Publishers from USP, Unesp and Unicamp diversify catalogs, with titles that cover all areas
Academic publishers have the essential function of disseminating knowledge produced in universities through the publication of books of scientific, technical, literary, artistic importance and educational interest. “If this knowledge stays in the closet, it will be of no use, we have to put it into circulation”, says Márcia Abreu, director of Editora at Unicamp. “We are more than 100 university publishers fulfilling this role”, observes Lucas Antonio Moscato, CEO of Editora da USP (Edusp). “Unesp Publishing is probably the one that publishes the most among academics, at a rate of 200 books per year, both physical and digital”, estimates the director-president of this foundation, Jézio Hernani Bomfim Gutierre.
A false impression that Márcia Abreu seeks to dispel is that university publishers only publish internal production. “People get confused, they think that ours is called Editora da Unicamp because it would be a market reserve for the house’s teachers. It's not true and it's good that it isn't, as our mission is to publish relevant books in the most varied areas. If there is a relevant book by a USP professor, we publish it here, and vice versa. Authors publish wherever they see fit.”
According to Ricardo Lima, Editorial Production Manager, Editora da Unicamp has published close to 1.400 books since its foundation in 1982 and maintains around 500 titles in its catalogue. “The average is 25 to 30 new titles per year, with 35 to 40 reprints – the best sellers are reprinted every two years. A book that sells well reaches a thousand copies during this period. In the acceptance phase of a work, we also estimate its cover price: when submitting a book, the proposer must list two or three similar ones that are already on the market; If the similar one costs 50 reais and his will cost 200, it is an aspect that makes it unviable.”
Márcia Abreu warns of some publishers that, although they claim to be academic, are called “predatory publishers”, who harass professors via emails, charging a sum for printing and promising delivery of the book within a month. “As a professor at IEL [Institute of Language Studies], I have already received a message asking for an improvement in the rankings, in exchange for 600 reais for five copies: one for Capes, another for the National Library (it is mandatory), the third for the institute's library and the last two for the author – it's a trick to gain a point in the evaluation system.”
The director considers it important to make this distinction because predatory publishers end up mixing with university publishers. “There’s nothing like that here. Sometimes a more uninformed person asks how much it costs to publish a book, but Editora da Unicamp is not a printing company. The author needs to fill out a form providing a series of information about their work, which will be evaluated by the Editorial Board made up of experts in various areas of knowledge – and ours is very representative, with people from engineering, physics, education, history, biology, literature and including a lawyer as an external member.”
If the Editorial Board accepts the book, continues Márcia Abreu, it is forwarded to two reviewers who are experts on the topic. “Opinions must be substantive, not a simple 'ok'. If one opinion is positive and the other negative, we can request a third reviewer, or return the book to the author, who has a deadline to discuss it with the negative reviewer and, if necessary, make reconsiderations. It is an interesting system because the reviewer can point out gaps unnoticed by the author, such as the existence of a more recent bibliography.”
Ricardo Lima informs that one way of forwarding titles is the continuous flow, in which the author enters the Editora da Unicamp website and submits his book on any day of the year. “Another way, created in this administration, is notices for books aimed at undergraduate students, with a date and deadline for them to be written. There is a need for works for use in the classroom, not necessarily didactic, but also high-level research. As we have reference courses, a book can go directly from the Unicamp Publishing House to the federal ones in Ceará or Rio Grande do Sul. We also have teachers who have used material in their classes for years, but left it in a drawer or at the disposal of their students. students for copies, when there is a book ready for graduation.”
Edusp and Unesp
Lucas Antonio Moscato, director of Edusp, responded to the report on the eve of the second meeting of the Editorial Board, which should take place once or twice a year. “Tomorrow we will have an agenda with 14 publication proposals, through very well prepared favorable opinions, which indicate not only whether the book is good, but also bringing the analysis of several items and a lot of information about the contents. It is up to the Council to follow the opinions or not. We have representatives from the various areas of USP – which is very complete in terms of courses – and also from external people, under the presidency of jurist and diplomat Rubens Ricupero.”
Moscato informs that Edusp publishes approximately 45 titles per year, also in other languages (English, French, Spanish), as well as translations proposed by the authors into Portuguese. “Not long ago we also started a textbook program, aimed at students at USP and other institutions, and we have already published around 25 titles, with another 25 being finalized. Teachers are encouraged to produce this material, not in a monetary sense, but through substitute teachers so that they are free from other burdens that would delay the production of the book.”
Jézio Gutierre, from Fundação Editora da Unesp, does not just attribute the significant production of titles to the foundational profile in comparison with other university publishers, although he highlights three elements – or “independencies” – that he considers interesting. “Firstly, financial independence, as we do with the money what we managerially consider to be in the foundation’s interests. Administrative independence, with complete freedom in managing our business. And, the most important element, which is editorial independence: the Publisher does not, for example, publish 'cards' of academic bureaucracy, we fundamentally take into account merit, the creation of a catalog and market penetration.”
The director explains that Editora da Unesp receives subsidies for teaching publications, especially for non-profit programs, which are fully financed by the university. “As for what we call over-the-counter books, they finance themselves, the sale covers the costs. This leads to the assumption that we need to have a major presence in the market. Therefore, we very carefully and intensely preserve distribution channels, which is carried out in all states of the country. The title selection process follows identical criteria, evaluations and opinions for authors from Unesp, USP, Unicamp or another Brazilian or foreign university. Everyone competes for space on equal terms. ”
According to Gutierre, the foundation has close to 1.800 active titles and annually receives 800 publication proposals which, before reaching the Editorial Board that he himself presides, are obligatorily submitted to reviewers, with the exception of classics. “It would be strange to send it to look like a work by Plato. But the publication of classics involves other criteria, such as in relation to niches to emphasize: certain periods, authors and themes – it is important that we are not chaotic in targeting these works. We are publishing Günter (in full) and also contemporary classics such as Adorno and Habermas. It is also important to consider technical feasibility: we cannot enter fields such as the Arabic classics without extremely reliable translators.”
English titles
An important and unprecedented action by Editora da Unicamp is taking its books for publication in English, enabling them to be disseminated throughout the world. A partnership with the English publisher Springer already has four approved titles, which will also have the Unicamp seal on the cover: Grupos de Lie, by Luiz San Martin (IMECC); Capitalism and environmental collapse, by Luiz Marques (IFCH); Freud: the movement of a thought, by Luiz Roberto Monzani (IFCH); and Higher education in Latin America, by Simon Schwartzman.
The Unesp Editor, reports Jézio Gutierre, has already negotiated several titles in more than 15 countries, although it considers it an extremely thankless task for Brazilian academia. “We know that Portuguese is not a very accessible language and for both us and foreign publishers, there is no interest in increasing costs by hiring translations. And let's make it clear that the co-editors abroad do not aim to spread Brazilian culture, the objective is trivially (and healthily, nothing against) commercial. This meets the institutional objectives of our publishers and also the professional objectives of the authors selected for these programs.”
Political context
In addition to the effort to fulfill their institutional mission of disseminating knowledge produced by professors and researchers, academic publishers are now experiencing a context of attacks on public universities, and reactions differ. “The aspects attacked are of a different nature, they are not against the final academic activity”, says Lucas Moscato, director of Edusp. “The risk for university publishers is if the budget becomes very reduced to the point that they have problems maintaining themselves, a risk that I don't see, at least in the state of São Paulo – I don't know what other publishers would be like, especially the federal ones. But our role is so important and the results so significant that I see no danger. Academic publishing will remain an important sector in book publishing.”
For Gutierre, from Unesp, the attacks make one consider the academic publisher as a truly constitutive element of the university. “When the university is attacked, its entire corpus is attacked; if the mother body is crumbly, there is no chance that the publisher will survive. The only reason for the university to get involved in the editing area is for it to serve as a channel of inter-academic communication, providing its production to the scientific community as a whole and also being a focus for internalizing production from outside the university. . If the institution is depleted, there is no reason to communicate what is no longer being produced or absorbed. I can’t see strong academic publishers in weak universities.”
The issue of e-books
A frequent question asked to Márcia Abreu, director of Editora at Unicamp, is why not the e-book instead of the printed book, due to the quick accessibility, low price and greater circulation. “That is not true. Carla Fontana, assistant editor at Edusp, presented a large survey of professors, researchers and students at the Association of University Publishers, before the launch of e-books by USP. The finding was that they buy books, but not digital books. They argue that, if it is to be downloaded from the internet, it has to be free; or that there is a risk that the operating system will change and the e-book will no longer work, while the paper book will always be on the shelf.”
Carla Fontana's research, Electronic Books at the University, was part of a strategy designed by Edusp to create a catalog of digital works that effectively meets the demands of its readers and authors. A questionnaire was available to the public for a month, attracting more than 6.000 participants. Only 32% said they had already purchased electronic books, with 47% already purchasing them but downloading them for free; another 20% never purchased or downloaded. As for the disadvantages of the e-book in relation to the printed book, 59% responded that reading on a screen is tiring, 26% that they do not want to be dependent on batteries and 26% that they cannot touch the book and put it on the shelf. Another 43% highlighted the importance of the habit of annotating or highlighting book excerpts for readers of academic works.
For Lucas Moscato, director of Edusp, the electronic book worked, but not in such a high volume that it could replace any other type of publication, as mainly the distribution companies imagined. “That didn’t happen, but it is an important means of distributing books, which reaches a large audience and at a very low price – and price is an important factor for a publication to achieve its final effect. Our publisher is in this field and should continue. I, for example, buy titles electronically at very low prices or even for free, and I'm very happy to be able to have more books. And today there is an editing process that allows the book to be printed as well as electronically.”
Jézio Gutierre, from Unesp, has no doubt that digital books are here to stay, to the point where his publisher has reached an average of 45 thousand downloads in 17 countries. “It is an impressive milestone from the point of view of academic communication. There are characteristics of digital books that are unbeatable, such as immediacy and universality. But we are talking about free availability, which is different from publishing e-books as a source of income. Carla Fontana may have made use of the book Words onscreen, by Naomi Baron, which contains a compilation of all the research regarding student reception of digital publications. It is a mega survey, funded by HP and which covered Canada, the United States and part of Mexico, with devastating conclusions, among others, that more than 90% of students prefer paper books.”