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From left to right;
Mr Lindsay Waters, Professor Stephen Mennell,
Professor John Thompson and Mr Fergal Tobin.
On 26 April 2005, at the Geary Institute, UCD�s Sociology Department held its third annual research day titled �Publish or Perish? The Future of Academic Publishing.� Among the guest speakers were Lindsay Waters, Executive Editor for the Humanities, Harvard University Press; John B. Thompson, Professor of Sociology at Cambridge University and Director of Polity Press; Fergal Tobin, Publishing Director of Gill & Macmillan and Chairman of the Irish Publishers Association and Professor Stephen Mennell, Chairman of the Editorial Committee of UCD Press.
Lindsay Waters spoke of his American experiences with academic publishing. He urged the academic community to no longer just do the counting while outsourcing or avoiding the difficult question of identifying distinguished scholarship and research by leaving such crucial judgement to the University Presses.
John Thompson stressed that publishers like Harvard University Press and those
in Princeton and Yale, were the exception. He noted that their resources allowed them to cope better with the crisis in academic publishing; a crisis he explained is inextricably linked to the stranglehold that international publishers of scientific journals had gained over library budgets since the 1970s. However, he predicted hopeful times for small and mid-sized publishing houses due to the production economies arising from new technological advances. Thompson also noted that these advances could drive a gap between academics who are inclined towards the publication of highly specialised research and publishers who want to reach a much broader readership.
Fergal Tobin described how UCD Press had overcome such difficulties. Stephen Mennell, one of its founders, revealed that it has not only been successful in becoming Ireland�s largest academic publisher but that it is also becoming an international player in the field.
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