Monograph

“ What inducement has an author to aim at excellence, to spend three or four years on a monograph or a history that it may be sold for waste paper, when some miserable compilation, vamped up in as many weeks, will, with a little management, give him notoriety and fill his purse? ”

“ What a noble subject would be that of a monograph of a group of beings peculiar to one region but offering different species in each province of it—tracing the laws which connect together the modifications of forms and colour with the local circumstances of a province or station—tracing as far as possible the actual affiliation of the species. ”

“ It is better to have produced one solid monograph on the minutest point—better to have edited a single pipe-roll or annotated a single short chronicle—than to have accumulated for forty years unwritten learning that goes down to the grave and is lost. And I said to myself—Learn to be definite at all costs; be limited, if it is necessary, stick to a single century if it must be so, or to a single reign, but write something—knowledge not committed to paper is knowledge lost. ”

“ Who, for instance, can predict the future emergence of figures culturally neglected within their time? As with many forms of peer review, the scholarly monograph world is inclined towards a conservative model that privileges normative scholarship: work that will sell at the time of publication. ”

“ There are, broadly speaking, two types of open-access monograph project currently in existence. The first of these consists of social scientific research projects investigating economic and academico-structural changes engendered by open-access monographs. The second grouping is a band of publishers and business model intermediaries, who are either already publishing open-access books, or facilitating such action. ”

“ Although Adema and Rutten identify four groups of stakeholders, and although it is true that the object called a ‘monograph’ depends upon publishers and funders, it is clear that without scholars there would be no need for that long-form object to exist. Scholars, or academics, are writers, citers, submitters, readers, editors, reviewers and quality-control accreditors.13 That scholars are often the only primary target audience as a readership for these objects is lamentable but also renders their involvement all the more central. ”

“ Thanks are particularly due to the owners of private collections of manuscripts and newspapers, whose courtesy in opening them for research evinces the general interest felt in historical studies. Most of all, I wish to record my appreciation of the kindness of Professor Albert Bushnell Hart and Professor Edward Channing, to whose inspiration and guidance the inception and development of this monograph are chiefly to be attributed. ”

“ D. (In press)
The price for each separate monograph is for paper-covered copies; separate monographs marked with an asterisk, *, can be supplied bound in cloth, for 75c. additional.
All prices are net. ”

“ The monograph referred to was anticipated, to some extent, by publication in the "Archives des Missions Scientifiques," published by the French Ministry of Public Instruction, and is itself issued as a first part of a work which the author hopes to be able to complete under the patronage of his government. ”

“ Monographs and edited collections of essays are of course particularly important in the humanities and some areas of the social sciences; but they feature hardly at all as key outputs of research in the life sciences and physical sciences. Moves towards digital and open access publishing have been much slower here than with journal articles, and experimentation is at a much earlier stage. We consider briefly some of the issues relating to access to monographs in the following section. ”

“ Monographers, come from whence they may, have, I think, fair pretence to challenge some regard and approbation from the lovers of natural history; for, as no man can alone investigate the works of nature, these partial writers may, each in their department, be more accurate in their discoveries, and freer from errors, than more general writers ”

“ The abundance of original records, of monographs and works of detail, that have been published within the last fifty years, surpasses by far the grasp of a single mind. To work up their results into a uniform whole demands the application of the cooperative principle—a principle to which we already owe such notable achievements of historical research as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, our own Rolls Series, and the Dictionary of National Biography. ”

“ For any post-2014 Research Excellence Framework, it is a requirement that the ‘accepted and final peer-reviewed text’ of any journal article be uploaded to ‘an institutional repository, a repository service shared between multiple institutions, or a subject repository such as arXiv’ and that this be done ‘as soon after the point of acceptance as possible, and no later than three months after this date’.88 Monographs and edited collections are excluded from these requirements. ”

“ But all modes of division are not equally judicious, and, though the reverse has been maintained, there are, in history as in all the sciences, subjects which it would be stupid to treat in monographs, and monographs which, though well executed, represent so much useless labour. ”

“ The approximately 3,000 works include books, pamphlets, articles, chapters in books, exhibition catalogs, calendars and guides to manuscripts, works on library collections and book collecting, and discographies; they exclude book dealers’ catalogs, bibliographies appended to monographs, and works on the Civil War, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. Organized in a single alphabetical list by author or title of anonymous work, entries generally provide basic publication information but no annotations. ”

“ This process goes on without a break, and it is hard in any branch of history to keep pace with the stock of monographs, or illustrations of particular points, which research and industry are constantly producing. However much a writer may strive to know all that can be known, new knowledge is always flowing in. ”

“ The Proceedings, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication, in separate form, of shorter papers from the Museum of Natural History. These are gathered in volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in the table of contents of the volume.
In the Bulletin series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear longer, separate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and volumes in which are collected works on related subjects. ”

“ Historically marginalized creators often turned to publishing their works in formats other than monographs. Wikipedia lists can be useful in locating creators and works that may not have individual bibliographic records in the library catalog. ”

“ In history it often happens that the best executed monographs furnish no other result than the proof that knowledge is impossible. It is necessary to resist the desire which leads some to round off with subjective, ambitious, and vague conclusions monographs which will not307 bear them. ”

“ The second order of publications, often rarer and scientifically more valuable than the first, are the scattered monographs or pamphlets published in all manner of forms and by societies, oftentimes ephemeral and of all degrees of eminence. This second class of materials is generally richly represented in the collections of the various scientific societies, especially in the form of reprints presented by the authors. ”

“ Old chronicles and histories were re-read and re-edited; innumerable monographs on special subjects and periods were produced, and these latter were of immense service to romance writers at the time of the popularity of the historical novel. Not a few of the works, for instance, which were signed by Alexandre Dumas consist mainly of extracts or condensations from old chronicles, or modern monographs, ingeniously united by dialogue and varnished with a little description. ”

“ Take as examples Blades’ Life of Caxton and Edmond’s Aberdeen Printers, the two best monographs we possess. They contain a very great deal of most careful work, and sufficient material to enable any one who desires to study those particular subjects to do so thoroughly.
In collecting, in the same way, a beginner who wishes his collection to be of real value should not be too catholic in his tastes, but confine his attention to one subject. A collection of fifty miscellaneous fifteenth-century books has not, as a rule, more interest than may be associated with the individual books. ”

“ While acting as editor he often reserved for himself, among the independent monographs of which the work was composed, only those on subjects distasteful to his collaborators on account of their obscurity or lack of importance. ”

“ A third source of both subjects and material is the report of special studies in some field, the form of the report ranging from a paper read at a meeting to a treatise in several volumes. These reports of experiments, surveys, investigations, and other forms of research, are to be found in printed bulletins, monographs, proceedings of organizations, scientific periodicals, and new books. ”

“ Without pursuing the subject further, let me say, as one who has always endeavoured to keep the interests of the society in view, that such monographs as I have mentioned represent the practical value of its work, and show what an important sphere of usefulness is invariably open to it. ”

“ To annotate the work of Sir John Gilbert or Mr. Birket Fosterxi would require for each a volume the size of this. But as Punch, The Illustrated London News, and the Moxon Tennyson have already been the subject of separate monographs, no doubt in future years each branch of the subject that may be worth treating exhaustively will supply material for other monographs. The chief disappointment in preparing a reference-book of this class belongs to the first compiler only ”

“ It is therefore essential that the great phases of political and constitutional development be treated in monographs, each devoted to a single, limited subject and each prepared on a careful and scientific method. ”

“ Corpus and regesta-makers collect and classify for the use of others documents in which, at any rate in all of which, they have no direct interest, and are absorbed in this labour. Ordinary workers, on the other hand, only collect and classify materials useful for their individual studies. Hence certain differences arise. For example, the arrangement by subjects, on a predetermined system, which is so little to be recommended for great collections, often provides those who are composing monographs on their own account with a scheme of classification preferable to any other. ”

“ Monash University Publishing, 131
monographs, 5, 15, 21, 40, 42, 44, 48, 50, 52, 58–9, 82, 111–38
aggregation channels, 119 barriers to entry, 120 book processing charge (BPC) , 130 consortial model for, 134–5 definition of, 113 differences to journals, 120–1 economic models for open access, 130–7 freemium, 133–4 green open access for, 125 institutional subsidy of, 132–3 investigations into open-access monographs, 121–30 Knowledge Unlatched. ”

“ As the number of titles under each heading increases in number so does the opportunity and need of division. The first and most usual groups to be made are Bibliography and its companion History, and the “practical-form” groups Dictionaries and Periodicals Under countries the first grouping will be Description and Travels, History and Politics, Language and Literature, followed by Natural history, etc. For examples of further subdivisions see the longer catalogues. It is not worth while in a printed catalogue to make very minute divisions. ”

“ The catalogue, not being confined to papers in the English language, would be equally useful in every country where science is cultivated, and would find support all over the civilised world. Either from the Government, or from learned societies, or the universities, or the enterprise of publishers, or the interest of individual subscribers, or private munificence, means would, sooner or later, be forthcoming to bring the work out, and thus erect a most substantial monument to the utility of our Association. ”

“ Alston that I really have made an attempt to establish a correspondence for him.
You ought to be collecting a few books for your own use. One way of forming a small library, and which I recommend to you, is to note down the title of every book which, either from its reputation or from perusal, you may wish to possess. Make you a small memorandum book for this purpose. If they be written on loose scraps, by the time you get a dozen eleven of them will be lost. I recommend to you a new publication called the Edinburgh Review. One number is issued every three months. ”

“ I have catalogued the pictures and the china, the armour and the various curios, after a style of my own, with the history, so far as possible, of each of the masters, the date and a copy of such criticisms as have appeared in the press. The catalogues, you observe, are all written by hand.”
She pored over the vellum-bound manuscript book which he had been carrying, turning the pages, and glancing at the extracts written with great care in a stiff, clerkly handwriting. ”

“ A collection of letters is one thing, a biography another; and they do not mix well when a career abounds in incident. Letters are material for biography, as original documents are material for history; but as documents are not history, so letters are not biography. The historian and biographer by publishing virtually contract to present their readers with a digested, reasoned whole; the best expression, full yet balanced, that they can give of the truth concerning a period, or a man. ”

“ A large amount of important information is to be found in the publications of the numerous Societies formed for the purpose of supplying to their subscribers valuable works which are but little likely to find publishers. These publications have in a large number of instances added to our knowledge of history and literature considerably. The Societies have much increased of late years, but no record of the publications is easily to be obtained, since the full account given in Bohn's Supplement to Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual. ”