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Show page 14 , Spring/Summer 2003 For those who teach at a university, it's essential to get one's writing published. "That's part of my 'publish or perish' responsibilities, that I've got to get the stuff published somewhere or another," Denton said. He went on to ------------------- say that there are several different options for packaging and publishing his work. He wants the Bear River project to be a book with photos and text. The book might also be accompanied by an exhibit. "Some of the material could work its way into a Web site," Denton added. Denton went on to say that there are some uniqe difficulties in getting his work published. "My work has to be published as photographs along with text, and publishing photographs, especially color photographs, is very, very expensive," he said. "Most publishers can't take on that risk unless they've got awfully deep pockets." Sometimes he has to seek a publishing subvention, which is a financial grant to him or his publisher that usually comes from a foundation with an interest in the work. Jorde, on the other hand, hasn't had much difficulty in getting his work published. "I actually had three publishers competing for the contract for our textbook, so it was just a question of which publisher to go with," he said. "For scientific articles, it's a little bit different. With the peer-review process, occasionally you'll get a review that is just off the wall." He added that this doesn't happen very often. "I've certainly had critical reviews, reviews where I think, 'Wow, this guy was really hard on us.' If they know what they're talking about I don't mind that. It means a lot of extra work because you then have to go back and do a lot of revision, but if they know what they're talking about, often a very critical review, even a harshly critical review, can end up really improving your paper because then you go back and you improve it," Jorde said. Goldberg said he really hasn't had too much trouble getting his work published. "I have not had problems publishing my work, and have published with a variety of presses: Yale University Press, University of Illinois Press, and commercial publishers." McCance was able to turn a request for a chapter contribution into her first published textbook. "They were actually looking for people to contribute to a new textbook, and asked me if I was interested in contributing a chapter," she said. "And I said no, that we had already developed a very large syllabus for our students because we didn't find the things we wanted in a book. And I said, just kind of off the cuff, 'I'd probably do my own book/ and so that's what happened." It took six years to develop the first edition. "Right as we were going to publication, the publishers were being purchased by an international publishing company out of England," McCance said, and the publishers wanted to sell their contract. "So we contacted That's part of my 'publish or perish' responsibilities, that I've got to get the stuff published somewhere or another." their leading competitors and said, 'Would you like our book/ because we had copyright then and they kind of jumped for it," she said. Denton said that his writing was part of what he ---------------------- needed to do to achieve tenure. "The route or track of creative scholarship is what my department asked me to do when it first hired me," he said. "That was my charge, and so I guess I was successful doing it because I'm tenured and a full professor." As for how his writing relates to tenure, Jorde said, "If you don't publish you don't get tenure." Jorde had received tenure before he wrote the textbook, and has since been on the tenure committee for the school of medicine. He said that when deciding whether someone should get tenure, "It's really a combination of the number of papers, but also the quality of the journals in which they're published." He added that the quality and importance of the papers is more important than the quantity. Goldberg received tenure after he had written his first two books, and was promoted to full professor after he had written his third. Lynn Jorde |