Financial Request and Response

As the Association contemplates the relationship between itself and the CHR, we wish to make available correspondence between the Association and the Catholic University of America Press, the publisher of the CHR.

Reproduced below is the Association’s initial letter to CUA Press from July 2012. CUA Press’ response follows.

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The ACHA’s initial letter

July 8, 2012

Dr. Trevor Lipscombe, Director
Catholic University of America Press
620 Michigan Ave.
240 Leahy Hall
Washington, DC  20064

Dear Trevor

I hope this letter finds you well and surviving the dreadfully hot summer.

I am writing this letter with the full knowledge and support of the American Catholic Historical Association officers and Executive Council to raise with you issues which need our cooperative attention — and solution.  As we move forward we find ourselves eyeing, again, a financial hole in our organization.  This is a serious concern for all of us.  We are collectively committed to work carefully to find a permanent and satisfactory solution — one that protects and ensures the long term viability of the American Catholic Historical Association while respecting the legitimate interests of the Press..

We have spent a lot of time reviewing the history of the ACHA, of the CHR, and of the relationship of both to the CUA Press.  The ACHA was founded in 1919 and in 1921 adopted as its “Official Organ” the fledgling and ineffective Catholic Historical Review that had itself been founded at CUA in 1915.  For fifty years the ACHA managed the journal in all significant respects.  In 1970, under circumstances that are nowhere documented, CUA Press assumed the copyright of the ACHA’s journal.  From the mid-1970s it appears that the Press has taken the leading role in setting subscription rates and otherwise controlling the business aspects of the journal.  Relations between and among the three relevant entities has never been governed by a legal contract.  Editorial control has remained with the ACHA.  We have together produced a fine journal of which we can all be proud.

Nevertheless, there is strong prima facie evidence that the CHR generates significant revenue for the CUA Press and the ACHA shares in none of this.  This situation is deeply unfair and certainly not the sort of arrangement that Fr. Guilday had in mind.  To prepare us all for productive conversations on financial  issues as they pertain to the CHR, we respectfully request that you provide us with the following information:

1) All revenues collected by the Press in respect of the CHR from quarterly ACHA payments, Institutional Subscriptions, Independent Subscriptions, Project MUSE,  JSTOR and any revenues realized from electronic publication;

2) Annual charges for in-house editing, printing, and mailing the journal.  To give us a reasonable picture, it would be helpful to have figures reaching back four or five years.

Candidly, it is unclear to the officers and  Executive Council why we ceased receiving this information some forty years ago.  The historical record shows clearly that subscription revenues often had a hard time keeping up with printing and mailing costs.  Decades ago, no one could have foreseen JSTOR, Project Muse, or electronic publication.  In 2002 Msgr. Trisco expressed the hope that Project Muse would be “advantageous” to the journal, and presumably to the ACHA.  To date it has not been.  In 1921 Fr. Guilday said that that ACHA and CHR had a “most satisfactory” arrangement.  We would like to work with you, in a very different time, to forge a new “most satisfactory” arrangement.

We can proceed in a number of ways:  by correspondence;  by conference call; or even by a meeting of a few of us with you in Washington.  I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Respectfully,
Thomas F. X. Noble
President, American Catholic Historical Association

 

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CUA Press’ response