Kathleen Fitzpatrick: Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy: New York University Press, New York, NY, 2011, 256 pp, $75.00, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-8147-2787-4, $23.00, Paperback, ISBN: 978-0-8147-2788-1

Pub Res Q (2012) 28:150151 DOI 10.1007/s12109-012-9271-6

BOOK REVIEW

Kathleen Fitzpatrick: Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

New York University Press, New York, NY, 2011, 256 pp, $75.00, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-8147-2787-4, $23.00, Paperback,ISBN: 978-0-8147-2788-1

Casey Brienza

Published online: 21 March 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Change is coming to scholarly publishing, one way or another, writes Kathleen Fitzpatrick in the conclusion to Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, but what form that change will take, and whether it will work for or against us, remains to be seen. The publishing industry has known this for quite a long time, of course, but Fitzpatricks declaration is notable not as one more acknowledgement of impending technological and organizational transformation. It is, rather, what precisely she means by us that makes the quoted sentence such an important and radical one.

The us of this monograph, perhaps unsurprisingly, started as me. According to Fitzpatrick, the genesis of this research was an unnamed prestigious university presss decision to reject of her rst monograph. Although the solicited referee reports were unstintingly positive, the press cited nancial exigency and declined to publish her. The newly tenured professor of media studies at Pomona College was thus awakened to a simple truth of...