Understanding Australian Academic Authors in the Humanities and Social Sciences Their Publishing Experiences, Values, and Perspectives

Publishers of academic books in Australia have evolved in response to the crisis in scholarly publishing by adapting to the opportunities afforded by digital technologies for faster, cheaper, and more dynamic publishing approaches. Academic authors are at the core of the scholarly publishing landscape, so publishers need to understand their motives and needs. This paper examines data from a survey of academic authors in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) in Australia. Our aim for the survey was to understand the publishing experiences, behaviours, and perceptions of these authors. We discovered their expectations for publishers are high. They want fast turnaround, high-quality editing and production values, and cheaper books, which run up against three principal constraints for all scholarly publishers: quality, time, and cost. The prestige and reputation of a publisher are critical, and authors are primarily interested in traditional success measures of academic performance. Societal impact or engagement with research end-users was seen as less important. The findings of this project highlight a number of contradictions and tensions within the scholarly publishing landscape, and they have tangible implications for practices in HSS for authors and publishers, as well as for grant funders and university administrators who adopt policies and assign criteria for research evaluation.