ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes on critical discontinuities between the publishing industry in general and social science publishing in particular. It is important to take proper note of basic continuities between the general and specific. The contribution of cooperative efforts between social science and book and journal publishing is the best evidence of its value to the world of scholarly communication. The role of major social scientific books, monographs, and reports cannot be reduced to a narrow, purely commercial vision of sales and profits. If social science publishing, whether in the book, monograph, or journal areas, were exclusively a function of the economic marketplace—that is to say, uniquely tied to individual tastes and preferences—there would be far fewer such products available. The shared values and mutuality of interests between social scientists and scholarly publishers provide the best climate for the continuing survival and maturation of both a viable publishing program and a democratically rooted social science.
