The future of the monograph: status report

[Hibush]

IHE reports on a study on the scholarly use of monographs by scholars in the humanities and social sciences. The study was done by two outfits with an intense interest in how these are used, and are likely to be used in the near future, namely Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.

Publishing has changed radically in the online age, and some fields have responded and even driven that change. There are huge differences among scholarly fields. I am not in a book field, though it was over a century ago. Darwin wrote several influential ones. The journal article was king when I was a grad student. Today,  I even see lots of online alternatives to journals (e.g. arxiv.org, Springer's Experimental Results). The way different fields accommodate these changes is interesting.

The survey shows that the monograph is the primary vehicle only in religion, philosophy, history and (as one would hope) literature. Even in those fields, journal articles are used as nearly as often by scholars. There trend away from the monograph is strong in the social sciences.

One concern I have is that the monograph will stop being the medium for advancing thought in a field, and instead be simply a credential in which the press provides independent validation for the purposes of hiring, promotion and tenure. I hear people speaking about them that way, which makes writing one seem like an empty excercise.

Nevertheless, Figure 17 in the report shows that 92% of respondents are very or extremely likely to use a monograph when synthesizing or analyzing the literature in a field.

The justification in the fields that use them is that it takes that long to make the complex arguments. A journal article is simply too short. If that is the case, then scholars who use the monographs to inform their own thoughts need to read the book cover to cover. The survey (Fig 17) shows that they don't.
Only 10% are extremely likely to read a monograph cover to cover. What do they do most: browse the chapter headings. Next are to read a chapter and to find interesting references.  If they can appreciate the argument that way, the monograph length is not actually needed. People have figured out new ways, even if the overt discussion in the field gives a more conservative impression.

[spork]

I'll note that the sample does not seem to include adjuncts. In the USA at least, the full-time humanities and social science academics who are in a position to do serious, field-changing research are disappearing.

In my field (social science), except for the really elite universities, publishing in peer-reviewed journals is just as beneficial career-wise for full-timers as publishing monographs. And I think it's safe to assume that a hefty chunk if not a majority of monographs are reworked dissertations. There is no market for these things, especially since findings, references, etc. usually appear beforehand in journal article form, and journal articles are far more readily accessible given the Intertubes.

[Parasaurolophus]

The survey shows that the monograph is the primary vehicle only in religion, philosophy, history and (as one would hope) literature. Even in those fields, journal articles are used as nearly as often by scholars. There trend away from the monograph is strong in the social sciences.

I think something probably went a little wrong with their philosophy results, where monograph production is pretty dependent on where you're working, and what you're working on. Most subfields are primarily article-based, and most of the Anglophone world is focused on articles (though monographs still get written, and are still important). Swathes of Europe, though, are still monograph-centred (like, career advancement depends on writing them)--and that's partly because the monograph-y subfields are bigger and more popular there (largely, I suspect, due to translation issues with contemporary articles--namely, the total absence of translations). In the Anglophone world, most monographs are produced by full professors.

The primary vehicle in the field, as it exists in the Anglophone world (which is overwhelmingly dominant), is clearly the peer-reviewed journal article; monographs are more like capstones. They're not necessary for tenure anywhere in the Anglophone world (well, maybe somewhere, but almost nowhere), and they're primarily produced by full profs, although R1 associates usually end up producing one at some point. The other potential confound is that a few monographs (mostly produced by canonical historical figures) have a big hold on the scholarship, even to this day; so it's still quite common to see Aristotle, Hume, or Kant cited, for example, even by non-historians.

I think the "marginally more important" caveat is key here, and it gets lost a few times in the report.

That said, I think that monographs produced by philosophers are much more important to non-philosophy disciplines than philosophy articles are. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if other disciplines valued philosophy monographs more, or if philosophy monographs were more important for interdisciplinary dissemination.

[tuxthepenguin]

The justification in the fields that use them is that it takes that long to make the complex arguments. A journal article is simply too short.

I'll strongly object (on the basis of my narrow slice of research - may not apply more broadly). I find monographs to be mostly a waste of time as a medium for communicating original research. Authors build speculation on top of speculation on top of speculation and put band-aids on top of flawed evidence. Then you get to chapter 2 and it's even worse. The author might be making a complex argument, but it's rarely (again, in my area) a matter of a single complex argument. Evidence can be accumulated through journal articles, where each piece can be given proper scrutiny. Every few years, someone can summarize the evidence in the form of a book without original research.

[Hibush]

The justification in the fields that use them is that it takes that long to make the complex arguments. A journal article is simply too short.

I'll strongly object (on the basis of my narrow slice of research - may not apply more broadly). I find monographs to be mostly a waste of time as a medium for communicating original research. Authors build speculation on top of speculation on top of speculation and put band-aids on top of flawed evidence. Then you get to chapter 2 and it's even worse. The author might be making a complex argument, but it's rarely (again, in my area) a matter of a single complex argument. Evidence can be accumulated through journal articles, where each piece can be given proper scrutiny. Every few years, someone can summarize the evidence in the form of a book without original research.

If someone has a lot of ideas but can't put them together coherently and can't tell speculation from inference, or assumption from evidence, then it may take them a whole book-length manuscript to spit it all out. But nobody should have to read it.

If someone is deeply confused, and can't make sense of disparate but related concepts, then they might go around and around trying to wrestle something onto the paper. But nobody should have to read it.


If someone has clear insight into a problem, they should be able to make the arguments concisely. An article should be able to capture enough new insight or synthesis to stand on its own.

[MasterOfRevels]

I find the generalizations against monographs, and the people who write them, in this thread somewhat problematic. There are plenty of good monographs out there, and I see no shortage of those in my field who can produce good ones.

To me, the potential problem with monographs is more a practical question. They're getting much more expensive to produce, and being consumed less frequently in an age of online databases and eBooks. So is there a better model for sharing scholarship? But if we're going to change the model, universities need to change their tenure expectations. As long as a monograph is the golden ticket to tenure and promotion, everyone is going to try to publish one. And it's that incentive structure (partnered with the financial incentive structures for presses) that feels like it's the cause of too many monographs that might not need to be full monographs, more so than lazy or substandard scholarship.

What if we just abolished the paper format and gave full recognition to eBook-only publications? Take the cost of paper out of the production process, and that would help drive prices down for all eBook titles, and also somewhat diminish the incentive for longer books that maybe don't need to be quite so long? The distinction between an article and a book-length study would slowly start to erode. It would be just as possible to make a big impact with a well-crafted 50 page piece as with a 500 page door stop, if they are all housed in the same database and all available in the same format. Just dreamin' big here....

[Hibush]

I find the generalizations against monographs, and the people who write them, in this thread somewhat problematic. There are plenty of good monographs out there, and I see no shortage of those in my field who can produce good ones.

To me, the potential problem with monographs is more a practical question. They're getting much more expensive to produce, and being consumed less frequently in an age of online databases and eBooks. So is there a better model for sharing scholarship? But if we're going to change the model, universities need to change their tenure expectations. As long as a monograph is the golden ticket to tenure and promotion, everyone is going to try to publish one. And it's that incentive structure (partnered with the financial incentive structures for presses) that feels like it's the cause of too many monographs that might not need to be full monographs, more so than lazy or substandard scholarship.

What if we just abolished the paper format and gave full recognition to eBook-only publications? Take the cost of paper out of the production process, and that would help drive prices down for all eBook titles, and also somewhat diminish the incentive for longer books that maybe don't need to be quite so long? The distinction between an article and a book-length study would slowly start to erode. It would be just as possible to make a big impact with a well-crafted 50 page piece as with a 500 page door stop, if they are all housed in the same database and all available in the same format. Just dreamin' big here....

Yay, a thoughtful proponent of the monograph!

I hear that maintaining the value of the monograph means focusing on using it for the scholarly communication that it does best and dispensing as much as possible with derivative uses (archaic tenure credential) that divert the effectiveness and with unnecessary secondary use (doorstop).

Other than tradition, what is the obstacle to having eBooks of arbitrary length? By that, I mean the appropriate length for a clear exposition of the argument, whether it is 50 or 500 pages. I know people who still think in terms of signatures and quatro sheets, because those used to be cost constraints on printing. They also encouraged a certain numbers of pages. With an eBook, the font is whatever size the poor tired eyes of the reader can handle, and the reading units are logical chapters rather than physical pages.