Going with the status quo

Once again, I feel behind and at a loss for understanding how my press is going to make the foray into electronic publishing other presses are making (here I’m thinking specifically of the discussion on the AAUP listserv of SUNY’s recent successes). Wayne State University is limiting all temporary employees to one thousand working hours. Those hours are non-renewable, and once they’re up the job is supposed to be done and nobody new can be hired. This means that people (I don’t have any numbers) are losing their jobs. We at the press are fortunate in that we’ll be able to hire someone new on a permanent but part-time basis to replace one of the people we will soon be losing. We can replace one but not all.

 

These sort of changes affect everyone at the press, those who are losing paychecks especially but also those who remain to pick up the slack. The editorial, design, and production department is doubly affected. We’re losing our editorial assistant, and the journals program will be moving under our purview.

 

Our editorial assistant is a poet and an MFA and will be likely be starting a PhD program soon, so she’ll be fine. I’ll miss her and I don’t know what I’ll do with the work, but I know she’ll be OK. I have someone in mind to handle some of the cleaning and coding on a freelance basis, but initial cleanup, coding, and general prep for copyediting are awkward to freelance.

 

I’m working on the posting for someone to replace our current journals coordinator. I initially thought we might be able to merge journal editing and production with book  editing and production, but feedback from university press colleagues helped me to see the challenges with that approach, so we’re going with the status quo, and I think overall that’s a good thing, even though the status quo is much-maligned.

 

I received a lot of great responses and support, even waves of telepathic empathy, from my colleagues. That was a bright spot in confronting this change. It was depressing that I had so much company in rethinking and doing more with less, but the back-and-forth was inspiring also, especially when another editorial manager suggested I work it out in this blog I’ve been neglecting.

 

So now I have the opportunity to work with a content management system that’s in the works and also the chance to think through issues of open access and electronic publishing as they relate to journals. How I’ll manage six journals on top of my current workload and on top of the other changes and improvements I should be making I’m just not sure. Ideas?