[The following notes of oral exchanges at the session were taken to help identify speakers and otherwise facilitate review of audio recordings. They have not been compared to those recordings and should be understood to provide only a sense of what was said. In other words, they are not formal transcripts, and they may contain inaccuracies.] Speakers are identified by their initials in the transcript. For a full list, click here. Roundtable 2: Future agenda for the field and the journal AB – Practicalities of ideas for articles – basically how manifests in the journal – extra members to editorial board, special articles, theme issues. We are joined by Mark Zadrosny [MZ], the journals editor at CUP [Cambridge University Press]. We owe him a lot for his work and public relations. He brought extra issues of 1 and 2 and a proof copy of 3. Maybe he can make some general remarks and answer questions. MZ – Speaking from a personal and a press perspective, we’re very happy to be able to publish the journal, especially to bring it back. The Press is a strong supporter of the journal. We have issues coming out – on paper and online. CUP updated its general online presence. We got back issues and online files from Oxford University Press. Now we are negotiating with DeGroiter to publish the back issues. They were asking for 30,000 euros for access to site. If the journal changes hands, it’s goodwill gesture to [...]. Now its down to 1000 euros. A bargain is coming soon. We’ll be able to scan old issues and put them on-line. AB – So you are planning on doing full text of all the back issues. MZ – It will be nice for journal because it will all be there. Those are the technical matters. I did check on subscriptions. Going into this project, the journal had not been published for two years. What’s the most conservative estimate to publish the journal and make it worthwhile for the press and society?. It would probably take four years to get back to the subscription levels at Oxford’s last year. We predict for institutional subscriptions – we figured only 200 institutional and personal subscriptions. Now we have in North America, 100 institutionals and 34 individual. In rest of world, 66 institutionals and 15 individuals. That’s 215 traditional subscriptions. Consortia – the electronic package from CUP – is reaching 758 worldwide; electronic access. I want to give it to you later as a mailing, showing what institutions, countries, what articles are being downloaded the most, what institutions using it the most. This shouldn’t direct the editorial slant of the journal, but it is interesting. The 215 traditional subscriptions together with consortia income with the downloads, means the journal is bringing in $60,000. This is bigger than what we expected in the first year. The society will get a percentage of that in coming years based on the contract. We can do better; we need to target creatively new places and different lists. We will do better. But the press as a whole is pleased that journal is doing better than the conservative estimates. MC – This is interesting because outreach is important. Beyond the 215 prescriptions, what is the total sale? Can you give us the breakdown of subscriptions – how many university, private scholars, government institutions? MZ – The print version isn’t significant. What’s significant is the number of institutions that subscribe and the consortia – 915 institutions with access to the journal. These are either active prescriptions (site licenses) or consortia licenses – for example, Ohio as an entire state with all of its institutions approaches a publisher and says how many traditional subscriptions does the whole state have, and how much money is that? Publishers won’t give a subscription to all the journals we publish. Maybe OSU paid for 100 and Case Western paid for 10. Now they both get 180 [110?] subscriptions. The extra money is divided up between the journals incrementally. This journal is getting $6000 from extra money divided out. But now all the institutions that might not have subscribed have access. That increases usage and increases […]. PO – Is it free? MZ – Not in the sense that its been paid for as part of its package. Virginia or California has the package. So any student can download it if she is on an authorized-user computer. LR – We talked a lot about terminology. What is CUP’s perspective – is this the right name for the journal? MZ – Yes, it’s fine. “International” indicates that it is not bound. “Cultural property” is a broad enough term. “Heritage” is a smaller term. LR – These are the right terms when people are doing keyword searching? AB – Heritage. MZ – I will check in with the IT people. LR – It would be nice to keep in mind that as wide a range of terms that might get people to us are being listed. MZ – That’s fair. DS – Some practical aspects. If you want extra copies, they are available to get people interested. Any time you attend a meeting, let me Alex or Mark know, copies can be available for the meeting. Brochures can be made available. Specific brochures that provided discount to individual subscribers – we can get it again but its not useful unless you go around and provide it to people. This is important because the value of the journal depends on how many people read it. It is important also for economic purposes. We get percentage of the sales money. So both in terms of what the society wants to do and economically – happy for Cambridge and helps CUP help us. Last year, a pool was created of what number of subscriptions we could get to. I want to win that pool; I am highest. HP – CUP usually has a booth at conferences. Is there a guideline for which journal gets displayed? MZ – We decide as a group – where are we going, who’s going there? We’re willing to send the journal anywhere even if there is no person. We also did BLADS – one or two articles with cover – can also do those as inserts on a program. HP – It would be nice to identify huge disciplinary annual conferences. MZ – We normally share space with book people – 33% of the space is for journals. There will be a list of everywhere we went and how [the events] were attended. HP – It is good to know the track record of venue. MZ – There is no way to know where the subscriptions come from, unless someone physically sends in titles on display list from a particular meeting. We held a price increase back in 2006 – to try to increase subscriptions. AB – Some comments here about indexing. I don’t know how that works. But in terms of getting the word out, we should identify the indexes we want to appear on. I don’t know what the protocol is for getting indexed. SK – That’s all changed. Google is the primary index AB – Yeah, Google research. MZ– We’ve allowed Google to spider through our stuff AB – Yeah but others. SK – I’m saying that’s outmoded. [Only] if you’re not online, do you need to be on these other indexes. MZ – There are abstract [indexes(?)]. CL – Does Google go through the content? MZ – Yes. AB – Are we in Lexis? Is it because we’re not a law review? KS – […] DL – […] AB – Is it that we shouldn’t bother being put on a citation index because Google is making it obsolete? SK – It already has. KS – It is different because of head notes – get all articles whether it is in title or not. MZ – We can be proactive about that. We’re trying to determine which journals and which indexes. If any indexing. Abstracting service, let us know. SK – We’ll put you in touch with a good law reference librarian who can tell you. AB – Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the journal, we want to be indexed in all these things. LP – […] MZ – We currently list only …. [cf. journal] LP – […] MZ – I need to spend time with the indexing issue. LP – […] I correspond with someone in Russia who does research in this field. Is it there? MZ – Yes, under the consortia agreement. LP – These articles – we can access all of those. What is the url? MZ – I need to get passwords for all? AB – Can we have a single journal editor password? MZ – If the society has a secure site, but not necessary, we can give everyone their own password. HP – I appreciate that – give to students. MZ – You have online institution at UCSB. AB – Everyone should make sure their home institutions have subscribed. PO – It takes a long time. AB – I have the list. JP – […] LP – It would be interesting for us to know. MC[?]– Some suggestions for potential subscribers. Because each one of us knows people in own country and others. After 3-5 issues, does CUP make retrospective? Now it is time to see where journal penetrated and where it didn’t. Direct your campaign to certain countries. MZ – We’ll prepare that for the society and marketing campaign for following year DS – Have there been any results of program to make the journal available at cost to those who can’t afford it? MZ – I can get you that. LS – From 2 to 4 issues a year. AB – It is 4 now. MZ – Only 2 have been published. AB – The third one is coming out now. Kurt, Lyndel, Neil, Michael C. don’t have a subscription. [Jovial exchange about the practice of public shaming follows.] DS – Important institutions that should have a subscription – for example, the U.S. State Department, administrative bodies in different countries – if you have contact with policy makers, it is important to get them to start looking at it. CC – The Cultural Property Advisory Committee [at the State Dept.] must have one. DS – It is not indicated on the list. AB – […] MC – You are very optimistic to think that people from the State Department read journals. DS – Maybe but it would seem to me to be a responsible official … CC – Takes a while after starting up again. AB – […] SK – It’s more or less inconsequential if its on a shelf. That’s not how people do research. A staffer will find the article on the internet and give it to the boss. We’re as good as the consortium is, so we should expand its reach. AB – [To MZ] You have a plant in the audience here. DS – If you know of potential subscribers that you think are important, send the name on to Alex or me. CUP is willing to market. To extent that we can motivate research or reference. Forward your contact at UNESCO or the State department. LP – Do you have this brochure, which we got, in electronic form? MZ – To send as a pdf? I think we do. LP – Send it to me; that would be helpful. MZ – DS’s idea that would be smaller – fit in breast pocket – and call out individual subscriptions. LR – Should we talk about the content of the journal? AB – Yes. There are several things with regard to journal itself. Editorial board. This is most of the board here. What we feel what groups, constituents, individuals should be represented on the board. There can be additions if we feel we are lacking. KS – Roman speaking countries – we have nobody from them. Ask Andre Renald from Geneva [KS lists his qualifications]; he is known to us. He can be invited to join the board or Society, perhaps. Or somebody else. PO – We need more people from Asia. CC – Latin America, Africa. AB – Can we name individuals? CC – From Mali – Sidibi. AB – Give me names and contact info, institutional affiliation. It would be a good idea if [we get] people who are inclined toward cross-disciplinary thinking. DS – We’ll circulate these questions by email. If something occurs to you as a result of this, tell me or Alex and we’ll follow up on it. LR – There’s a tendency for editorial boards to grow so large as to be meaningless – unless you have specific reason for it – and for people to lose energy the longer they are on the board. Maybe we should make a term for being on the editorial board. You can have a list of emeriti but a 3-5 year term is a way of circulating the elite and getting additional attachments – we pick successors, etc. – that’s okay. It is better for meetings to have fewer people; it allows you to get new folk. Allows you to ask people to do things – for 3 years, not forever. DS – Practical matter: some of my boards have terms and this is useful because it helps resignations (which are necessary) to come up on a non-discretionary basis. LR – We can have a staggered board. HP – Ballots, democratic? LR – To hell with democracy. AB – Perhaps can allow people to stay on. PO – Same problem with committees where 2-3 people do all the work DL – I’ve been on boards. I agree that three year terms are good, but these are usually large membership bodies where people don’t know each other well. Many of us are not yet dead. I would hate to think that people would stop contributing. KS – We had a compromise before – editorial board and national correspondents, who were invited once a year to submit news from their area. They were not called editors, they were not on the board; they were just correspondents who had this obligation. Once a year, they would tell us what was going on in their region. PO – What happened to that? KS – They contributed CC – Identified? MC – Morales had that list. CC – It should be prominently identified – the country – not the person. KS – Yes [explains how it worked]. LP – Did you always get a response? CC – Did they have a subscription? It would be ideal if they already knew the journal. KS – They were chosen by a board of editors; we asked them to contribute. LR – That might go with what you decide are some options about the regular sort of sections of the journal – if you have a section that chronicles – and corresponding editors might be expected to do that for their term [essentially functionally specific editors]. There’s a tendency in new journals – they start out eagerly broad and collapse into a core of people who continually are involved and the whole enterprise is defined by their interests – and it is vital that we keep reaching out to new people who will be involved – into certain kinds of activities. Vital if we are to keep it from being the same people writing to the same people. DS – Whether there will be an advisory board – there are many ways to get people involved in various ways without overburdening the editorial board or making people feel forced. Sounds like we’re moving onto content via KS’s national correspondents. We had a whole list of possible topics or areas. Perhaps once a year something about national legislation from different countries. Or, taking a treaty or an important piece of legislation. Perhaps there are ideas along those lines that will at least help Alex think about new areas. Also, as the journal is coming back after a hiatus, there is concern about the number of potential authors. To have requests is tricky but requested articles still need to be reviewed. AB – For naming other members for editorial board, remember the listserv. It’s there and active. Anyone can post to it. One of the things we can talk about generally – papers from you guys. Or collaborative endeavors, for example, let’s continue a debate in an article that could appear in the journal. Use the listserv to advantage to have dialogues to publish as debates. PO – The potential author died. DL – In a hunting accident? PO – We have 4 articles – fox-hunting, Japanese whaling, Australian, and one, I hope, on European hunting in North America. I hope they meet the standards. They are all from different directions. Fox-hunting is from anthropologist, who conducts interviews with people out of work because of the decrease in fox hunting. NS – How do we define that as property? HP – Intangible. AB – As practice. NS – On the cover it says cultural property. AB – It’s heritage. NS – Okay – its heritage. DL – It’s hard to bag a grouse. MC – A topic for a future issue: donor countries – hydropower dams – submerge invaluable cultural property forever. The losses are important; there is the possibility of influencing governments and donors by calling attention to the issue in advance. Developed countries for developing countries. Developed countries are sensitive to criticism if not enforcing protective safeguards. I want to propose the orientation of the journal – more responsive to issues on the policy agenda of governments. [I want it to] speak more beyond the walls of academia. Figures of interest: how little money is given by governments with rich patrimony for preservation and maintenance. Middle East and North Africa. Bahrain has .6 % of national budget; Iran .3%, Jordan, .8%, Kuwait 1.1%, [etc.]. RH – What would it be for the U.S.? MC – I don’t know but the U.S. has private funding. This means that protection of cultural property in this country simply doesn’t get protected – there is no dehumidifier for rugs in a Moroccan museum. Let’s invite people dealing with these issues to contribute. There is so much resentment within intellectual communities about what governments do or not. Let’s give it a voice. I don’t know about how the review process will go. An article on psychological aspects – I liked that article, but in Lebanon for last decade there’s been a royal battle between people who want to preserve and construct monuments hurt by war and others who say money is better used for other things, like putting people in houses. World Bank was in support of cultural heritage and gave $30 million for reconstruction. There was a battle inside the Bank on whether to do so. This article doesn’t even mention these issues – uninformed about major things in cultural reconstruction of what he is writing about. AB – you should write article in response to that. Not every article will do every thing that needs to be done. We have a tradition of response articles. That is good. We can have articles that piggyback – make the journal a forum for debate. MC – [Point] well taken. The issue is broader – to bring in such topics. [We can] send a list of articles to be published to all members of board to invite members to review. HP – I also support MC about dams. The three gorge dams in China are a huge issue. Having infrastructure development vs. human rights. [This would be] a good way of going through the world. So [we can have] a special section on different regions of the world. It would be nice to see a brief history of cultural properties management in different parts of the world. AB – Like a review article; that is interesting. HP – With an international bent. Formatting – can we take maps? AB – Yeah, no problem. HP – If it can make it more attractive. CL – The dam issue – it has been extensively covered within conservation literature. RH – First, a response to MC – this issue seems like a nice range of articles. Merryman’s article and responses. Nice ongoing theoretical discussion. Then the case study from Lebanon. Then case discussion section, here about Kenniwick man, which was coherent. I find a very nice balance in this one issue between theoretical debate and empirical case studies from different parts of the world. In MC’s critique of the Lebanon article, there is the debate between artsy-fartsy and practical articles. I don’t know how to solve that problem. DS – I said that and I will say it again. All the topics that are on the board and were generated – I would like to follow up on. It would a wonderful luxury for Alex to have. CC – What is the transcript for? AB – Two things. First, a full transcript – we can each get a copy of it. We can send it to others who weren’t here. Second, the idea of having a conference report that will be short and touch upon general issues that were raised. But the papers from you guys are to build on general topics. Single people write articles or articles get written jointly. CC – Two practical questions. Can we have identification of the journal on every page in each article? AB – The journal name and issue number as a running header. CC – Review the editorial process for us, and how to decide on the readers. AB – We send every article to three different people in three different fields – e.g., a law person and a person from the region that is the subject. I send it directly to individuals. I haven’t circulated list of possible titles to editors. CC – The press does the copy editing? AB – I do initial read-throughs and the press does proofreading MC – I think the point is important: cultural theorists and policy theorists. Underlying tension between the two. Cultural policy is culture – so relevant to both things. How will cultural theorists ever influence policy makers? RH – A person can do it but doesn’t have to. MC – I believe that the discipline must be interested in speaking to the policy maker and must think on what practical things theorists can do. AB – I would like to see articles that don’t just stay in the realm of political theory. We need acknowledgement of real world impact – I would like a nod to that. I agree. LR – I am curious about the ISSN number being on the front of the journal as well as the back. Why? MZ – I don’t know. LR – Its not necessary on the cover. Should we have feedback from our readership? Let’s email a list of who they are. Send out short questionnaire of what would you like to see in the journal. We don’t know who our customers are. MS – We can do a survey. AB – Or just ask them to contact us. LR – Keep it short. Things other journals do: American Scholar and Woodrow Wilson Quarterly have a place for letters from readers. Often a particular instance to suggest comparison. Without being Harper’s-like, we can have short excerpts from documents that have been interesting. In general, let’s just look at some other journals for ideas and [get ideas also] from reader response. |