The Restructuring of Scholarly Publishing in the United States, 1980-2001: A Resource-Based Analysis of University Presses. Barbara G. Haney Jones. Lewiston, ME: Edward Mellen Press, 2009. 452 pp.
Of interest to serious researchers who may be seeking to get their monographs accepted by a good academic press, this study may open some eyes, for all is not well in the world of scholarly publishing. But it must be said at the outset that to some extent this is a book of history.
Note the dates in the title—most of the discussion here predates the full impact of the Internet on publishing. Further, many of the trends described here have greatly expanded over the years since—the decline in library book-buying, for example. So the detailed discussion, based on data largely from the mid-1990s, has a rather quaint feel to it a decade and more later. Add in the recent economic slump, and the book seems even more outmoded. That is not to say, however, that it has little value.