The following article discusses the growing collaboration between the publishing industry and the academic world, written by Jessica Syme 2008.

Feel free to enter this debate by sending comments to jessicasyme@iinet.net.au

Exciting & ambiguous spaces of collaboration

Writing, Editing, Publishing, Academe

Modern universities are facing both the state and the market. Janus, a uniquely Roman deity, the god of doors and arches, was depicted on coins as facing two ways, because of his link with entrances and exits … – not an inappropriate metaphor for self-renewing universities in the rapidly changing environment of the global knowledge-based economy. Gallagher (2001)^1. Finesse, diplomacy, watching your back and your words, building bridges, not stepping on toes, counting the hours, assessing who will pay for those hours, talking to whom, when, where and how, being inside the industry, the academe, the media; being outside, freelancing, being 'reeled in' for this and that, knowing who your 'colleagues' are, defining 'work partners' or 'one academic to another', understanding moving, multiple boundaries — these skills and many more make up an essential toolkit, necessary to participate in the new – exciting & ambiguous – spaces that have emerged in the collaborative world of writers, students, academics, publishers and editors.

Continuing Gallagher's architectural metaphor, I refer to a story recently reported in the NY Times^2. about a group of architecture students who rented out a hole in the wall. They placed a mattress in a vent above the door. "Then they tried the mattress out for comfort. Not half bad! It occurred to one of them … that people might pay money to call that elevated mattress home." The students received dozens of replies to their advertisement and in the process discovered that there were many such ambiguous spaces for rent. The new architecture of collaboration being built in the spaces between/above/under/around academia and the publishing industry are oftentimes similar to these rented holes in the wall, in that, the dynamics of who owns the space and how to move into and out of that space are ill-defined, ambiguous, implicit, and corruptible.

Inside Out/ Outside In  A contemporary perception of academia is that it resides 'outside' the world. Expressions such as 'finding a job in the real world', 'inside the ivory tower', 'writing for the outside world' are familiar vocabulary. In the past decade, as universities have explored ways to generate funding, they have developed courses that strive to meet industry standards. Courses in writing, editing and publishing have emerged across the country. As in other disciplines that work collaboratively with commerce, there is a policy of employing lecturers that are "in" the industry. The publishing industry has had its own use for inside/outside argot having "in-house editors" and contracting "outside" consultants. These expressions, although not rigid lines of separation, have been markers of boundaries that represented known values and modes of operating for generations. These familiar structures, ways of working and modes of relating are breaking down. The results are both positive and negative.

Of course, there are benefits for academe to be seen as part of the world — inside the collaborative network of working, living, praying, paying people. And there are benefits for the publishing industry to be endorsed by the academic world — inside the respected loop of authority, setting the standards, providing knowledge and receiving a seal of approval. However there are problems in navigating and communicating within these new spaces. Many of these have been discussed in relation to other industry/academe collaborations e.g. Börjesson, Bruce, and Forsberg ^3. introduced the expression " tacit border"to describe the invisible, non-explicit walls that sometimes materialize in collaboration projects between industry, consulting firms and academia. They state that "These walls have to be revealed and acknowledged in order to perform better in future collaboration efforts."

Dual Identities One stated aim of the new courses is to provide ways for students to gain skills that meet industry standards. The often un-emphasized agenda is to provide university revenue from fee paying students or from their sponsors (often players in the publishing industry itself) and to provide the "industry" with a trained workforce. Lecturers who work primarily outside the academy and tenured academics who work as consultants are now operating with dual or multiple identities. Professional and popular writers, celebrity journalists, and movers and shakers in the publishing industry are being 'reeled in' to academe to work as 'associate' or 'off campus' lecturers. Conversely academics are being 'reeled in' to the publishing industry as consultants. Titles themselves have become ambiguous — 'knowledge professional', 'celebrity academic', 'industry professional' 'entrepreneurial educator'. The positives — students receive tuition from experienced industry professionals. The negatives — oftentimes convoluted, twisted communications, hidden agendas, unclear boundaries and multiple motives.Börjesson, Bruce and Forsberg suggest that "dual identities" can override perceived "truth and neutrality". So, what does it mean to have "colleagues in the industry"? Sometimes it means that top students can be plucked from courses into industry jobs - a plus for everybody concerned. It can also mean that students are taught by people who they hope will employ them, or facilitate employment for them. Sometimes it means that lecturers are in competition with students for jobs, or on the perverse side, are sometimes hoping to be given work by students. In other scenarios, lecturers and students can be publishers or have publishing connections with the power to commission publications. Unusual vents in the architecture sometimes provide comfortable opportunities, but, more often than not, these ambiguous identities create the need for a guarded communiqué. Everyone has to be careful — constantly trying not to offend incase they might need that connection later, or incase the connection leads to 'work' at another point.

Values & Assumptions: According to Börjesson, Bruce and Forsberg differences in values, assumptions and goals between academe and industry need to be made explicit for collaboration to thrive — Time: The polarized approaches of the academic world and the publishing industry in dealing with time creates disaccord when negotiating expectations for research and the integrity of the published product. Problems also arise for students dealing with the contracted lecturer. Late assignments now require an extension of the lecturer's contract into the summer break. Lecturers and students wishing to 'chat' must ask - Who is paying for these hours? Information sharing:When information means money, it is important to determine who owns the information and subsequently who can share that information? Issues of copyright have become increasingly complex with advances in electronic publishing and collaborative, interactive projects. Profile:The building of an academic profile which used to have an organic growth over the lifetime of an academic career is now placed in competition with the celebrity persona. Consequently, scholarly publishing, intimately associated with academic prestige, has experienced an unprecedented growth and precipitated a "serials crisis". ^4. As the publishing industry consolidates, large publishing conglomerates with their focus on scientific publishing are forging/forcing the direction of academic scholarship. Competition:Of course, there has always been competition in academe but can lecturers actually give grades to students that they are in competition with for work contracts? or chat to colleagues 'academic to academic' when they are competing for "outside" contracts? Can they speak clearly to a class of students about the state of the publishing industry when some of those students are noteworthy players in the publishing industry? And what of the tradition of refereeing for grants and scholarships when those refereeing are stakeholders in the collaborative project?Determining research directions: Who decides what research will be undertaken and funded? Gallagher points out that Commonwealth policy clearly states that the users of research knowledge are to have greater participation in"determining priorities for funding and performing research".

Exciting Spaces

What about the exciting bits of the new architecture? One international example of collaborative practice isThe Oxford Centre for Publishing Consultancy and Research located at Oxford Brookes University UK, which works in collaboration with the Oxford International Centre fro Publishing Studies.^5. This model of collaboration offers multi-connectivity for students, alumni, academics, researchers and international publishers. On a more local level, operating on an ARC linkage grant of $271,000 over three years, the University of Sydney has been working in collaboration with Pan Macmillan on ways to develop doctoral theses into publishable manuscripts. Pan Macmillan has undertaken to publish six titles from the program. ^6. As writers, academics and publishers become increasingly conscious of the book as a cherished artifact, morphing on screens and interactive digital devices in front of our eyes, innumerable possibilities and opportunities for collaboration emerge.

To move gracefully through the doors and arches of this new architecture, there needs to be clarity of expectations, openness, and increased sharing of information. Values and assumptions need to be made explicit. And let us not forget the superb traditions held in common by the academic world and the publishing industry that can be drawn upon for guidance  — valuing the ah, ha moment, sharing intuition, following the gut-felt instinct, bowing to the synchronicity of the creative process. Dessaix ^7. reminds us that it was the dilettante who first moved amiably between academe and commerce, the interested but disinterested professional, the true self-fashioner. It conjures images of more classic collaborative spaces — the coffee in the bookshop that isn't on anyone's clock, the mentor and the protégé, a brandy or two in the salon — and, after all, who hasn't thrown a mattress in a hole in the wall in their student days?

 References

1. Gallagher, M.  The Changing Face of Higher Education – Public policy and Commercial Reality presented at Globalisation & Tertiary Education: Impacts, Responses and Implications for the 21st CenturyThe Australian Association for Institutional Research Forum, 2001.

 2. Scott, J.  NY Times February 3, 2006.

 3. Börjessonac, Bruceab and Forsbergad Academia, Industry and Consulting firms

in Collaboration A value-based analysis of different institutions. Viktoria Institute, Sweden.

 4. Ann Okerson Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: Academic Publishing, Copyright, and other Miasmas American academy of Arts and Sciences

 http://www.amacad.org/publications/trans11.aspx#foot19

5. Dessaix, Robert. Night Letters Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 1996.

6. The Oxford Centre for Publishing Consultancy and Research located at Oxford Brookes University, UK in collaboration with theOxford International Centre for Publishing Studies

7. University of Sydney http://www.usyd.edu.au/research/news/2004/nov/26_thesis_hm.shtml