Here and Now? Explorations in Urgent Publishing

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Publishers have always played an important rolein initiating and stimulating the public debate –a role that has changed radically over the pasttwo decades. The cultural capital of publishersconsists in making public reliable, original, andengaging information, but the time-consumingworkflows that are part and parcel especiallyof smaller or niche presses make it increasinglyhard for them to keep up. Despite the promisesof the desktop publishing revolution and the im-mediacy of publishing on the web, accelerationand optimization did not speed up the publishingprocesses as much as hoped for.Speeding up the printing and publishingprocess is by no means straightforward. It seemsthat all too often, any one of the three successfactors in publishing that we identified – namelyspeed, quality, and positioning of the publicationwith an audience – could only be realized at theexpense of the other two. For example, speedingup can mean a sacrifice on the side of qualitybecause there is less time for editing, or a tooheavy focus on quality can mean that the posi-tioning of the publication with an audience willfall short and the speed of publication will un-doubtedly suffer.This puts pressure on the role of publishersas catalysts of public and cultural debates, and ontheir publications as hallmarks of quality. How canpublishers keep making content available to thepublic in a prompt, appealing, and focused way?INTRODUCTION: EXPLORATIONS IN URGENT PUBLISHING15What kind of innovations can help to presentinformation in a timely manner, without losingout on quality and relevance? In this final publi-cation of the Making Public project, we presentstrategies for such ‘urgent publishing’ practices.We hope to address both publishers and editors,as well as authors and those who work in the pu-blishing field, whether in design, development,marketing, or research.