TYPE OF PROPOSAL: paper
TITLE: Publishing originally digital scholarship at the University of Virginia
KEYWORDS: publishing, genres, ecommerce
AUTHOR: John Unsworth
AFFILIATION: University of Virginia
E-MAIL: jmu2m@virginia.edu
CONTACT ADDRESS:        John Unsworth
975 Locust Ave.
                                 Charlottesville, VA 22901-4029
FAX NUMBER: 804-982-2363
PHONE NUMBER: 804-924-3137

Driven by the ubiquity of the World-Wide Web and by an interest in the 
computer as a research tool for the humanities, scholars are producing 
originally digital publications with increasing frequency.  These are not 
E-books, not digital derivatives of print publications, and because they 
don't fit the traditional production, distribution, or economic practices 
of university-press publishing, they pose a new challenge to scholarly 
publishing.  Moreover, because university presses are not capitalized, they 
are not in a position to experiment while continuing their full 
book-publishing programs.  As a result, very few presses have any 
experience in publishing originally digital scholarship, there is very 
little information available to help presses decide when or how to get 
involved, and most originally digital scholarship is produced without the 
benefit of the editorial, design, marketing, and cost-recovery services 
that a press can offer.

Over the past eight years, the Institute for Advanced Technology has 
produced originally digital scholarly work in a number of different 
disciplines: some of these projects are currently being used to investigate 
the issues involved in collecting and preserving originally digital 
scholarly work, under a collaboration between the University of Virginia's 
Digital Library Research and Development Group and the Institute for 
Advanced Technology in the Humanities, funded last year for three years by 
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.   John Unsworth, Director of the Institute 
for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, in collaboration with Nancy 
Essig, Director of the University Press of Virginia, has secured support 
from the office of the President of the University of Virginia, and has 
applied for new external support (to be announced in December 2000) that 
would allow the Press to establish an electronic imprint under which to 
experiment with these and other scholarly projects from universities across 
the country (and around the world), in order to explore what electronic 
publishing can mean and to investigate a range of strategies and options 
for cost recovery in the publishing of originally digital scholarship in 
the humanities.

The goals of this project are:

       To select and publish scholarly work of the highest standard
       To find innovative ways to apply the traditional publishing skills 
of editing, design, and marketing to new media
       To analyze the initial conditions for each publication (the nature 
of its publishable products, the cost of its production, the size of its 
audience, etc.)
       To develop for each project a publishing plan and a business 
strategy designed (with those initial conditions in mind) to maximize 
distribution while recovering the unfunded costs of producing the scholarly 
publication
       To document and analyze the success or failure of each of these 
plans, and to publish that information and analysis for the benefit of 
other academic publishers, policy-makers, and authors.

An electronic imprint at the University Press of Virginia has the 
opportunity to experiment with a range of very different scholarly 
products, and can therefore develop a number of different publishing plans 
and business models for originally digital scholarly publications.  One 
might well ask whether it wouldn't make more sense to develop one basic 
business strategy, and then apply it to a wide range of scholarly projects 
with minor alterations for each project.  We believe it is possible that 
such a prototype would emerge from the experiments we propose, but we also 
know that the range of initial conditions (costs of production, audience, 
marketable byproducts, etc.) varies widely for these originally digital 
scholarly publications.  Perhaps what should emerge is not one, but two, or 
three, or four such prototypes: if we begin by trying to make each case fit 
a standard solution, we would doubtless find that this solution works in 
some cases--but we would not then find the solution that works for the 
other cases.  In short, while we do not anticipate that a very large number 
of business strategies will be required, we doubt that one size fits all.

The experiment we propose will combine the traditional activities of 
publishing (list-building, evaluation, shaping, and promotion) with 
technological innovation, to produce publications that exceed the 
capabilities of print while retaining the core values of scholarship.  In 
any trial or experiment, one has to know at the outset what are the 
criteria by which success or failure will be measured, and what outcomes 
are expected.  Some that we know will be important include:
       Intellectual Criteria: An electronic imprint at the University 
Press of Virginia must contribute to realizing the core objective of the 
Press, namely to "advance the intellectual interests not only of the 
University of Virginia, but of institutions of higher learning throughout 
the state."  The imprint can do this in at least three ways:
       Dissemination: An electronic imprint should seek to deliver the 
goods it produces as inexpensively--and thereby, as widely--as 
possible.  If it is possible to do so and recover costs, the ideal 
situation will be for the online form of the scholarly publication to be 
free to its users.

       Experimentation: Since electronic publishing is still in its 
infancy, an electronic imprint should--within the limits of 
cost-recovery--not only accept but embrace change, experimentation, and 
even instructive failures.  This plan will offer an opportunity for 
authors, project developers, and publishing staff to work together in new 
ways and to consider together what publishing originally digital 
scholarship means.

       Education: Inasmuch as the medium of digital information is a 
matter of theoretical and historical research and instruction in other 
parts of the University, an electronic imprint should strive to enhance and 
extend in practical ways in those educational and research programs, and in 
particular Media Studies.

       Economic criteria: Given the outlook for future State subsidy of 
scholarly publishing, an electronic imprint should aim to recover its own 
costs and the unfunded costs of producing the scholarly work it publishes, 
though (see Dissemination, above) it should not expect to profit much 
beyond that.

       Service to Scholarly Publishing:  As noted above, an important 
outcome of this project, during its initial phase, will be the 
documentation and analysis of initial fiscal conditions, business 
strategies, and income results.  This documentation and analysis will be of 
use not only to the imprint itself, as a tool for assessment and planning, 
but also to other university presses trying to engage in electronic 
scholarly publishing without undue risk.