Thirty years of publishing

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by Keyan G. Tomaselli

The year 2009 is witness to Critical Arts' thirtieth year of publishing. It also witnesses the first time that three issues will be published annually. (Our inexperience in the early 1980s did see the intention to publish three to four issues a year. This schedule largely failed, given our lack of capacity at that stage.) At least one of the three issues to be published annually from 2009 will be allocated to a particular theme, with guest editors being tasked to develop new approaches. The epistemological history of the journal is well documented elsewhere, so I will simply offer some comments on how we arrived at the new arrangements and publisher licensing agreements in 2005.

Critical Arts started negotiations with companies such as Sage, Edward Arnold and Blackwell at the initiative of its Indonesian/Australian editorial board member, Ien Ang, in the early 1990s. These UK-based publishers were intrigued with the journal, but none could then see a market for a regional southern publication which would need to be subscribed to and read in the North to ensure its viability. In one sense, Critical Arts was well ahead of the game in these negotiations, as the market for 'regional' journals had yet to be constituted via the electronically mediated information economy still on the horizon.

The World Wide Web later shifted the mode from paper to a primarily electronic platform, providing economies of scale and market opportunities recognised by Carfax in the late 1990s, whose visit to South Africa was sponsored by the National Research Foundation's International Office for Scientific Liaison. Robert Kriger and Abebe Zegeye were the visionaries who got the ball rolling. Another six years were to pass before the agreement was enacted, due to mergers and acquisitions which demanded due attention from Carfax, as first Routledge and then Taylor & Francis successively entered into the picture. These business developments needed to be settled before Carfax could revisit the original model and wrap up the earlier agreements with 11 South African journals, including Critical Arts. Most of the titles included in the initial bouquet are published directly by Unisa Press, whereas Critical Arts has always been, and remains, independent. Since 2005, Critical Arts has been approached by no less than three international publishers to join their stables (including one whom we had approached ten years previously), which means we must be doing something right in terms of relevance, readership and viability.

The nature of the agreement

Critical Arts is owned by Critical Arts Projects, constituted by its founding editor and associate editors (whoever they may be). In 2005, Critical Arts licensed Unisa Press to publish the journal. In turn, Unisa Press licensed Routledge for the international edition, while Unisa retained the African rights. Unisa Press edits, typesets, markets and manages the subscriber list of the journal in conjunction with Routledge.

Journals in the consortium remain editorially independent. They retain their ownership of the title--some even retain copyright. The model is based on strategic business partnerships which build capacity, permit wider dissemination, and identify income streams which should result in viability. The link with Routledge via Unisa Press helps journals to retain and enhance their respective regional identities, and to use their specific content niches to build their international profiles and impact factors.

Positioning Critical Arts for global impact and the Digital Age

* Critical Arts is proactive. In the 1980s Critical Arts set out to shape the nature of debates in the disciplines of drama and performance, cinema studies, cultural and media studies, literature, education, and so on. This was not intended as an arrogant exercise--though it was often seen to be so. Rather, we were pursuing an anti-apartheid strategy which challenged received disciplinary assumptions about the academic enterprise and its relation to the political and social hegemony. This stance attracted immediate international attention and secured (a) political legitimacy for the journal, its editors and its authors; (b) an early, sustainable subscriber base (building on that of the defunct Speak, whose subscriber list we inherited); and (c) contributions from authors internationally.

* Critical Arts tries to set disciplinary agendas. Debates initiated in the early 1980s are still being discussed in books, and theses especially. Digitisation of early issues has now revitalised access to these early debates. Our current direction is to fill the South-North relational space within an approach which retains something of the original interventionist cultural and media studies project, into which we have infused a social justice and rights dimension.

* Amongst our early authors were J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and Andre Brink, who set the initial tone and lent their global reputations to help establish the journal's early profile. Later, we worked with a number of international luminaries to continue this dynamic within the disciplines represented, amongst them Cees Hamelink, Stuart Hall and Handel Kashope Wright, who in turn attracted other luminaries such as Arvind Singhal.