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Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast with Journals Director David Famiano
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:06]
B
This is periodically a UC Press Journals podcast Conversations about research and scholarship from across the UC Press Journals Portfolio Picture a landfill. You may already know one exists near you. You just don't think about it much. A researcher named Claire Cannon did think about it. For years, she compiled data on every landfill in the United States. Municipal waste, construction debris, industrial, hazardous and mapped them against the communities nearby. What she found was not random. Landfills in the US Are disproportionately located near communities of color and near households headed by women. This research was published in Elementa Science of the Anthropocene, a UC Press Journal, in 2024. It's the kind of finding that makes you stop and reconsider something you've taken for granted. And it's exactly the kind of work that rarely makes the evening news, even when it should. My name is Jessica Chestnut, UC Press Journals Manager, and this is periodically a podcast from UC Press about the research published in our journals and the authors and researchers behind it. To start, I'm joined by David Famiano, who has spent 11 years shaping the UC Press Journal's program and portfolio. Welcome.
- [01:12]
A
Thanks. It's good to be here. I'm really glad we're doing this.
- [01:15]
B
So, before we get into the research itself, I wanted to share a bit about the journals the University of California Press publishes. When someone at a dinner party asks what you do, what do you tell them?
- [01:24]
A
Yes, of course. Gosh, it feels like forever since I was actually at a proper dinner party. But yes, I think journals director isn't a super common position. I mean, in the world of publishing at large. But people in publishing generally understand what a journal director does. But for people outside of publishing, I try to keep it simple and just tell them that I work for you, University of California Press, and that we have a journals program that includes more than 40 academic or scholarly journals and a variety of subjects and disciplines, and that I'm just pretty much responsible for anything and everything that has to do with that program.
- [02:10]
B
Great. Thank you. I think something that makes UC Press distinct in the world of journals publishing is that we aren't a commercial publisher. We're part of the University of California system, the largest public research university system in the world. What do we publish? Can you describe our portfolio?
- [02:24]
A
Oh, absolutely. So we currently publish 44 journals, and we have two new journals for next year for 2027, so we'll soon have 46. But there's a lot of diversity within those 44, soon to be 46 titles. First, I'll say that from a format perspective, all of our journals are available in electronic format, but we still do have a number of journals for which we prod a print component. I think the total number of print journals is like 17, something like that. But with those 17 or so, the amount of print copies, the number of print copies we produce and mail tends to decrease each year. So that print component is continuously shrinking. From a frequency perspective, I'd say that the majority of our titles are published four times a year, so quarterly. But overall they range from continuous publication or issue less journals that publish articles as they're ready and aren't issue based. So it ranges from continuous publication to we're going to have our first annual journal launching this fall and then we have another journal that publishes nine issues a year. So we're kind of all over the map with regards to frequency. From like, from a publishing model perspective, the majority of our program is made up of paid subscription journals, but we do have a few fully open access journals like Elementa, which you referenced earlier, and Collaborate Psychology. And then of course we have a number of hybrid journals which are essentially paid subscription journals that offer open access publishing options for authors. But then of course, from a subject discipline perspective, most of our titles are currently humanities and social sciences. On the science side of things, we do have some pedagogy journals like the American Biology Teacher and the Chemical Educator, which is a new title to our program. And then we have titles like again Elementa, Science of the Anthropocene and Case Studies in the Environment. But yes, most of our journals are in the humanities and social sciences. Very broadly we publish a ton in history across the board, from animal history to architectural history to of course the history of California and the West. We also have a great concentration of titles in music and sound. I think we have total of eight there. And then of course we have Film and Media and Visual Culture titles like Film Quarterly and Latin American Latinx Visual Culture which we call lalvc of course, because that's a mouthful. And I should also mention LA obc. I just have to plug LA OBC for a second. It's relatively new and it won not one but two Best New Journal awards, which we're very proud of. And then of course there's other areas that we lots of other areas that we publish in Asian Studies, international relations, ethnic studies, et cetera. And one last thing I'll say about our program is that a lot of what we publish is interdisciplinary. Particularly I think our ethnic and regional studies titles, things like Journal of Vietnamese studies or Mexican studies. And that's, you know, that also adds to the diversity of our program.
- [06:21]
B
Thank you. So it's obviously not just one discipline or publishing for one audience. One thing that I think makes the scholarly journal article distinct from other article that are out there is the peer review process. How do you explain that to someone who hasn't been through it?
- [06:37]
A
Well, yes, peer reviewed content is key to scholarly publishing for both books and journals. Peer reviewed original research and scholarship is the bulk of what our journals program publishes. But I also want to mention that it's not just all peer reviewed scholarship. We publish plenty of non peer reviewed content as well, whether those are things like book reviews or editorials or invited essays or commentaries, etc. But yes, peer review is integral to our program and our titles. Yes, for someone who hasn't been through the peer review process, I mean, one might or isn't familiar with the peer review process. One might explain it as like experts checking one's work before it enters the scholarly conversation through publication, or that the submitted work is reviewed by someone with similar or relevant expertise to check and make sure that the research is sound, the arguments are original and credible and well supported. I mean, I think this is ultimately what sets scholarly writing apart from a lot of other writing scrutiny by experts in the relevant areas, not just evaluating an author's prose or readability.
- [08:16]
B
So the system is rigorous, but that's what make what comes out of it worth trusting. And what comes out of it is what we really want to talk about today. I want to start with the research that opened this episode because I think it's a good example of what journals can do that almost nothing else does. Earlier I mentioned a 2024 study by researcher Claire Cannon published in Elementa, one of UC Press's open access journals. She mapped every landfill in the United States and found these facilities are disproportionately located near communities of color and near households headed by women. That's not an opinion, that's not a think piece. It's a peer reviewed finding built on a national data set. And it has real implications for how we think about environmental policy, waste management, and who bears the cost of how we live. And that's the thing about research like this. It reframed something you thought was just logistics. A landfill is infrastructure until someone shows you the pattern of where it gets built. Then it's something else entirely. That reframing, taking something familiar and revealing the structure underneath it turns out to be something our journals do across very different fields. I want to Share another example, this one from a completely different corner of the program. In 2023, a historian named Jennifer Lynn Peterson published an article in Feminist Media Histories, another UC Press journal, about a short film made in 1919 in Humboldt County, California. It was produced by a group called the Women Save the Redwoods League. These were women's club members who were also, it turns out, deeply embedded in both the local film culture and the early American conservation movement. They commissioned and sponsored a film, a nonfiction redwood film, as Peterson calls it, to make the case for protecting these trees. Most people, if they think about the early conservation movement at all, picture the names we learned in school. They don't picture women in Northern California using cinema as an advocacy tool. In 1919, Peterson found this story by spending years in archives, letters, club records, local film history, piecing together a moment that had been almost entirely forgotten. What she found isn't just a footnote. It's evidence that women were using the moving image as a political instrument from the very beginning of film history. And it only exists as knowledge because someone went looking for it. When you read something like that, research that recovers a story that would otherwise be completely lost, what does that tell you about what journals are actually for?
- [10:25]
A
Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, it's always interesting to hear from authors or editors about how or why exactly an author came to a particular project and what changed or developed along the way, or just about the actual process itself. And I think these are the kind of things that I hope we get to uncover and share through episodes of this podcast. I mean, I think the reality of the situation, though, is I think when most people think about publishing in general, they think about books. Let's not, let's not kid anybody. There's a real romance around books, you know, a romance that I don't think really exists, sadly for journals, although maybe, you know, I'm just not a romantic, who knows? But when it comes to scholarly publishing, there still is that romance about books. But people understand and acknowledge the presence and role of journal publishing. But not every, you know, not every idea or project becomes a book. Here at UC Press, we publish something like 170 to 190 books a year, but our journals program publishes nearly 2,000 pieces of content a year. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes an article published in a journal develops into a book project. A good example of this is from UC Press. That is, is Matthew D. Morrison's award winning Black Sound book from a couple of years ago. What preceded that was an article by him in jams, the Journal of the the American Musicological Society. I think that article was published four or five years before his book. And I say award winning book, but that article also won a big award. So, you know, yay. Matthew. But for authors, I think it usually starts with an interest, a passion or curiosity which leads to, you know, research, you know, on that. On a particular item or topic. And in most cases, that research results in an article that gets submitted to a journal for consideration and review and ultimately, hopefully, publication. And then that published work may inspire or play a part in somebody else's research or even a larger project like a book. And then the, you know, the cycle continues. But for those two examples that you've talked about, the Elementa article and the Feminist Media Histories. But those two examples, the Elementa article and the FMH article, the Feminist Media Histories article, are good examples, and I'm sure we have hundreds of similarly good examples in our program, and I'm really hoping we get to capture some of those stories through this podcast.
- [13:40]
B
Yeah, excellent. Thank you. That's perfect. Because it really brings me to what we're actually trying to build here with periodically. I want to be specific about what periodically is going to be because I think the format matters. Each episode will bring in an author or an editor, someone who did the work, wrote the paper, or shepherded the research through publication. Some conversations will be about a specific piece of research, while others might feature a special issue, celebrate an anniversary, or give a peek behind the scenes of scholarly journals publishing. David, when you think about the authors and editors behind the work in our journals, the people we'll be inviting onto this podcast, what do you think listeners are going to find that they don't expect?
- [14:15]
A
That's a good question. I'm not sure exactly. I think it's going to depend on the listener, really. I mean, sometimes scholarly publishing gets painted as like, stuffy or boring. And, well, I certainly hope these Podiatz episodes aren't going to be boring or stuffy, but I hope that listeners might find that the episodes are more entertaining than they expected. But there's also like a, I think, a personal human element as well, being able to actually hear authors in their own voice talk about their own projects or experiences. I mean, just. That's really great. I mean, this is something that many of us have experienced at conferences or lectures, but this allows more people to experience it on their own time. And, you know, not all scholarly content is known for letting the author's personal voice or personality shine through. I mean, the ultimate purpose of journal publishing is to share and present research. So actually being able to hear that personal voice or pick up on that author's personality, I think is very humanizing and personal and maybe makes the content a little bit more accessible and relatable. And of course, maybe this then inspires listeners own curiosity, which leads to more listening and reading and discovering, which I think that at the end of the day, those are all, all good things.
- [15:58]
B
Yeah, I think there's something about reading an abstract that's totally different than hearing someone explain why they spent a decade on a question. And I think that's what audio can do that a journal page can't. So we're really looking forward to these conversations, which are the kinds of conversations you're most looking forward to hearing in future episodes.
- [16:15]
A
Well, that's a good question. And to be completely honest, again, I'm not. I'm not sure I want to be surprised really, as I think, you know, I try. I try to avoid saying that something will absolutely do such and such a thing. You know, when I'm working with a new editor or an editorial team on a new journal launch or relaunch, and you know, we've done quite a few journal launches since I've been here at the press, I almost always insist that their first issue includes a substantive editorial from the editor, the editorial team that explains why this journal is needed or how the project came about, things like that. And of course, I always encourage them to explain how the journal is different from other journals in the field or what they want to accomplish with the journal. Again, not will accomplish with the journal, et cetera, et cetera. But I specifically or explicitly tell them to avoid very declarative statements like this journal will do such and such, or we will publish this specific kind of explicit, you know, explicitly described research in these very specific formats or article types. Because ultimately the content you publish depends on the content that gets submitted to the journal. You don't have a ton of control over what actually gets submitted. And it can be a little embarrassing to have in your inaugural editorial to have declared very specific plans that just never came to fruition. Um, so similarly, in this instance, I want to avoid saying in this very first episode of periodically what kind of conversations I am looking forward to, because what if those conversations don't actually end up materializing? So I'm just really looking forward to the conversations themselves. Right. The fact that the conversations are happening and being recorded and being shared with people, People, you know, whether those conversations are with authors or editors or even our publishing colleagues who I'm hoping we can get to rope into an episode here, there, or our external publishing partners, whomever. And I'm looking forward to those conversations, inspiring others to share their own stories or insights or experiences and new conversations. Um, I mean, the research and topics are always interesting, but the. I think, personally, the people and their stories and conversations are usually more interesting.
- [19:15]
B
Thank you. And one last thing about the podcast. It will come out periodically, and while it's rooted in the UC Press Journal's program, the conversations are for anyone. If you're a researcher, a librarian, a teacher, or just someone who finds themselves going down research rabbit holes, this is for you. But before we close out, I want to zoom out and ask something a little bigger. We live in a moment where there is more information available than at any point in human history and also genuinely more confusion about who and what to trust. What do you think about that tension, David? Well.
- [19:46]
A
Well, I don't know if I find it interesting. I mean, I think for a lot of people, it's overwhelming. It's frustrating. I think it can generate a lot of anxiety or confusion or suspicion or mistrust. It's very, very positive words, aren't they? But just because there's more information out there than probably ever before doesn't mean that obviously doesn't mean that all that information is trustworthy or accurate or credible. I think many of us are. Are learning about that every day. A little bit every day. So I think scholarly publishing and its various processes and mechanisms, including peer review, play an important role here. And I think it's important that we, as publishers do what we can to highlight and share and disseminate the work that we publish. And I think in an age, or I think that people are generally reading less than they have in the past. I mean, whether that be assigned reading in classes or personal or pleasure reading. I know that my personal reading has really plummeted over the past couple of years in finding themselves turning to more or different formats to consume information. I mean, particularly media like podcasts. I'm hoping that we can shine a light on our authors and our editors and their work and then contribute to helpful, interesting, and trusted conversations during this, you know, challenging period of time.
- [21:25]
B
Yeah. All right, last question, and it's a big one. What would success look like for this podcast in a couple of years? Not downloads. What would you want someone to say about it?
- [21:35]
A
Oh, gosh, success. That's always such a. A difficult thing to measure, I think. You know, last year I was at our booth at a conference of The American Academy of Religion Conference. And a student made a beeline right to our booth and grabbed a book. I cannot remember exactly which book or which author it was. And they said something to the effect of, oh my God, I just heard this author talking about this book on the New Books Network. And, and yes, I remember this is not a plug. I actually remember them explicitly saying New Books Network. And I wanted to get a copy. I want to hear things like that. I want to hear, I want to hear editors say that someone was inspired to submit an article because they heard an episode about a specific article that was published in the journal. I want to hear, like, guest editors of special issues talk about how they approached their special issue differently because they heard another guest editor talking about the challenges of, you know, whatever, herding cats for their, their issue. And I'd love, I don't know, I'd love to see some podcast episodes referenced in published works or other podcasts. You know, I think there's a whole kind of ecosystem out there that, that we haven't been part of yet and our content hasn't been part of. And I think this is going to give us an opportunity to, to be part of that. And of course, I, you know, I want authors and editors to reach out to us about doing an episode because they really enjoyed listening to a recent episode of from another journal. Or I want listeners to reach out to us and suggest specific topics or publications that they want to hear from or about. So I think those are the things that are. I mean, maybe they're not easily used to measure success, but at least they would make us feel as if we're having an impact. And to me, that is success.
- [23:52]
B
Yeah, it sounds like community scholarship promotion. Having conversations started from these conversations on periodically.
- [24:01]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [24:02]
B
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We started today with a landfill, not because it was a dramatic opening, but because that research, careful, specific, published in a peer reviewed journal tells us something true about where we've put our hazards and who lives next to them. That's what scholarship does at its best. It clarifies what we thought we already knew. Stay tuned.