After Almost 50 Years, an African Arts Journal Adapts to Survive
Although there are grants — and generous individuals — out there in the world of academia ready to support scholarly publishing, funding an academic journal, from its creation to production to ultimate dissemination, is often still a challenge.
Although there are grants — and generous individuals — out there in the world of academia ready to support scholarly publishing, funding an academic journal, from its creation to production to ultimate dissemination, is often still a challenge. One longstanding arts journal is now exploring one solution to alleviate financial burdens through an innovative global partnership that will at the same time expand its editorial capacity. The nearly half-a-century-old African Arts, a quarterly journal published by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), recently announced that it is creating a consortium with other colleges, one of which is based in Africa, as it moves forward with its next volume.
Currently available online and in print, African Arts is a source of academic art history scholarship and prides itself as the leading journal in the field of arts from the African continent, having attracted a diverse audience since its start in 1967 — when “African art was hip and inexpensive,” as executive editor Leslie Ellen Jones put it in an email to Hyperallergic. Over the years, however, it has found itself facing an increasing deficit, especially as its audience shifted from collectors and general-interest readers to a crowd with academic and curatorial backgrounds.
Consortium publishing, Jones said, pools both financial and intellectual resources, not only easing financial stresses but expanding the journal’s perspective. The only other journal she knows of that has embraced this model is TDR/The Drama Review, which also formed a consortium in 2011 after its editorial board found itself in a similar situation.
This endeavor will more than triple African Arts‘ number of editors, drawing editorial input from not only fellow US universities — at the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill — but also from an African institution: Rhodes University. The South African school will join the editorial consortium in 2017, led by Professor Ruth Simbao, who is also involved in a program in Africa aimed to improve standards in regional academic publishing.
Each board will take charge of one issue per volume, but the editorial teams will still coordinate content with one another; all incoming submissions will also undergo review by every editor, which Jones notes will alleviate pressures over deadlines and also provide them with more time to focus on broader ideas.
“I hope it will catch on,” Jones said. “It seems to me to be a way for universities to get a lot more bang for their publishing buck, and it also keeps publications from getting sunk by the failure of a single income source.”
“We retain our independence,” she added, “but we bring in new viewpoints.”
