More on The Decline of Print Journals: Northwestern's TriQuarterly

We've been talking for a long time about the declining fortunes of academic presses (OUP and CUP had layoffs at the beginning of the year; YUP laid off  staff later in the year; HUP shut its display room this summer; LSU Press had a near death experience this summer) and the shift to e-publishing (such as the University of Michigan Press' shift towards e-publishing).  Post-crash, things aren't looking good for the academy.  Of course, that was true even before the crash.

Now comes news that Northwestern's pretigious literary magazine TriQuarterly will cease print publication next year.   Here's more about the TriQuarterly, from its blog:

Founded in 1958 as a faculty and student magazine, TriQuarterly was reshaped in 1964 as an innovative national publication aimed at a sophisticated and diverse literary readership. The physical aspect of many literary journals today derives from the creation of the TriQuarterly design in 1964. The New York Times called TriQuarterly “perhaps the preeminent journal for literary fiction” in America, and the Times Literary Supplement (London) has said that TriQuarterly “fulfilled the classic function of the literary magazine in the twentieth century.” Library Journal called TriQuarterly “the premier literary review currently being published,” and Publishers Weekly noted that the twentieth-anniversary issue’s “table of contents is a roster of some of the leading writers of our era.”

This raises a really important question: how many other print journals will follow this route? I'm guessing a lot.  My second question: how quickly will other major journals shift to e-publishing?

As a close follower of the history of the book literature, it seems to me that one important lesson is that print confers status.  But then again, one of the reasons print confers status is that print is expensive.  And in this new world of significantly tighter budgets, I'm not sure that we can afford luxury.

Comments

[Mary Dudziak]

Al, thanks for this post and for following this issue. One area of academic publishing that seems to be immune to this trend is law journals. Law journals have proliferated over the past decade or more, with schools now hosting multiple journals, and the majority of students at some schools participating in journals. Have law journals been affected by library subscription cutbacks? Have any ceased print publication? If the economic downturn nudged some secondary journals out of existence, would that be a bad thing -- or might it instead lead more students to spend their time doing clinical work or other valuable activities?

[Alfred]

Thanks for posting, Mary. Really interesting observation.

I was thinking about law reviews as I was writing this -- and wondering when we'd see this trend towards e-publishing in law reviews. I think law reviews -- even more than "regular" (I was tempted to say normal, but that's too judgmental) scholarly journals -- are concerned with prestige. So they're even more wedded to print than other scholarly journals, I fear. Law schools have until recently also had more money than a lot of other departments, so they're somewhat better able to support luxuries like print journals.

But to borrow a phrase from Dan Filler, when major journals shift to e-publishing, the stigma of the change may disappear (maybe it's already disappeared?) And then I'd expect budget-conscious administrations to shift to e-publishing.

One other thought: I haven't heard of a lot of new law journals starting recently. Seems like the market may be saturated. I'm not sure. Then again, I haven't heard of any secondary journals closing shop in the last five years, either.

[Mary Dudziak]

Hi, Al. One of the differences is that law reviews are funded differently than journals in other fields. In history, for example, a department doesn't host a journal, and organization (e.g. Org of Amer Historians) does. A university, where the editor is based, often supports a journal, but it isn't as tied to an academic program as law journals.

Maybe this bodes well for the continuing health of law journals, if law schools view their reputations as tied to the maintenance of their journals?

Another interesting comparison is the move to open access, and the creation of web supplements. Some law reviews (Duke) are open access. Most journals (law and history) are not, as far as I can tell, though some are partial open access. (Law & History Review has been open access, but unfortunately that is going away with a shift to Cambridge Univ. Press.)

Among law reviews, there is now interesting shorter commentary in web supplements. The J. of Amer. History has gone another route, with web supplements related to using particular articles in teaching, with links to teaching resources. That has been a fabulous development. More info on that is here: http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/teaching/