Roger Horton – Chief
Executive, Academic Publishing
Stephen Carter – Group
Chief Executive
Derek Mapp – Non-Executive
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Richard
Menzies-Gow – Director of Investor Relations, Corporate Communications &
Brand
Informa Group PLC
5 Howick Place
London
SW1P 1WG
UK
November 29, 2015
Dear Messrs.
Horton, Carter, Mapp, and Menzies-Gow,
I write as a scholar who has had a
number of extremely positive and valuable professional relationships with
Ashgate as author, co-editor, reviewer, and reader. Because of the great
importance of Ashgate volumes to my field (Renaissance--or, as some prefer,
early modern--Europe), I have signed the petition urging that Ashgate be
maintained as a distinct publishing entity. I now write to you to respectfully
provide more detailed information in support of that request.
As a preliminary to more in-depth
considerations, I note the over 6,000 signatures on the petition, accompanied
by uniformly glowing comments. The petition was circulated widely not only by
individuals but by learned societies and numerous professional listservs. Those
signing are scholars, librarians, and students who read, purchase, and cite
Ashgate volumes, demonstrating Ashgate’s importance to the publishing
enterprise as well as to the intellectual enterprise in which it is engaged. Many
signatories have recommended that Ashgate be continued precisely because the
respect that it enjoys ensures strong and continued sales. It is a wiser
financial decision to continue it than to close it.
There are many reasons for the
passionate outpouring on Ashgate’s behalf. Under the expert guidance of Erika
Gaffney, Ashgate has developed one of the premier lists in early modern
studies, one that is distinguished by a hard-to-find union of quality of
scholarship, cutting-edge originality and interdisciplinarity, and quality of
physical product (illustrations, copy-editing, etc.). In addition, authors and
editors have universally had an extremely edifying professional relationship
with Erika Gaffney, who unfailingly conducts her duties at the highest
professional level and with courtesy and kindness to all, as do the other
editors and staff members of the Vermont office. As a co-editor of Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in
Early Modern Italy. Playing with
Boundaries (2014) and as author of Commerce, Peace and the Arts in Renaissance Venice. Ruzante and the
Empire at Center Stage (in press), as well as a reader and reviewer of
numerous Ashgate volumes, I developed great respect for Erika Gaffney’s ability
to discern scholarship that is at the same time original, innovative, and
well-researched. This is a refreshing and valuable change from the bifurcation
often seen between the trendy or appealing on the one side and the hide-bound
on the other.
In particular, Ashgate has provided
an important venue for younger scholars and for those engaged in emerging or
consolidating fields, especially so as university press series have been
curtailed or closed. It has made vital contributions to art history and
musicology, it has been a leader in the creation of now important and respected
fields such as women’s studies, it has been a beacon in smaller fields such as
Byzantine studies, it has been a perceptively courageous publisher of essay
collections. Finally, on a human level I note that the monograph is the
standard for tenure in many fields of the humanities and Ashgate a highly
respected venue. The closing of Ashgate will be harmful in this aspect of their
professional lives to young and innovative scholars, precisely the ones who
will be developing the future of many research fields.
Given the closing of the Burlington office despite
the July statement by Informa that Ashgate’s “experienced team and strong
brands will be highly complementary to our other major HSS [humanities and
social sciences] brand, Routledge, the world's largest English language
publisher of academic content in HSS disciplines,” we are left to wonder what
future truly awaits Ashgate under the present arrangement. One hears that the
United Kingdom office could also soon be closed. What commitment has Informa
made to the future of Ashgate and to its fundamental and vital role in
scholarship and the academic community?
In conclusion, I join thousands of
colleagues and readers in warmly encouraging you to reverse the decision to
close Ashgate’s Vermont office and to maintain Ashgate as a publisher,
primarily for the intellectual reasons that matter most to us but also for its
business wisdom. To put it in old-fashioned agricultural terms, closing Ashgate
is eating one’s seed corn, leaving none to provide a future crop either for
researchers or for publishers.
Sincerely,
Linda L. Carroll
Professor, Italian
cc. Prof. Rabia Gregory
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