Authorship and Publishing in the Humanities (Elements in Publishing and Book Culture)

What is the point of publishing in the humanities? This Element provides an answer to this question. It builds on a unique set of quantitative and qualitative data to understand why humanities scholars publish. It looks at both basic characteristics such as publication numbers, formats, and perceptions, and differences of national academic settings alongside the influences of the UK's Research Excellence Framework and the German Exzellenzinitiative. The data involve a survey of more than 1,000 humanities scholars and social scientists in the UK and Germany, allowing for a comprehensive comparative study, and a series of qualitative interviews. The resulting critique provides scholars and policy makers with an accessible and critical work about the particularities of authorship and publishing in the humanities. And it gives an account of the problems and struggles of humanities scholars in their pursuit of contributing to discourse, and to be recognised with their intellectual work. Cover Title page Copyright page Authorship and Publishing in the Humanities Contents 1 Understanding Authorship and Publishing Competition, Growth, and Efficiency Publish or Perish Methods and Empirical Data Quantitative Survey Who Are Humanities Scholars? Qualitative Interviews Structure of This Book 2 How and How Much Scholars Publish: Basic Characteristics of Publishing How Much Do Scholars Publish? What Languages Do Scholars Publish In? What Other Formats Do Scholars Publish In? Further Publishing-Related Perceptions Specific Monograph-Related Needs The UK Humanities Publishing Persona Open Access Venues, Discourse Communities, and Consecration 3 Publish or Perish: The Empirical Reality of the Pressure to Publish Publish or Perish, Competition, and Efficient Filtering Who Experiences Pressure? Variations of Experienced Pressure Negotiation of Quantity and Quality Publish or Perish Embodying Reification 4 Being REFable: The UK’s REF and Germany’s Traditionalism A Short History of the REF Today’s REF between Symbolic and Material Reward From Humboldt to the Exzellenzinitiative Being REFable: Individuals and the Pressure to Perform The Management of Internationalisation and Impact 5 Publishing as Production and the Meaning of Authorship The Constitution of Publishing The Formal Form of Authorship Self-Referentiality: The Distancing of Scholar and Text Appendix References