2010 TAA Conference on Text and Academic Authoring

Ramada Mall of America Minneapolis, Minnesota

June 24-26, 2010

Academic Session:

Robert Ginsberg

Orientation to the Journal Publishing Industry

Day/Time: Friday, 10:45 - 11:45 a.m.

Presenter: Robert Ginsberg, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University, and Director of the International Center for the Arts, Humanities, and Value Inquiry

Publishing scholarly journals is a big business for publishing houses. This highly profitable commercial activity sells a desirable product--the latest scholarship--to a small but reliable market--academic libraries and the membership of scholarly organizations. To assure quality of contents, and to attract subscriptions from institutions, publishers must respect the autonomy and expertise of the academic editors. Scholars, in turn, are expected to respect the business acumen of their publishers. This sounds like a reasonable cooperative arrangement. But what shall we do when publishing costs go up, individuals and institutions can no longer afford subscriptions, editors are called upon to shape contents for better marketability, and scholars do not have enough opportunity to publish their work?

About the Presenter:

Dr. Robert Ginsberg is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he taught for 35 years. He is the Director of the International Center for the Arts, Humanities, and Value Inquiry. Ginsberg was the founder of the Jones and Bartlett Philosophy series of textbooks, the Social Philosophy Research Institute Book Series, the Value Inquiry Book Series, and the New Studies in Aesthetics book series. He has served as executive editor of The Journal of Value Inquiry. Over 200 volumes have appeared under his general editorship. One hundred seventy-three of his own writings have been published in five languages in nineteen countries on four continents.