Literature as a Network: Creative-Writing Scholarship in

Harriett E. Green 217

portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2014), pp. 217–238. Copyright © 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 21218.

Literature as a Network: Creative-Writing Scholarship in Literary Magazines Harriett E. Green

abstract: With the increase in undergraduate and graduate programs for creative writing at institutions of higher education in North America, literary journals and magazines now serve as leading scholarly publishing outlets and research resources for creative-writing faculty and students. This study analyzes ten years of citations from nineteen leading print and digital literary journals to examine the publication frequencies of academically affiliated writers and the representative strength of such writers in various literary genres. Through the citation analysis, the study proposes that library support of scholarship for the discipline of creative writing in literary magazines can be achieved by promoting broader discovery and user access to literary magazines in library collections and revised collection development strategies to strengthen the representation of literary journals in academic library collections.

Introduction

In 1975, there were 79 degree-granting creative-writing programs in North America.1 Today there are approximately 880 degree-conferring creative-writing programs at North American colleges and universities. The programs graduate an average of

6,000 newly minted writers every year, according to the Association of Writers & Writ-ing Programs, the professional association for creative-writing programs and authors.2 Additionally, a large majority of the 2,400 English departments in North America offer courses if not formal programs in creative writing.3 This exponential expansion in the number of programs in the field has resulted in an increased number of creative-writing faculty at institutions of higher education, many of whom have promotion and tenure considerations. As such, these statistics argue for a consideration of the scholarly activi-ties occurring in creative-writing programs: What are faculty, teachers, and students in creative-writing programs utilizing for curricula? And where are the more than 4,500 This

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Literature as a Network: Creative-Writing Scholarship in Literary Magazines 218

creative-writing teachers and faculty members publishing their works to produce schol-arship for the discipline?4

The AWP Hallmarks of a Successful MFA Program in Creative Writing notes that for creative-writing faculty, “Respected venues for publication may reside outside the usual circle of university journals and presses that publish scholarship and theory.”5 Among the most prominent of these venues for the publication of creative writing is the literary magazine.

The most frequently referred definition of the literary magazine or “little magazine” is drawn from Frederick Hoffman, Charles Allen, and Carolyn Ulrich’s The Little Magazine: A History and Bibliography, which defines the literary magazine as “a magazine designed to print artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to

the money-minded periodicals or presses.”6 As of 2010, there were 493 members of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, of which 274 were literary magazines and 55 members were online publishers.7 The last statistic is critical: the Internet and emergence of digital publishing platforms over the past two decades have resulted in the birth of open online literary journals that have marked an evolution in literary magazines.

Once considered transitory upstarts and publications of last resort, online journals are now a rapidly expanding and thriving branch of literary publishing: Many online-only journals provide open access to a rich lode of literature written by both emerging and lauded writers, and print literary journals leverage online platforms to showcase pieces from print issues, to publish wholly new content, or both.8 This expansion in the breadth and depth of literary publishing outlets, combined with the rising prominence of creative writing in academia, urges a renewed look at the role of literary journals and magazines in scholarship.

This paper analyzes a selection of leading literary journals and magazines to exam-ine the role of literary periodicals in scholarship for the discipline of creative writing. Through analysis of multiple years of compiled citation data from nineteen print and digital literary journals and magazines, this study will examine how scholarly publica-tions may appear more frequently than previously known in literary magazines, and what the publication frequencies reveal about the standings of literary journals as pub-lishing outlets for creative-writing scholars and faculty. This paper aims to ultimately examine how academic libraries can become more attuned to faculty research agendas that require publication in literary journals through reconsideration of collection devel-opment philosophies for literary magazines and enabling more effective modes of user access to literary magazines in print and digital forms.

Literature Review

The study of disciplinary scholarship as networks of academic communications has produced a substantial body of literature. Scholarly communications itself has vari-

Once considered transitory upstarts and publications of last resort, online journals are now a rapidly expanding and thriving branch of literary publishing.

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ous definitions, and Dennis Dillon defines such communications by three factors: the limited market for the authors’ content; publications for which funding sources are not principally driven by consumers; and the system of peer review, which “is the basis of faculty evaluation and is the determinant of the success or failure of an academic ca-reer.”9 These criteria can serve as a working definition for this study’s consideration of literary journals as conduits of scholarly communications for academic faculty. Studies also have examined the feasibil-ity of journals as a channel of learned communications, including as a reflec-tion of social and intellectual networks in the sciences and social sciences.10 Digital scholarly communication tools have been explored as well in recent decades, including the role of electronic journals in academic communication forums; and the role of e-mail listservs—that is, electronic mailing lists—and digital resources in the exchange of scholarly information for disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.11 Literary journals and magazines, however, have largely been absent in the dominant analyses of academic communica-tions for disciplinary scholarship.

Scholars in sociology, cultural studies, and critical theory have examined the modes of information production, networks of publication and exchange, and metrics of prestige and value in literature and the arts. Decades of work by Pierre Bourdieu and others reveal the complex social issues involved in the role of literary magazines for disciplinary schol-arship and creative production. These studies include Alisa Craig and Sébastien Dubois’s study of the influence of public poetry readings on poets’ careers and economic status, which explores the scholarly and evaluative networks within which writers operate; Katherine Giuffre’s examination of social networks of artists and art galleries; and Marc Verboord’s analysis of prestige in literary works and publications via reference works, literary prizes, and publishing houses.12 In recent years, several studies have explored “literature and art informatics,” defined by Stephen Paling as “the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their role in the creative efforts of writers and artists to cover the organization and dissemination of literary and artistic works.”13 While these studies are primarily focused on the impact of technology on practices in literary publishing, Paling’s studies of the uses of information technology by editors and literary authors reveal the changing nature of publication for literary journals and magazines.14

Otherwise, limited library and information science research has addressed the pres-ervation and discoverability of alternative magazines. A few studies have dealt with the curation and accessibility of e-zines and similar online publications in libraries. Others have described a metadata schema—a labeling, tagging, or coding system to improve retrieval of information, such as an index of new literary works.15 And several studies have examined literary magazine publishing itself, including a study of the sustainability of leading periodicals and literary magazines, and features in library and information science journals on literary artists and presses.16

Literary journals and magazines, however, have largely been absent in the dominant analyses of academic communications for disciplinary scholarship.

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This body of literature has created a context in which to examine the current repre-sentations of the academic community in literary journals, and how their publications in these magazines relating to a field of academic study influence the role of literary magazines in library collections. As such, the following analysis of citation data begins to explore how frequently academically affiliated writers publish their disciplinary scholarship in literary journals.

Methods

Data Set

This study analyzes citations from a selection of nineteen literary journals and magazines, consisting of seventeen primarily print periodicals and two online-only publications. For the selection of periodicals in this analysis, a literary journal is defined, in Paling’s words, as “a serial publication that has an editorial review process and features primarily literary work, e.g., poetry, fiction, and essays. It may also feature artwork, audio, video, or multimedia works.”17 Bibliographic citations were compiled for works published in the following journals from 2000 to 2010: Antioch Review, Callaloo, Chicago Review, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Salmagundi, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, and TriQuarterly (through 2009). Cita-tions also were collected from two Web-based literary journals, Blackbird and The Cortland Review, for works published from 2006 to 2012. Citations for the primarily print literary journals were downloaded from Thomson Reuters’s Web of Science database index. Citations for the two Web-based literary journals were gathered and indexed manually by the author.

Methodology

The bibliographic citation data were analyzed for each journal and across the entire sample set of citation data by works and by authors, specifically:

• The percentage of total published works by academically affiliated authors com-pared to those by nonacademic authors;

• The percentage of works by academically affiliated authors as divided by the four major types of works published in literary journals: poetry, fiction, articles, and reviews or commentary;

• The percentage of authors with academic affiliations versus nonacademics;• The percentage of academically affiliated authors published within the categories

of poetry, fiction, articles, and reviews or commentary.

Academically affiliated authors were identified in the data by two methods: For the cita-tions retrieved from Web of Science, the full bibliographic citation reports included an organization field that listed institutional affiliations for each author where applicable. Citation reports were also generated for tabulated lists of academic institutions pub-lished in each journal, and these lists were analyzed to identify educational institutions predominantly represented in the journals. For the two digital journals, institutional

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affiliations listed in the authors’ biographical summaries were manually gathered with the bibliographic citations. Given the differing time periods and disparate number of records among the seventeen primarily print journals and two online-only journals, the two sets of citations were analyzed separately and are presented here as separate analyses before being compared together.

The Web of Science citation records for the primarily print journals provided the number of works, or “records,” that were published in the journals. Web of Science only parsed authors by records, and multiple authors for one work were clustered together. As will be explained in the paper, adjustments in analysis were conducted to account for this formatting of the data.

Analysis

Analysis of Works

The number of published works by academics can reveal the representative strength of academically affiliated authors in the literary journals. To assess the representation of such authors through the works published, the citation data were analyzed per year and as cumulative averages for each journal. Per year, the per-centage of published works by academically affiliated authors varied widely among the print journals (see Table 1). The journal with the most consistently high percentage of works by authors from academic institutions was Callaloo, with at least 40 percent of its published works every year authored by writers who held positions in higher education. Other journals with notably high publication rates overall for works by academically affiliated authors were Michigan Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, and Kenyon Review, which had at least 25 percent of their published works written by each year by authors who held academic positions. Salmagundi and Southern Humanities Review also were among the journals with relatively strong representation of works by academically affiliated authors, with only one year when less than 20 percent of the works published were by such authors.

The averaged publication rates of works by academically affiliated authors among the journals produced a similar distribution (see Figure 1). The five journals in the sample that published the highest average percentage of works by authors holding academic positions between 2000 and 2010 were Callaloo at an average of 60 percent, Michigan Quarterly Review at 51 percent, Shenandoah at 45 percent, Salmagundi at 42 percent, and Kenyon Review at 39 percent. The five journals in the sample with the lowest average percentages of works by academically affiliated authors were Literary Review and Chicago Review with averages of 23 percent, North American Review with an average of 19 per-cent, Paris Review at 16 percent, and Sewanee Review at 13 percent. Yet the majority of the publications—including Southern Humanities Review, Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and Salmagundi—averaged moderate percentages of works by academically affiliated authors, with significantly higher publication rates of such authors’ works in some years and notably lower percentages of works in other years.

The journal with the most consistently high percentage of works by authors from academic institutions was Callaloo.

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Tabl

e 1.

Publ

icat

ion

Perc

enta

ges o

f Wor

ks b

y Ac

adem

ical

ly A

ffilia

ted

Auth

ors b

y Ye

ar, 2

000–

2006

Year

20

00

2

001

200

2

2

003

200

4

2

005

200

6

2

007

200

8

2

009

201

0

Ant

ioch

Rev

iew

24

%

28%

25

%

26%

27

%

21%

12

%

20%

34

%

31%

25

%C

alla

loo

56%

60

%

57%

47

%

66%

66

%

50%

48

%

61%

69

%

78%

Chi

cago

Rev

iew

12

%

33%

4%

15

%

8%

28%

25

%

26%

34

%

34%

36

%G

eorg

ia R

evie

w

29%

4%

27

%

15%

24

%

12%

34

%

37%

37

%

67%

45

%H

udso

n Re

view

15

%

12%

20

%

25%

27

%

10%

5%

24

%

16%

26

%

36%

Ken

yon

Revi

ew

61%

40

%

37%

32

%

32%

32

%

39%

32

%

38%

50

%

36%

Lite

rary

Rev

iew

31

%

25%

29

%

21%

19

%

15%

17

%

14%

26

%

42%

16

%M

assa

chus

etts

Rev

iew

30

%

31%

34

%

48%

40

%

32%

36

%

28%

31

%

46%

51

%M

ichi

gan

Qua

rter

ly R

evie

w

61%

50

%

61%

58

%

47%

40

%

58%

33

%

47%

61

%

42%

Nor

th A

mer

ican

Rev

iew

8%

29

%

26%

28

%

16%

13

%

10%

18

%

20%

17

%

19%

Paris

Rev

iew

21

%

16%

19

%

15%

16

%

2%

18%

5%

19

%

27%

16

%Pl

ough

shar

es

41%

33

%

29%

37

%

28%

28

%

24%

3%

34

%

30%

39

%Sa

lmag

undi

36

%

31%

44

%

64%

51

%

37%

42

%

17%

42

%

41%

55

%Se

wan

ee R

evie

w

49%

42

%

50%

32

%

40%

24

%

38%

54

%

46%

50

%

71%

Shen

ando

ah

41%

40

%

31%

37

%

39%

39

%

36%

36

%

38%

27

%

18%

Sout

hern

Hum

aniti

es R

evie

w

12%

10

%

8%

21%

25

%

6%

22%

7%

13

%

6%

16%

TriQ

uart

erly

30

%

43%

4%

18

%

6%

19%

24

%

31%

30

%

33%

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The citation records were also analyzed by four major types of works: poetry, fiction or creative prose, articles, and reviews or commentaries. The first three categories were predefined in the Web of Science data, and the latter category of “reviews or commen-taries” is the combination of citations for book reviews and editorial material. By genre, the representation of works by academically affiliated authors significantly fluctuated per genre (see Figure 2). Across all journals, the lowest percentages of works by authors holding academic positions were in citations for poetry and for fiction or creative prose. A few journals had relatively strong representations of such authors, including Callaloo’s publication of 49 percent of poetry and 54 percent of fiction or creative prose works; Shenandoah with 38 percent of poetry works and 43 percent of fiction or creative prose works; Michigan Quarterly Review with 35 percent of the poetry and 39 percent of the fiction or creative prose works; and Ploughshares with 35 percent of its poetry and 32 per-cent of its fiction or creative prose works written by authors from academic institutions.

As such, the highest percentages of works by academically affiliated authors were in the genres of articles and of reviews or commentaries. In the analysis, the percent-age of works in this category by authors in higher education was often close to equal or slightly higher than those written by nonacademic authors. In some cases, the ratio was strikingly high, especially when compared to the poetry and the fiction or creative prose percentages. In the Southern Humanities Review, 48 percent of the published articles and 77 percent of the published reviews and commentaries were by academically af-filiated authors, compared to 2 percent of the published works of poetry. Other notable

Figure 1. Yearly publication rates of works by academically affiliated authors in the print journals

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examples are the Massachusetts Review with 56 percent of its articles written by authors from academic institutions, compared to 29 percent of published fiction or creative prose works; and TriQuarterly with 41 percent of its published articles by academically affiliated authors, compared to 25 percent of the published fiction or creative prose. The reasons for these imbalances partly lie in the raw numbers of works published: For example, the Southern Humanities Review citations contained only 7 works of poetry written by authors holding academic posts out of a total of 434 published pieces of poetry, which contrasts to the 34 articles by academically affiliated authors from a total of 71 published articles. These numbers also reveal a distinct difference in the numbers of works published for each genre: every journal had far higher numbers of published poetry and fiction pieces than published essays and book reviews. Thus the significant difference ratios of publication by genre may lie in the limited publication of articles and of reviews and commentaries, and the higher representation of academically affiliated authors in these more formal genres.

The numbers of published works, however, certainly do not provide the full picture of representation of academically affiliated authors in literary journals. The gathered citation data often included multiple citation records for one author, for example, an author who published multiple poems in one issue. Some writers also are published far more frequently than others, a statistical factor that may result in a slight overrepre-sentation of nonacademic authors versus academically affiliated authors in the data set. These factors augment the need to count the number of published individuals and thus determine the representation of authors from academic institutions as individual writers.

Figure 2. Publication rates of works by academically affiliated authors by journal and genre

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To calculate the number of authors, the data from the full Web of Science records were processed in Excel and parsed down to the individual authors, their listed institu-tional affiliations, the genre of each work published, and the year of publication for each work. Then multiple works by an author during one year were eliminated as duplicates.

The percentage of academically affiliated authors published in the journals reflected similar representation to the percentage of the published works by such authors (see Figure 3). The journal with the highest average percentage of academically affiliated authors was Callaloo, with an average of 61 percent of its authors from academic in-stitutions. The lowest was Paris Review, with an average of 14 percent of academically affiliated authors (see Figure 4). Across the entire sample, most publications had overall averages of 30 to 40 percent of their authors holding academic posts. When the percent-ages are examined per year, the journals’ proportion of academically affiliated authors fluctuated; in some of the journals, the percentage of such authors markedly increased in the later years of the sampled citation data (see Table 2). The five journals with the most significant upticks in the publication of academically affiliated authors included the Hudson Review with a 32-point increase from 8 percent in 2006 to 40 percent in 2010; the Paris Review with a 19-point jump from 5 percent in 2006 to 24 percent in 2009; and the Chicago Review with a 31-point increase from 9 percent in 2004 to 42 percent and 38 percent in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Across the sampled citation data, however, the percentages of published academically affiliated authors were similar to the percentages of published works by academics.

Figure 3. Average percentages of academically affiliated authors in print journals from 2000 to 2010

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When analyzed by genre, the percentages of individual academically affiliated authors were again similar to percentages of their works published in each genre (see Figure 5). Journals published the highest percentages of such authors in the categories of articles and of reviews or commentary. A number of journals had notably high numbers of academically affiliated authors in these genres, including Callaloo, with more than 70 percent of its authors who wrote articles and 68 percent of its writers of reviews and commentary holding academic positions; in the Southern Humanities Review, 81 percent of the authors of reviews or commentary and 48 percent of the article authors were academically affiliated; and 62 percent of authors of articles and 57 percent of authors of reviews in the Massachusetts Review held academic posts.

But while the genres of poetry and of fiction or creative prose still had lower per-centages of academically affiliated authors represented, several journals had markedly more equal numbers of academic and nonacademic authors across all genres, especially when compared to the number of works published. Approximately 40 to 50 percent of Shenandoah’s writers in every genre were academically affiliated; Kenyon Review writers were academically affiliated 35 to 45 percent of the time across all genres; and at least 25 percent of writers in every genre for North American Review held academic positions. Overall, the notable percentages of academically affiliated authors in the genres of articles and of reviews or commentaries suggest that academics have made the deepest inroads in what might be characterized as the most formal sections of literary journals. This representation is particularly notable in literary publications with strong editorial ties

Figure 4. Percentage of academically affiliated authors by literary genre

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Tabl

e 2.

Publ

icat

ion

Perc

enta

ges o

f Aca

dem

ical

ly A

ffilia

ted

Auth

ors b

y Ye

ar, 2

000–

2006

Year

20

00

2

001

200

2

2

003

200

4

2

005

200

6

2

007

200

8

2

009

201

0

Ant

ioch

Rev

iew

31

%

36%

43

%

31%

36

%

30%

16

%

31%

44

%

31%

32

%C

alla

loo

57%

60

%

66%

52

%

69%

65

%

49%

53

%

51%

75

%

68%

Chi

cago

Rev

iew

17

%

38%

7%

15

%

9%

31%

28

%

34%

34

%

42%

38

%G

eorg

ia R

evie

w

41%

32

%

27%

17

%

23%

13

%

32%

39

%

41%

52

%

45%

Hud

son

Revi

ew

14%

17

%

30%

23

%

30%

14

%

8%

24%

24

%

27%

40

%K

enyo

n Re

view

39

%

37%

37

%

34%

29

%

29%

37

%

40%

38

%

47%

41

%Li

tera

ry R

evie

w

46%

24

%

24%

15

%

21%

15

%

18%

17

%

22%

33

%

15%

Mas

sach

uset

ts R

evie

w

31%

31

%

38%

46

%

40%

33

%

35%

30

%

33%

42

%

43%

Mic

higa

n Q

uart

erly

Rev

iew

58

%

54%

57

%

55%

46

%

43%

56

%

36%

46

%

62%

47

%N

orth

Am

eric

an R

evie

w

8%

28%

26

%

28%

15

%

13%

9%

17

%

20%

15

%

18%

Paris

Rev

iew

16

%

16%

18

%

16%

19

%

5%

7%

5%

16%

24

%

14%

Plou

ghsh

ares

37

%

36%

29

%

39%

26

%

28%

25

%

43%

32

%

34%

35

%Sa

lmag

undi

36

%

31%

40

%

61%

49

%

37%

33

%

17%

40

%

40%

55

%Se

wan

ee R

evie

w

21%

15

%

11%

20

%

32%

9%

27

%

10%

11

%

9%

15%

Shen

ando

ah

42%

48

%

50%

33

%

42%

27

%

42%

53

%

54%

52

%

56%

Sout

hern

Hum

aniti

es R

evie

w

40%

36

%

37%

38

%

35%

40

%

34%

31

%

39%

26

%

21%

TriQ

uart

erly

29

%

45%

5%

24

%

10%

28

%

34%

41

%

40%

30

%

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14.2.


to universities and academic settings, such as Callaloo, Ploughshares, Southern Humanities Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review.

These tabulations might be considered a more accurate representation of academi-cally affiliated authors in literary journals, as this analysis counted each individual who placed at least one work in the literary journals. As such, the representation of authors from universities and other academic institutions in literary journals is slightly stronger than direct publication records might suggest. The representation of such authors can be further explored in the digital journals that are rapidly establishing a major role in literary publishing.

The advent of born-digital literary journals over the past two decades has opened even more rich avenues of publication and prominence for creative-writing faculty and students. For this study, two online literary journals were analyzed as a sampling of digital literary journals: Blackbird and The Cortland Review were selected for being among the longest-running and most highly regarded digital literary journals in publication today. Approximately six years of citations were collected manually and analyzed for the years 2006 through 2012. In these Web-based literary journals, the percentage of academically affiliated authors among the published works and authors was highly similar to the print journals.

The yearly percentages of academically affiliated authors compared to nonacademic authors published in these journals were comparable to the print journals (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Percentage of academically affiliated authors published in digital literary journals between 2006 and 2012

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Blackbird contained a stronger representation of academically affiliated authors compared to The Cortland Review, as there were only two years when less than 40 percent of its published authors held academic appointments. On average over the six-year period, 41 percent of Blackbird’s authors have held academic posts, while The Cortland Review had an average of 29 percent.

The journals’ citations were also analyzed by genre. Given the diverse types of works that online journals publish, five genres were identified for this analysis: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, book reviews, and art (which included video, photography, and multimedia). The compiled citations were manually indexed by these identified genres, and then were analyzed per works and per authors by the totals of the six-year span. The percentages by works and by authors were essentially identical, and of the two, Blackbird was more evenly distributed: academic authors comprised 47 percent of its published authors of poetry, 51 percent of the authors of nonfiction, 32 percent of fiction authors, and 32 per-cent of producers of art. The Cortland Review published academic authors as 33 percent of the nonfiction authors, 30 percent of the poetry authors, 21 percent of fiction authors, and 17 percent of the reviews.

The citations for the Web-based literary journals were combined with the print journals’ citations to identify the publications with the overall highest representations on average of academically affiliated authors (see Figure 6). The five journals with the highest representations of academic authors were Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Blackbird, and Salmagundi, respectively. On average, at least 40 percent of the published authors in each of these journals were affiliated with academic institutions.

Figure 6. Percentages of academically affiliated authors in both print and online journals

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The total citations were also analyzed for the most frequently represented institu-tions in this sampling of literary journals. The leading institutions were the University of Michigan, with 165 authors published between 2000 and 2010, followed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with 109 authors, the University of Virginia with 94 authors, and the University of Massachusetts with 91 authors. Yet the tabulations pre-sented here are but one way to display how academic authors are represented among the journals, and graphic visualizations of the citation data can present a different perspective.

Visualizations

Visualizations also offer a way of analyzing the publication rates of academically affili-ated authors. For this study, visualizations were generated to show which institutions and journals contained the highest representations of authors with academic affiliations and the percentages of academically affiliated authors who published in each genre of work. Two types of visualizations were generated: bubble graphs, which show values and amounts as circles of different sizes and in different places in relation to the hori-zontal and vertical axes; and tree maps, which display data as a set of nested rectangles.

A bubble graph was created to analyze the journals by the percentages of academi-cally affiliated authors published in them (see Figure 7). Callaloo is the most prominent with 61 percent of its published authors from academic institutions, followed by Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, and Blackbird. The bubble graph reveals that in the sampled citation data, there are two tiers of journals for academic representation. The top third of the journals have an average representation of academically affiliated authors of at least 30 percent or higher, while the bottom third of the journals have representations in percentages of mid-twenties and lower and are smaller circles.

The tree map visualization (Figure 8) displays the total representation of academi-cally affiliated authors and nonacademic authors as divided among the four major genres analyzed in the citation data: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and reviews. The data for this visualization were generated through combining all the citations for works published and then calculating the proportions of authors by academic affiliation and genres. The most prominent group is nonacademic poetry at 37 percent, with academic poetry being the second largest grouping at 16 percent.

One interesting result is that the fourth largest area is nonacademic reviews at 9 percent, which is three percentage points higher than academic reviews. This is notable because in the earlier analyses of individual journals, academically affiliated authors frequently equaled or outnumbered nonacademics in the authorship of articles and reviews or commentaries. The reason may lie in the fact that some journals, such as the Paris Review and North American Review, had very low percentages of works by authors from academic institutions, including articles and reviews and commentaries. Thus when all of the citations from all journals are combined, the strong and weak representations of academic authors balance out; in the end, nonacademic authors still outnumber aca-demically affiliated authors by one to three percentage points.

When calculated in aggregate, nonacademic authors make up 67 percent of the authored works in the four major genres, while academic authors make up 33 percent. The less than 1 percent not reflected in this graph are the artworks and multimedia

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Figure 7. Bubble graph showing the percentages of academically affiliated authors published in the journals as circles of different sizes

Figure 8. Tree map showing the representation of academically affiliated authors and nonacademic authors among the four major genres

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pieces also published in the journals. These visualizations offer an alternative method of viewing the compiled citation data, and they provide perspectives on how significantly academically affiliated authors are represented in the leading literary journals, and in which journals such authors are most heavily concentrated.

This analysis presents a case for the existence of a not-insignificant representation of academically affiliated authors in literary magazines and journals. With this evidence, how should libraries respond to this expanding publication sector for scholarship in academic disciplines?

Discussion: Users of Literary Magazines in the Library

Collections Access

The frequency of academically affiliated authors’ publications in this study’s sampling of literary journals suggests that library holdings of such journals are critical for facilitating scholarship related to the discipline of creative writing. For this discussion, the operating definition of a collection will be “an accumulation of information resources developed by information professionals intended for a user community or a set of communities.”18 The

act of building collec-tions is a “value-laden” activity, and as Michael Buckland notes, “If col-lection development is seen as deciding which items to privilege, then the need for those with that ability would ap-pear to increase as a local

paper collections diminish relative to networked electronic collections.”19 Thus despite the fluidity of the digital environment, there still is a strong need for library collections to acquire carefully selected materials to indicate to users the particular scholarly value of certain periodicals and research resources.20

In studies of serials collection development, the most dominant metrics for evaluating serials collections are concerned with economic efficiency and usage information such as usage statistics, citation analyses, and cost analyses. Notable studies include the six cost models for electronic and print journal access in the University of California system, a value score system developed by Jason Dewland and Jessica Minhan for evaluating journals based on usage and cost, and the usage factor project developed for libraries in the United Kingdom that consolidates regular access statistics with other factors to evalu-ate usage of digital journals.21 For literary magazines and journals, however, economic metrics do not provide an adequate picture of journal usage and other patron needs for these materials. Rather, the concept of a collection as a user-centered environment may provide a better framework for developing literary magazine and journal collections.

The user community is critical to shaping the collection, as a number of recent stud-ies argue, and the collection “developers” must consider how users will interact with

The frequency of academically affiliated authors’ publications in this study’s sampling of literary journals suggests that library holdings of such journals are critical for facilitating scholarship related to the discipline of creative writing.

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the items.22 As such, a usable collection should be oriented around users’ behaviors and needs, and must interact with other materials as well.23

The consideration of user engagement with the materials has already proved to be an effective guide for building library collections of zines. A zine is an inexpensively produced, self-published or online publication often devoted to an unconventional or specialized subject. Zines are similarly complex to literary magazines in their creative content and nontraditional format. Several studies have examined strategies for collect-ing alternative press publications and zines in libraries, including donations from users, building library connections with the alternative press communities and vendors, and purchasing individual issues where available.24 While literary magazines are often easier to find than zines, librarians can employ similar strategies to critically engage users and the local communities in efforts to acquire and integrate print and digital literary journals into their collections.

The integration of open-access digital literary magazines is a particularly challenging issue that must be considered and addressed. Studies on the integration of free and open-access journals into library collections suggest that there is a rich corpus of open-access scholarly publications that libraries need to catalog and index. Collection development criteria can be equally applied to select open-access digital literary journals for the collection, and through the use of online records and Web links, libraries can provide patrons with opportunities to use open-access digital journals through their collections.25

In this work to integrate digital and print literary journals into collections, sustain-ability and preservation are especially critical given the ephemerality of little magazines both in print and digital form. In an analysis of the stability of e-zines, Jen Stevens proposes a predictive model that offers useful criteria for evaluating digital literary journals in collection development and cataloging for a library collection.26 Other studies on cataloging and preserving zines in library collections also shed light on how unique strategies can be pursued for ensuring the sustainability of nontraditional periodicals in circulating library collections.27 Strategies for interdisciplinary collection development also can inform the acquisition of literary journals, including broad needs assessments of user and information models that reflect the journal usage and research workflows of faculty and students.28

In light of these models and analyses, librarians can begin to formulate strategies for the incorporation of literary magazines and journals into collections. Yet after liter-ary magazines and journals are integrated into the holdings, another challenge remains: how to facilitate user discovery and access to the materials.

Discovery

Literary magazines and journals long have lacked exposure in established research resources when compared to scholarly journals from other disciplines and specializa-tions in the humanities. Of the major humanities bibliographies and research indexes, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) and the MLA [Modern

There is a rich corpus of open-access scholarly publications that libraries need to catalog and index.

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Language Association] International Bibliography both index well-established literary and arts journals such as Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, Salmagundi, and Hudson Review; while Humanities International Complete, a database that includes all data from the Humanities International Index, also contains a selection of newer journals such as Tin House. But given that there are currently 918 listings in the Poets & Writers Literary Magazines and Journals Database, there is a large segment of journals that academics still need to access for scholarly communications and publishing, but may not find through standard indexes and bibliographies.29 Thus a need exists for better user access to literary magazines and journals.

There are several independent indexes for literary journals and magazines: the most authoritative and accessible sources are the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ CLMP Literary Press and Magazine Directory on the Web and in print, The International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses, and the Poets & Writers’ Literary Magazines and Journals Database that is openly available online.30 There are other Web sources as well, including the commercial database Duotrope and Web sites such NewPages.com.31 While resources such as the Literary Press and Magazine Directory are mainstays of library reference collections, these should not be the only discovery tools for faculty and students who publish in literary magazines. Studies on how libraries can enhance discovery and access to digital resources and alternative press publications may reveal insights for enhancing availability and use of literary magazines.

In efforts to identify how academic communities ideally should access scholarly resources today, studies have examined the reading behaviors of academics with jour-nals and identified the leading digital tools they use for accessing periodical literature, such as Google Scholar.32 Studies also have examined methods for improving access to online journals, and a number of studies have examined user finding and retrieval of journal literature through Web-scale discovery systems and new catalog interface tools.33

Yet literary journals contain amalgamations of creative and multi-formatted content that pose complex challenges for cataloging and indexing, as examined in Tom Murphy’s study of indexing fiction and poetry, and Paling’s examination of improving the index-ability of literary texts by using fuzzy sets, an extension of the mathematical concept of set theory in which members belong to a set to a greater or lesser degree.34 As noted earlier,

the challenges of literary journals’ complex content and format are similar to zines, and studies of cataloging processes for zines also can serve as potential models for discovery and access of literary magazines. Libraries have adopted diverse strategies for enabling access to zines beyond catalog entries, such as cataloging zines in separate databases, creating special subject lists, processing zines

as archival materials, and shelving them in easily accessible file folders and archival boxes for circulation among patrons in the building.35 Rowena Koh also considers the challenges in facilitating discovery and access to print and online alternative literature, with an analysis of various subject headings assigned to zines and a proposal to create online guides with links to e-zines.36

Literary journals contain amalgamations of creative and multi-formatted content that pose complex challenges for cataloging and indexing.

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As evidenced in these studies, there are many different possibilities for enabling access to literary magazines and journals comparable to that for traditional scholarly publications from established disciplines. Libraries must evaluate the discovery mod-els for their collection and strategize ways to integrate literary journals, which could include explicit addition of literary magazines into database indexes. Libraries might also urge the aggregators who offer packages of content from many sources to include literary journals more prominently.

Libraries’ support of disciplinary scholar-ship in literary magazines through improved discovery tools and reconfigured collection de-velopment strategies will pivot upon selections of literary journals and magazines determined to have especially critical scholarly value. Authoritative sources such as the MLA International Bibliography and Literary Magazines and Presses Directory provide reliable guidance for initial decisions in reconfiguring collection content and access, but the notably fluid nature of publication venues for literature and art may require new and hybrid strategies for monitoring scholarly com-munications in creative writing.

Future Research and Conclusion

Literary Information Science]

This analysis of publications by academically affiliated authors in literary magazines ultimately seeks to respond to issues raised concerning information networks in literary publishing and the work practices of authors and editors. These studies shed light on future avenues of study for the disciplinary scholarship in literary journals and maga-zines. In particular, the theory of intensifying use of technology (IUT) in writing and editorial practices proposed by Paling has implications for the evolving role of digital and print literary magazines for scholarship in academic disciplines.37 According to this theory, producers in creative genres often use new technology to produce highly in-novative poetry, fiction, and other work. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of markers of “consecration” to define prestige in literary world, Paling and his coauthors examine how “IT by itself cannot change human values. However, by creating new artistic possibilities, IT makes it possible for authors to create new literary practices that can become new standards of value.”38 The rise of open-access digital periodicals in literary publishing will have significant impact on the scholarly practices for creative-writing faculty in literary publications. The two digital journals examined in this study, Blackbird and Cortland Review, notably feature audio recordings, video essays, and other multimedia features that are nearly impossible to convey in the print medium. As such, future studies might explore the types of works that creative-writing faculty members

Libraries must evaluate the discovery models for their collection and strategize ways to integrate literary journals.

Producers in creative genres often use new technology to produce highly innovative poetry, fiction, and other work.

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are publishing in these digital venues and the consequent implications for scholarly publishing in these disciplinary areas.

Conclusion

Future analyses of disciplinary scholarship published in literary journals and magazines also must take into account several other challenging factors for data gathering and analy-sis. As noted earlier, online literary magazines are a rapidly expanding, yet all too often ephemeral, publication universe. Many journals are not indexed in standard humanities bibliographies, yet these publications must be accounted for in future analyses that ex-

amine larger data sets than the data presented here. Citation references and coauthoring are infrequent for most works published in literary magazines, such that possible analyses of creative-writing fac-ulty publications may require different strategies than standard bibliometric studies. But with the ap-propriate data sets, analyses could be conducted to identify the networks of scholarly communications

and prestige in literary publishing for scholarship in academic disciplines.Katherine Swiggart notes that “the challenge for online journals, and for print jour-

nals seeking to diversify, is how to establish credibility. For some, this credibility has to do with maintaining the editorial standards set by their print counterparts. For others, credibility depends on originality and innovation.”39 This issue of credibility lies at the heart of knowledge creation: Critical acceptance for literary magazines and journals has been built by their immense contributions to the field of literature, and today, literary jour-nals serve the scholarly aims for writers in academe as they seek promotion and tenure.

In this initial examination of how literary journals are be-coming publication outlets for disciplinary scholarship, this early analysis suggests that discovery tools and collections access to liter-ary journals and maga-zines must become a critical consideration for research library services and resourc-

es. Literary journals, in print and increasingly digital forms, ultimately are a key facet in the changing scholarly communications landscape for the humanities.

Harriett E. Green is the English and digital humanities librarian and an assistant professor of library administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; she may be reached by e-mail at: [email protected].

Critical acceptance for literary magazines and journals has been built by their immense con-tributions to the field of literature, and today, literary journals serve the scholarly aims for writers in academe as they seek promotion and tenure.

Online literary magazines are a rapidly expanding, yet all too often ephemeral, publication universe.

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Notes

1. Association for Writers & Writing Programs, AWP Director’s Handbook: Guidelines, Policies, and Information for Creative Writing Programs (Fairfax, VA: Association for Writers & Writing Programs, 2012), 104.

2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Association for Writers & Writing Programs, Association for Writers & Writing Programs

Strategic Plan 2010–2020 (Fairfax, VA: Association for Writers & Writing Programs, 2012), 5. 5. Association of Writers & Writing Programs, AWP Hallmarks of a Successful MFA Program in

Creative Writing, accessed August 29, 2013, https://www.awpwriter.org/library/directors_handbook_hallmarks_of_a_successful_mfa_program_in_creative_writing.

6. Frederick J. Hoffman, Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich, The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946), 2.

7. Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, “Membership Facts,” accessed March 17, 2013, http://www.clmp.org/about/member_facts.html.

8. Gabe Habash, “Literary Magazines Adapt to the Digital Age,” Publishers Weekly (March 10, 2013): 4–5.

9. Dennis Dillon, “Hand Wringing in Paradise: Scholarly Communication and the Intimate Twinges of Conscience,” Journal of Library Administration 52, 6–7 (2012): 609–25.

10. David Minguillo, “Toward a New Way of Mapping Scientific Fields: Authors’ Competence for Publishing in Scholarly Journals,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61, 4 (2010): 772–86.

11. Rob Kling, Geoffrey McKim, and Adam King, “A Bit More to It: Communication Forums as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54, 1 (2003): 47–67; John C. Navin and Jennifer M. Vandever, “The Market for Scholarly Communication,” Journal of Library Administration 51, 5–6 (2011): 455–63; Jenny Fry and Sanna Talja, “The Intellectual and Social Organization of Academic Fields and the Shaping of Digital Resources,” Journal of Information Science 33, 2 (2007): 115–33.

12. Marc Verboord, “Classification of Authors by Literary Prestige,” Poetics 31 (2003): 259–81; Wouter de Nooy, “The Dynamics of Artistic Prestige,” Poetics 30 (2002): 147–67.

13. Stephen Paling, “Fuzzy Sets and the Organization of Literary Texts: A Conceptualization and Two-Stage Pilot Study,” Journal of Documentation 67, 4 (2011): 610–23.

14. Ibid. 15. Stephen Paling, “Technology, Genres, and Value Change: Literary Authors and Artistic

Use of Information Technology,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59, 9 (2008): 1238–51; Stephen Paling and Crystle Martin, “Transformative Use of Information Technology in American Literary Writing: A Pilot Survey of Literary Community Members,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62, 5 (2011): 947–62; Stephen Paling and Michael Nilan, “Technology, Genres, and Value Change: The Case of Little Magazines,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57, 7 (2006): 862–72.

16. Steve Black, “Failure Rates and Publication Status: Periodicals Reviewed in Library Journal (1980–2005) and Database Accuracy,” Serials Review 36 (2010): 210–13; Jen Stevens, “Long Term Literary E-Zine Stability: Issues and Access in Libraries,” Technical Services Quarterly 22, 1 (2004): 21–32; Alan May, “From Print to Online to Print,” Serials Librarian 49, 4 (2008): 125–34; Alan May, “Interview with Jake Berry, Editor of Outré, Artifact Collective Texts, Anomaly, the Experioddicist, and Currently 9th St. Laboratories,” Serials Librarian 55, 1: 296–303.

17. Stephen Paling, “Technology, Genres, and Value Change,” 1238.18. Hur-Li Lee, “What Is a Collection?” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51,

12 (2000): 1106–13.19. Michael Buckland, “6: Supplement,” Redesigning Library Services: A Manifesto, accessed

August 20, 2013, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Library//Redesigning/supplement.html.

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20. James Currall, Michael Moss, and Susan Stuart, “What Is a Collection?” Archivaria 58 (2005): 131–46.

21. Michael Cooper, “The Costs of Providing Electronic Journal Access and Printed Copies of Journals to University Users,” Library Quarterly 76, 3 (2006): 323–51; Jason Dewland and Jessica Minhan, “Collective Serials Analysis: The Relevance of a Journal in Supporting Teaching and Research,” Technical Services Quarterly 28, 3 (2011): 265–82; Oliver Pesch, “Usage Factor for Journals: A New Measure for Scholarly Impact,” Serials Librarian 63, 3–4 (2010): 261–68.

22. Hur-Li Lee, “What Is a Collection?” 1106–13.23. Tony Horava, “Challenges and Possibilities for Collection Management in a Digital Age,”

Library Resources & Technical Services 54, 3 (2010): 142–52.24. Colleen Hubbard, “DIY in the Stacks: A Study of Three Public Library Zine Collections,”

Public Libraries 48, 3 (2005): 351–54; Richard Stoddart and Teresa Kiser, “Zines and the Library,” Library Resources and Technical Services 48, 3 (2004): 191–98; Rowena Koh, “Alternative Literature in the Libraries: The Unseen Zine,” Collection Building 27, 2 (2008): 48–51; Karen Gisonny and Jenna Freedman, “Zines in Libraries: How, What, and Why?” Collection Building 25, 1 (2006): 26–30.

25. Koh, “Alternative Literature in the Libraries,” 51.26. Jen Stevens, “Long-Term Literary E-Zine Stability,” 21–32; Jen Stevens and Sarah McCord,

“Long-Term E-Zine Stability: A Predictive Model,” Technical Services Quarterly 22, 3 (2005): 29–45.

27. Stoddart and Kiser, “Zines and the Library”; Koh, “Alternative Literature in the Libraries,” 49–51; Gisonny and Freedman, “Zines in Libraries.”

28. Cynthia Dobson, Jeffrey D. Kushkowski, and Kristin H. Gerhard, “Collection Evaluation for Interdisciplinary Fields: A Comprehensive Approach,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 22, 4 (1996): 279–84.

29. Poets & Writers Literary Magazines and Journals Database, accessed August 30, 2013, http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines.

30. Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ CMLP Directory, http://clmp.org/directory/; Poets & Writers Literary Magazines and Journals Database.

31. Duotrope, accessed August 15, 2013, https://duotrope.com/index.aspx.32. Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, “Reading Behaviour and Electronic Journals,” Learned

Publishing 15, 4 (2002): 259–65.33. Steve Hitchcock, Les Carr, Stephen Harris, J. M. N. Hey, and Wendy Hall, “Citation

Linking: Improving Access to Online Journals,” in Proceedings of the Second ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries (Philadelphia: Association for Computing Machinery [ACM], 1997): 115–22; Heather Hessel and Janet Fransen, “Resource Discovery: Comparative Survey Results on Two Catalog Interfaces,” Information Technologies and Libraries 31, 2 (2012): 21–44; Carol Pitts Diedrichs, “Discovery and Delivery: Making It Work for Users,” Serials Librarian 56 (2009): 79–93.

34. Tom Murphy, “Exploring Fiction and Poetry Through Indexing,” The Indexer 23, 4 (2003): 216–17; Paling, “Fuzzy Sets and the Organization of Literary Texts.”

35. Stoddart and Kiser, “Zines and the Library.”36. Koh, “Alternative Literature in the Libraries,” 48–51.37. Alisa Craig and Sébastien Dubois, “Between Art and Money: The Social Space of Public

Readings in Contemporary Poetry Economics and Careers,” Poetics 38 (2010): 441–60.38. Paling, “Technology, Genres, and Value Change: Literary Authors and Artistic Use of

Information Technology,” 1238–51.39. Katherine Swiggart, “A Sorcery of Circuitry: Behind the Screens of Online Magazines,”

Poets & Writers 31, 5 (September/October 2003): 63–68, http://www.pw.org/content/sorcery_circuitry_behind_screens_online_magazines.

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Literature as a Network: Creative-Writing Scholarship in

Documents

Transcript of Literature as a Network: Creative-Writing Scholarship in