RLI 287  17 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC 2015 Part III: Long-Form Scholarship: Monographs and Scholarly Books Rikk Mulligan, ARL Program Officer for Scholarly Publishing and American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellow T he modes of traditional long-form print scholarship primarily encompass the monograph, scholarly book, critical edition, textbook, and the edited collection. In some quarters a sharp distinction is made between the monograph and the scholarly or trade book because of the differences in their respective audiences and sales figures. The historian and former provost of the University of Pennsylvania Stanley Chodorow makes this distinction by describing the monograph as a “specialized work of scholarship that provides a detailed treatment of a narrow topic within its field” that is also “the product of a large project usually carried out by an individual scholar,” while the scholarly book “is aimed at the broadest possible audience within a field and deals with general theoretical issues or offers a general explanation of a general question.” 1 For many outside the community encompassing colleges, universities, research libraries, university presses, and learned societies, the distinction between these types of books is “academic.” For those in the humanities and humanistic social sciences the monograph is the most important format of scholarly communication, yet many argue that its existence has grown increasingly endangered over the past two decades, prompting cycles of analysis, reaction, and frustration. Sometimes referred to as “the book that won’t sell,”2 monographs stimulate debates about the need to reach a larger audience (to sell more copies) and revise the peer-review process to increase use (and sales), and spark fears of further declines in print runs and the number of manuscripts accepted for publication, leading to experiments in electronic books and digital presses, and proposals for alternative forms of economic support, especially of the first-books of early-career scholars. In America both university presses and the monograph date back to the last quarter of the 19th century, although the latter has only gained prominence over the past few decades as it began to figure more heavily into the professional certification and assessment of humanities scholars.3 The form of the specialized scholarly monograph derives “inspiration from the German universities, where strong emphasis was placed on research and publication,”4 according to Joanna Hitchcock, but this form also tends to restrict its readership and limit sales because it does not usually appeal to a general audience. Yet this form of scholarship has become the gold standard for humanities scholars in the promotion and tenure process, and is sometimes considered in hiring decisions. Douglas Armato, director of the University of Minnesota Press, points out that questions about whether the monograph is overproduced, overly specialized, and has too limited an audience go back to at least the late 1920s. Yet its format was not designed to be profitable and instead relied on the “gift-economy” system of the “free” labor of scholars, Sometimes referred to as “the book that won’t sell,” monographs stimulate debates about the need to reach a larger audience (to sell more copies) and revise the peer-review process to increase use (and sales), and spark fears of further declines in print runs and the number of manuscripts accepted for publication, leading to experiments in electronic books and digital presses, and proposals for alternative forms of economic support, especially of the first-books of early-career scholars.