We (Dept) have supported a number of publications across ML, going back to
the mid-1990s, because it seems the only way for colleagues to get their
books published. If I was to be asked to justify it, I would simply say
that this is RAE/REF investment. The cost tends to be around the £1,000
mark, give or take a couple of hundred. This has involved French, German,
and European (Lang/Rodopi) publishers.
Yes, usually to a fixed amount but it can be full, if circumstances
require. In practice in XXX we offer 500 pounds.
2. How widespread is the 'subsidy' phenomenon among academic publishers in
our field and in cognate fields? Is it rare/quite common/very common?
I imagine that this point of view(the self-supporting subsidy) will gain
weight in the current economic and impact-focused climate. From informal
discussions in German over the years, I'd say that 60% or more of
publications rely on a subsidy to help them see the light of day.
Subsidies payable to serious academic publishers are extremely common.
From my experience all German and Austrian academic publishers need a
publication subsidy.
My sense is that this is a growing problem, with subsidies being fairly
common, and university funds not being able to cover them - but the
expectation remaining that outputs will appear. Possibly young academics
like myself, least able to pay from personal finances, get doubly caught by
this, as we particularly need to get such things out in order to stand a
chance of getting a job.
Subsidies seem to be expected by nearly all "academic" publishers.
Niemeyer/de Gruyter are the most expensive (I think the going rate for the
Beihefte zur Zs. für romanische Philologie is now c. ¤4,000). Others seem
to come in at a quarter or a third of that.
Very wide in all small disciplines like German. And of course as you know
in Germany and the requirement to publish DrPhils there is no shortage of
publishers who live by subsidy.
3. Are colleagues in MLs more affected than colleagues in anglophone
studies, history etc by this issue?
I certainly think we are more affected by this issue than other
disciplines.
Don`t know.
The practice seems also widespread in both France and Germany (I'm not
so sure about Spain/Italy) and colleagues report all sorts of publications
seeking money.
Yes; it all has to do with the size of the potential market. Print runs of
300-500 are common in German, whereas in English and History, for example,
this would be much larger.
----------------------
Dr Nils Langer
Reader in German Linguistics
School of Modern Languages
University of Bristol
Bristol, England
BS8 1TE
0044-(0)117-92 89841
[log in to unmask]
http://www.bris.ac.uk/german
weblinks to improve your life:
The Historical Sociolinguistics network:
http://www.philhist.uni-augsburg.de/hison/
The Forum for Germanic Language Studies: www.fgls.ac.uk
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