RU Press funding stops after 4 years

By Seth Brown     9/23/10 7:00pm

Rice University Press, Rice's digital academic press, will stop receiving university funding at the end of the month. The decision to cut RUP's funding, which has consisted of $150,000-$200,000 a year since its revival as a digital press in 2006, came after a report by a group of consultants said that RUP would require significantly more cash in order for it to achieve its original goal of being a leading digital university press.RUP, in its previous incarnation a traditional university press, was initially shut down in 1996 but was then brought back in 2006 as an all-digital press. Publications were published through Rice's Connexions project and could be accessed digitally for free, but bound copies could also be purchased. Former Provost Eugene Levy said that although RUP was never intended to make a profit, the publications that had so far been put forward by RUP had not really attracted a market.

Levy said that although the annual cost of RUP was not unexpected, the financial downturn was.

"The press was funded at pretty much the level that was initially requested," Levy said. "It would have been foolish to undertake [RUP's revival] if it didn't retain the position of being able to be reevaluated."

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According to the report submitted by the group of consultants, RUP could not continue to function in the same fashion as it had if it were to make an impact as a university press, Levy said. He said that the report did propose an alternative option - to put RUP in the hands of the School of Humanities at the Humanities Research Center. However, Levy said that even this would have required the funding to be approximately doubled.

"It was hard given the financial demands on the university to prioritize the press in a way that it could have continued while we were cutting other things on the campus," Levy said.

History Professor Allen Matusow, who joined the RUP's editorial board more than a year ago, said that despite capable leadership, in the end, the money for RUP was not there. He said that as a majority of Rice faculty do not use RUP to publish their works, the impact of the university's decision will be minimal.

"At the level of funding, the press did not have much of an impact on campus," Matusow said. "Therefore, not having the press won't have much effect."

Throughout its four digital years, RUP had a single paid contract employee, Editor in Chief Fred Moody, who worked off campus in Washington state. Moody said his responsibilities included editing all manuscripts, overseeing web and print production, arranging for peer review of publications and generally orchestrating the operation of the press. Moody said that the business model for RUP called for it to build up a repertoire of titles which would then sell hard copies indefinitely.

"Originally we thought we could break even in five years," Moody said. "I honestly don't know if we could've done that or not."

Moody said that over the past three years, RUP had accrued 18 titles and this year started getting about $1,000 a month in revenue from sales. Moody said it was difficult to grow the number of titles offered by RUP without having acquisition managers to help him solicit publications.

Moody said he thought the decision to cease funding for RUP was ultimately made because it did not have enough intangible value for the university.

"It's hard to make a press fit into a given institution's mission," Moody said. "It's not like you're promoting the work of your own faculty - it's always been kind of an odd creature in the university world."

Moody said that although he is looking for other sources of funding for RUP, as of Sept. 15 he had not found any definite sources of funds.

Levy said that although he wouldn't rule out the idea of Rice having some future connection to RUP should it succeed in finding an alternate source of funding, he preferred not to speculate as to whether or not it would or what role it might play. However, Levy said that despite the cessation of funding from the university for RUP, because of the Connexions project, a free, open-source online educational repository, the university retains an important position in digital publishing.

UCLA Information Studies Professor Chris Kelty was at Rice when RUP was revived in 2006 and remained on its editorial board after going to UCLA. Kelty said he was frustrated with how the university had administrated the press and that RUP had not had the opportunity to have as much academic impact as it could have.

"If Fred Moody was actually headquartered at Rice, if [RUP] had more employees - then maybe it could have had an impact," Kelty said. "That doesn't seem to have been the administration's interest at all."

Kelty said that Rice should not have notified the foundations funding the Connexions project of the pending end of university funding for RUP before they made the press release. He also said that RUP should have been sold, rather than shut down.

Had the publications made available by RUP been better marketed, Kelty said the project might have enjoyed more financial success.

"There really aren't any other projects this sophisticated," Kelty said. "I'm really frustrated to see it not be well managed."

Levy said that the editorial board needed to have taken some responsibility for fundraising and marketing RUP.

"The board can't sit back as a critic after the fact and complain," Levy said. "It has to be proactive."

Matusow said he did not have the impression that the members of the editorial board had ever seen it as their responsibility to raise funds for RUP but that it would not be unusual for the university to expect RUP to raise money.

"At some other moment, the administration might have come up with the money - but after severe budget cuts, it wasn't there," Matusow said. "Rather than continue the press at the level it was at, the decision was made to save the money and terminate it."

Moody said that a general decline in the number of traditional university presses means that it is becoming much more difficult for professors, especially in the humanities, to publish their works. Because of the general necessity of publishing to tenure, Moody said that either the tenure system will need to be revised or a new method of publishing will need to become popularized.

"In general, more and more young faculty are finding it harder and harder to get their books published because there are fewer publishers now," Moody said. "A model like [RUP] has to be found to keep academic publishing alive.

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