Doha: Gita Manaktala, editorial director of the MIT Press, examined the current state of the publishing industry and the trends shaping its future at the latest Dean’s Global Forum at Northwestern University in Qatar.
Joining Northwestern Qatar Dean and CEO Marwan M Kraidy in a conversation on the state of publishing and her career in the publishing industry, Manaktala discussed the ways university presses are responding to the digital evolution and how economics and globalization are shaping the future of the field and knowledge production across digital media and communication fields.
Manaktala began the conversation by highlighting the importance of the monograph and the present-day challenges it faces amid the lack of funding models. “It [the monograph] is languishing, not for lack of impact or quality or importance or significance, [but] for lack of a business model to support it,” noted Manaktala. “The model used to be that academic libraries would buy monographs, and university presses would expect to sell 1000, which was enough to cover the cost of publishing monographs. Now, [only] 200-300 copies are the norm for monograph sales, and that does not cover the cost of publishing them.”
To overcome the current lack of sustainable funding, Manaktala said MIT Press and university presses are adopting a funded open-access model that relies on library subscriptions to fund publishing costs. “In the model that we have come up with, academic libraries are tipping in some additional money to support open access because that is consistent with their values as well as our mission to disseminate the best quality ideas,” said Manaktala. “It suggests a way forward, where libraries are helping to fund the production of knowledge.”
While digital technologies have provided university presses with new ways to fund their publishing costs, Manaktala underlined the importance and value of printed books in the 21st century. “The codex needs to be protected and valued,” she emphasised. “It continues to be a very significant technology, a very convenient way to read, and perhaps the most enduring medium of all to absorb long-form arguments and ideas that need to persist in time,” added Manaktala.
Manaktala went on to discuss the growing interest in examining the notion of the digital among the academic community and how university presses are prioritising originality while remaining focused on amplifying ideas that are breaking new grounds and creating new knowledge. “We don’t just trust our own sense of it; we have a faculty editorial board that weighs in on some of what we published on everything, and they, too, bring us skeptical eyes to those kinds of claims,” said Manaktala, who also highlighted the importance of conformity and reframing in educating new audiences about existing ideas.
