ABSTRACT

Drawing on the findings from semi-structured interviews with 21 academics in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) at Australian universities, this article explores how academic authors understand prestige in scholarly book publishing, and how the institutional pressures, and their personal and professional goals shape their publishing strategy. University presses in the Global North were regarded higher than global commercial publishers, which in turn were seen as more reputable than Australia-based university presses. The application of such HSS-wide hierarchies of publishers devoid of disciplinary nuance in performance assessments has been criticised as counterproductive and even harmful, with a detrimental impact on the scholar’s autonomy and research agendas. Nevertheless, the need for academics to carefully choose the publisher is considered key in the current competitive institutional and publishing environment. The study develops a framework to guide academics’ publishing strategy, which uses audience, quality and time as key elements that need to be taken into consideration when deciding where to publish their book-length work. The findings of the study will be useful to HSS academics who are interested in refining their book publishing strategy and staff in libraries and in research support roles who advise academics, especially early career researchers, on their publishing decisions.

摘要

本文利用对澳大利亚大学人文与社会科学 (HSS) 的 21 位学者的半结构化访谈结果，探讨学术作者如何理解学术书籍出版的声望，以及制度压力以及他们的个人和职业目标塑造他们的出版策略。全球北部的大学出版社被认为高于全球商业出版商，而后者又被认为比澳大利亚的大学出版社更有声望。在绩效评估中缺乏学科细微差别的出版商在 HSS 范围内的这种层次结构的应用被批评为适得其反甚至有害，对学者的自主权和研究议程产生不利影响。尽管如此，在当前竞争激烈的机构和出版环境中，学术界需要谨慎选择出版商被认为是关键。该研究开发了一个框架来指导学者的出版策略，该框架将受众、质量和时间作为决定在何处出版其书籍长度作品时需要考虑的关键因素。该研究的结果将对有兴趣完善图书出版策略的 HSS 学者和图书馆工作人员以及为学者，尤其是早期职业研究人员的出版决策提供建议的研究支持角色有用。质量和时间是在决定在哪里出版他们的书长作品时需要考虑的关键因素。该研究的结果将对有兴趣完善图书出版策略的 HSS 学者和图书馆工作人员以及为学者，尤其是早期职业研究人员的出版决策提供建议的研究支持角色有用。质量和时间是在决定在哪里出版他们的书长作品时需要考虑的关键因素。该研究的结果将对有兴趣完善图书出版策略的 HSS 学者和图书馆工作人员以及为学者，尤其是早期职业研究人员的出版决策提供建议的研究支持角色有用。