Indiana University Press Journals Weblog

Ronald Broude wins Jo Ann Boydston Award in Textual Cultures

The Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) announced on October 15th that its Jo Ann Boydston Award for 2009 has been presented to Ronald Broude for his article "The Gilbert & Sullivan Critical Edition and the Full Scores that Never Were." The award is presented every two years for an article that has been published during the preceding two years and that best addresses the aims and methodologies of sound documentary editing. Broude's article was published in Volume 3.2 of Textual Cultures, the journal of The Society for Textual Scholarship. It deals with the problems of preparing a full-score critical edition of an opera from a complex of sources, no one of which provides all of the necessary information. Broude expressed satisfaction that the award recognizes the unique problems posed by musical texts and that it has been presented to a piece in this relatively young journal.

IU Press Launches IU Press Online

Indiana University Press has launched IU Press Online, a robust and growing collection of electronic books and special journal issues in five of its main subject areas (African studies, African American and Diaspora studies, Jewish studies, philosophy, and Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies). Included in the collections are issues from Africa Today, Ethics & The Environment, Israel Studies, Jewish Social Studies, Nashim, Prooftexts, Research in African Literatures, and Transition and more than 200 of the Press’s leading book titles. The next collections to be added to the database are selections form the Press’s award-winning music and religion titles. The Press also plans to use the IU Press Online site for text promotion and will have news on that aspect of the project soon.

Access to IU Press Online may be purchased by individuals, institutions, libraries, and academic departments for various time periods, to individual titles, to individual collections, to any combination of collections, and to the full database of content. For more information, please click here. 

Additional journal issues and books are added to the collections on a regular basis so please bookmark IU Press Online and visit often. 

(Please note that electronic and print subscriptions to the Press’s fine list of journal titles, as well as print and electronic copies of journal issues, are available on the INscribe site.)

IU Press Director Chosen as a Top Woman in Publishing

Janet Rabinowitch, Director of Indiana University Press since 2004, has been chosen by Book Business magazine as one of the top women in publishing for 2009.  Rabinowitch has been at the Press since 1975, first as sponsoring editor and senior sponsoring editor and then as editorial director.  She was named interim director in 2003.

During her 34 years at the Press, Rabinowitch has acquired more than 500 titles and has become one of the most distinguished editors in the field of Russian and Eastern European studies. In addition, she has established internationally respected lists in Jewish and Holocaust studies, African studies, Middle Eastern studies, and continental philosophy. Many of her books have won prestigious awards, including the Vucinich Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the Herskovits Award from the African Studies Association, the National Jewish Book Award, the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize, and the Koret Jewish Book Award. In addition, her books have been honored by the American Library Association as Choice Outstanding Academic books and as selections of the History, Reader’s Subscription, and Jewish Book clubs.

Rabinowitch is the fourth director and the first woman to head the Press. She has a BA in French from Wellesley College and a PhD in Russian studies from Georgetown University. 

IU Press/Journals to Maintain FY 2009 Prices

In recognition of the economic stresses confronting libraries, academic departments, and individuals, the Journals Division at IU Press will not raise subscription prices during fiscal year 2010. “These are tough economic times for all of us,” says Kathryn Caras, the journals publisher at the Press. “We have always been conservative in our pricing model so that we can maximize the distribution of the scholarship we publish. Although we had scheduled price increases for fiscal year 2010, we have decided to maintain last year’s pricing out of consideration for our readers.”

The Press currently publishes 29 of the leading journals in the humanities and social sciences, law, and natural sciences, and recently added Black Camera: An International Film Journal (The New Series), edited by Michael T. Martin, the Director of the IU Black Film Center/Archives, to its list. 

For a complete list of the serials published by IU Press, please visit http://inscribe.iupress.org or contact Linda Bannister, Marketing Manager, at 1-812-955-9449.  

Journals Spring & Summer catalog: Download the PDF

Indiana University Press/Journals
Spring/Summer Catalog 2009

Rich in knowledge and ever-aware of our diminishing natural resources, we are distributing our spring/summer catalog online this year.

Click on this url to download the PDF, http://inscribe.iupress.org/page/catalog.

On pages 4 and 5, you will find descriptions of four new special issues from Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Israel Studies, Research in African Literatures, and Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. In addition, on page 6 you'll find information on Black Camera: The New Series, our newest journal. It is devoted to the study and documentation of the black cinematic experience and is edited by Michael T. Martin at the Indiana University Black Film Center/Archives.

On page 23, you'll find a mail order coupon worth $10 off of your next purchase. Open the PDF, print pages 22 and 23, and mail the coupon to us with your postal order form. It is our thanks to you for reading our electronic catalog!

A note from journals publisher, Kate Caras:

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama declared, “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood.” The world finds itself facing profound and far-reaching difficulties. Perhaps now, more than ever, it is essential to pay attention to quality scholarship. 

Continual and fresh exposure to scholarship stimulates our curiosity, while new ideas challenge the status quo and encourage innovative thinking. Understanding culture, history, and philosophy gives us perspective and context and provides us with the resources to understand the world around us. It enables us to imagine new ideas and new ways of being in a world in need of wisdom. 

We at IU Press/Journals are committed to bringing you critical new scholarship in topics that are more relevant than ever: globalism, feminist and American philosophy, Jewish and Middle East studies, Israel Studies, feminist studies in religion and bioethics, folklore, African studies and literature, electronic services, film, transnationalism, early modern cultural studies, and environmental ethics, among others. 

The staff at IUP/Journals is enthusiastic about providing you important and relevant scholarship necessary to understanding today’s changing world.

Kate Caras

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth.
The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. — Kurt Vonnegut

IU Press Online to Be Launched This Spring

Indiana University Press will launch IU Press Online in spring 2009. Hosted by Tizra Publisher, a web-based software service, and structured around subject collections, IU Press Online will initially include a robust electronic collection of more than 200 back-, mid-, and front-list books and more than 75 themed journals issues in African Studies, African American and Diaspora Studies, Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Philosophy, and Russian and East European Studies. Journals featured at launch will be Africa Today, Ethics & the Environment, Israel Studies, Jewish Social Studies, JMEWS (Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies), Meridians, Nashim, Prooftexts, Research in African Literatures, and Transition. More books and journal issues will be added to these online collections on a regular basis. The next subject to be introduced is a collection of the Press's award-winning music titles.

Users can access full-text single titles at discounted prices through IU Press Online or can subscribe to individual subject collections, any combination of collections, or to the entire database of titles. Also available for purchase will be individual chapters/articles and virtual collections of content across book and journal titles.

Features of IU Press Online will include:

• Fast downloads regardless of the size of the document
• Page-specific URLs for easy bookmarking, citing, and sharing, including on such social bookmarking services as Delicious and Digg
• Usability in any browser, including web-enabled handhelds such as the iPhone
• Fully searchable documents with relevancy-ranked search results
• Search capability across the whole site or by collection, title, or within specific metadata fields
• Search hits that link directly to a specific page and not just to the document
• Variety of online viewing options, including full screen zoom to support different user preferences and browsers
• Built-in subscription-based RSS feeds for automatic updates when content is added

For more information on IU Press Online, watch for additional blog posts and visit the Press's web site.

Print or Electronic?

Print or Electronic? How do you access scholarship today?
One of the most important issues in journals publishing today is how people access scholarship. IU Press/Journals offers three distribution options: the traditional print, which has been around for more than 500 years; online; or a combination of the two. What is your preferred format? If you haven't decided already, here are some factors to consider.

Top 10 benefits of an electronic subscription to an IU Press journal:

1. Gain immediate access to scholarly content wherever the internet is available and before issues are available in print
2. View table of contents and special issue titles at a glance
3. Email abstracts to colleagues
4. View related articles
5. Create favorites lists to return to  anytime
6. Search across multiple issues
7. Download and track citations
8. Save a tree
9. Provides multiple purchase options, including by the article and  by the issue
10. Permits unlimited access to all back issues included with your subscription.

 
Top 10  benefits of a print subscription to an IU Press journal:

1. Build your own personal library of scholarly research
2. Take a break from the screen  and enjoy the tactile pleasure of paper
3. Enjoy high resolution images
4. Take along while traveling   
5. Write in it, annotate, fill the margins, or dog ear the pages
6. Provides something positive to look forward to in your mailbox, amidst the junk mail and bills
7. Lend it to a friend or colleague
8. Purchase an extra single issue to give to a friend or colleague
9. Select special issues as texts for classroom study
10. Protects against interruptions due to internet downtime

Best reason to have a combination of both electronic and print?
All of the above. Plus the cost of a combination subscription is usually only a few dollars more than  either print or online alone.

Happy reading, however you access scholarship!

Be Alerted!

INscribe’s Content Alerting Services

In a white paper published by Simon Unger Consulting in September 2008 entitled, “How Readers Navigate to Scholarly Content”  results state that the “most highly sought after features of journal websites are content alerting services.”

The topic today is to let you know about INscribe’s content alerting services. Once you have registered and logged in, you will see in the “My Account” screen, a link to the “Alert Settings” in the left-hand navigation bar.

Alert settings on INscribe; click on graphic to enlarge.

The email alert service notifies registered users when new content is available on our site. You can choose to be notified of recently released table of contents associated with any or all of our robust collection of journals, citation alerts, and/or special alerts, including notices and special offers.

You can work with citations in different ways. You can track citations of your favorite articles, email them to friends or colleagues, and/or you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Formats include EndNote, BibTex, Medlars, ProCite, Reference Manager, or RefWorks. You can choose to be alerted when a new article cites the article that you have selected. Also, when you select an article and “view abstract,” you have the additional option of viewing related articles.

TOC Alert as it appears in your email; click on graphic to enlarge.

RSS feeds is yet another avenue of receiving updated information on a subject. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. In essence, it is a format for a special file on a Web site that has all the latest updates to the site in it. The URL to that file is known as an RSS Feed. By using a special piece of software called a Feed Reader, you can monitor this file and get notified instantly when new information gets added to the site. To learn more about RSS feeds, click here.

Sample RSS feed; click on graphic to enlarge.

If you have any questions or comments regarding our content alerting services, please email Joy Andreakis.

Happy Tracking!

IU Press/Journals have a global focus

The new fall catalog from the Indiana University Press/Journals is available for pdf viewing and download on INscribe, our website: http://inscribe.iupress.org.

The new catalog includes a greeting from journals director, Kate Caras.

"Our title list reflects the strengths of Indiana University, and six of our journals are edited on the IU-Bloomington campus (Africa Today, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Journal of Folklore Research, Philosophy of Music Education Review, Textual Cultures, and Victorian Studies). In addition, and in keeping with the vision of Herman Wells, long-time president of the University who said “the campus of Indiana University is not just in Bloomington….[I]t encompasses the four corners of the globe,” five (Aleph, Film History, History & Memory, Israel Studies, and Nashim) are edited outside of the US, and many share a global focus."

Look for the print catalog in your mail soon. Let us know if you do not receive one and we will be happy to add you to our mailing list. Email your name and address to: Linda Bannister at llbannis@indiana.edu.

Building Online Communities in Academic Publishing

By Joy Andreakis, Manager of Electronic and Serials Publishing, Indiana University Press/Journals

The buzzwords are changing, technology being the ever-morphing mechanism that it is. "Portal" is so last year. Well, maybe not that passé, but having attended my first Society for Scholarly Publishing Conference (SSP) in Boston, May 28-30 (Empires of the Mind: Inventing the Future of Scholarly Publishing) it offered several compelling and competing presentations.

This discussion centers around building online communities within an academic press. How do university presses build upon relationships in a professional field to develop critical mass for their emerging online presence? There may not be a logical algebraic solution, such that a=b, b=c, therefore a=c. However there are things to consider. Social media should not be viewed as a place (i.e. a portal) but an ecosystem. After all, community building is a live, dynamic process.

This segues into a set of questions that need to be answered before racing forward full throttle. Is your organization’s mental model that of a closed enterprise or one of open engagement? What are the parameters of your mission statement? How should you develop active engagement on your site and for your particular audience? Are scholarly goals and social media mutually exclusive? What content do you have that lends itself to social engagement tools?

Since concepts of community building, collective engagement, and social discovery are forwarded as ideals for publishers to work toward, I lit up when a presenter offered a list of “community-building” do’s and don’ts. What can I say, but that my personality type likes guidelines and lists.

Do:
1.Build functionality around content that fulfills specific needs of your audience. Instead of just offering downloadable articles (a “flat” structure) or pre-packaged products, would your users benefit from selecting their own e-anthologies (a personal selection of online articles across journal titles)? Think in terms of what would benefit your users to get their job done.

2.Cross seed your efforts. Place a button at the article level on your website to your blog, such that a user can “comment on this journal article.” Or when a discussion starts on your blog pertaining to an article, make sure the article is tagged, “join the discussion about X.” Or promote an article during a discussion.

3.Germinate your community-building efforts with key people. For example, if you are redesigning your website, involve a spectrum of skill levels and positions as beta testers. Get key people involved as much as possible so they feel invested in the project.

4.Tie real-world events to online networking and continue brainstorming on how to tie various efforts together.

5.Create a shared perception. Putting energy into a new project is like hosting a great party or tending your prize-winning garden. You don’t just throw seeds in the dirt and hope for rain. Energy, attention, and perseverance must be present. And above all, remember it took Edison 10,000 attempts to make the light bulb a success!

6.Be flexible and prepared to change or adapt your plans. If after 6 months, your efforts have stalled, don’t be afraid to alter your course. Nothing is set in stone.

Don’t:
1.Don’t hop on the Web 2.0 bandwagon platform because every other press is doing a certain something. The direction of your efforts has to ultimately offer your customers added value and be congruent with your bottom line. The “build it and they will come” attitude isn’t made of magic.

2.Don’t set up your efforts for failure. Staff commitment is important and in the age of tightened budgets, this issue is critical. Blog expectations demand updates 2 to 3 times per week. Discussion groups need moderating. Consider the extent of development support to what you are planning. New technologies enable the creation of new models to form. Do you have the dedicated talent it takes to move your organization in the direction it needs to go?

A recommended title to further your insight into social media and what makes or breaks online group effort is, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” by Clay Shirky. We are living in an era with the largest increase in expressive capability in history. Plan wisely.

Visit the website for the Society for Scholarly Publishing at http://www.sspnet.org/

SSP has posted notes from many of the presentations at this year's conference: http://sspnet.org/Events/Meetings_and_Seminars/2008_Annual_Meeting-Presentation/spage.aspx

Visit their blog at http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/