[Reading-hall-of-fame] Concerns about Spanish Journal of IRA

[ferreiro at cinvestav.mx]

Dear Donald Leu, dear all RHF members

I was ready to reply immediatly, in Spanish, to Donald’s message. Having
to reply in English took me some additional hours.  However, I don’t have
the rethoric means to modulate my statements. So, I decided to say what I
need to say in not so well articulated words.

1) First of all, I thanks Donald Leu for his extensive and detailed
account of facts. For the first time we became acquainted with a step by
step account of the Board’s decisions and procedures concerning the
Spanish Journal Lectura y Vida.

2) If I “post claims on our listserv that are not based on accurate
information” it was because this information was not available. (By the
way, I share Jim Hoffman’s concerns about the content of Leu’s paragraph
related to the use of a listserv).

3) To go beyond information given, making inferences, is a normal human
activity. Did I make “inferential leaps”?  Perhaps, but the matter is
that, having now accurate information, my concerns remain and I have
additional ones.

4) I said that “IRA Board decided to drop out the only Spanish Journal
taking into account only financial reasons”.  Donald Leu’s message shows
clearly that it was indeed the case.

5) I said that “The Board has put a deadline to LyV (December 2010),
taking this decision without hearing other voices”.  Donald Leu’s letter
confirms the deadline and confirms also that the Board did not consider
appropriate to hear other voices (for instance the members of the
Editorial Advisory Board of LyV),

6) I feel obliged to change a word:  it was not a “secret” procedure but a
“confidential” one”. OK
However, the reasons to observe confidentiality seems to me not so well
adapted to the circumstances.  In fact, if the time to obtain an “agency
of adoption” is so short, why not involve more people hoping to enlarge
the list of potential candidates from the beginning, instead of enlarging
it little by little? In fact, the first step of this process was not very
promising.  The Board gave the agencies  “one month window” to answer. “No
plans were received by the deadline”, so it “was pushed back to June 1,
2009”.
Of course, I don’t know the terms of the letters sent to those agencies. 
But I know enough about Universities and Publishing Houses. I am making
inferences: if those documents present LyV as a financial failure, ¿who
will answer possitively in a very short period of time?  Not an Editorial
House, by sure. Our Latin American Universities have troubles to function
with limited resources. I doubt that they will accept to participate at a
“rescue operation” without a strong support from IRA.

7) I suggested in my previous letter that “there are alternatives to
reduce production and distribution costs (including an on-line version)”. 
Donald Leu informs us that indeed the Board considers this option but
discarted it. However, in a message so rich in figures, no estimation
appears about the potential reduction of costs of this alternative.

8) I used the expression “competitive, in academic terms”, refering to the
quality of the published articles. Perhaps in English this term is used
only with reference to matters of money.

9) I am quoting Leu’s report: “At the level of raw subscriber numbers, LyV
has very little readership; it can be said to have a market penetration of
zero” // “LyV is having little, if any impact within the communities we
seek to support”.  My comments. First, it is true that the subscriber’s
number is ridiculous, but this is not a new problem. It was a persistent
problem during the editorship of Maria Elena Rodriguez.  I don’t know if
the new editorial staff was nominated with the definite assignment of
making the Journal self-sustaining. As far as I know, the new editorial
staff was concentrated in enhancing the quality of the papers, in making
more strict the review process and similar duties related to qualitative
aspects of the publication.  Second, the quoted words indicate that impact
and readership are measured only through the number of subscribers; in my
first message I gave preferential attention to qualitative indicators.

9) Concerning the preceding point I will like to inform all of you that on
13-15th March 2009, Mirta Castedo organized a Seminar to cellebrate the
30th anniversary of Lectura y Vida. It took place at her University
(Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina). Five hundred persons
attended it, not only from Argentina but also from Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Mexico.  I gave a plennary conference there.
All of this happens without any cost for IRA, and near 300 new
subscriptions were collected (between 276 and 282, to be more precise).

10) I expressed my concerns about the IRA policy towards Latin America. 
Donald Leu did not take this point into consideration. Instead, he is
proposing to take the world population on an equal basis, giving no
priviledge to the LA region.  I am not in disagreement, in principle. But,
realistically speaking, IRA is more NorthAmerican than International. USA
citizens cannot ignore the importance of the growing Latino population
inside their frontiers.  If 403 US university libraries are subscribed to
LyV it probably means that many students and staff members are willing to
read such a Spanish Journal.

11) In conclusion, after a careful reading of Donald Leu report, I feel
obliged to change only one word in my previous letter (“confidential”
instead of “secret”).  One strong statement in Donald’s report worries me:
“We do plan to terminate LyV if we are unable to transfer the publication
of this journal to another party”.   I have concerns about the efficiency
of the procedure implemented to find, in a very short time, another
serious agency willing to take care of a Journal in a situation of
failure. Of course, I am making inferences....
In any case, I will be glad to know, by June 1, 2009, how many agencies
and which ones had send positive answers. Because, if I understood
correctly, it is not a matter of putting the potential capital that
represents 30 years of continuous publication in anyone hands.

12) Thanks to Dick Anderson, Colin Harrison and Shirley Brice Heath who
quickly reacted to my first message.
Yours, EMILIA FERREIRO










> Dear Emelia,
>
> I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you.  I hope to
> correct that mistake, on my part, very soon.
>
> I respond as one member of the IRA Board who is also a member of the RHoF.
>  I do not speak for the entire Board.  Still, I have been active on this
> particular issue, ever since I was elected.  I understand the importance
> of the issue and I take seriously your concerns, as I greatly admire your
> work. Like you, I care deeply about IRA and the work our community of
> literacy educators does, around the world, to support children, parents,
> and teachers.
>
> This issue has consumed substantial amounts of time at every Board meeting
> that I have attended.  I am confident that we have worked carefully,
> honorably, and cautiously, trying to determine the best possible solution
> for a complex situation.  I will share some of the aspects of this
> situation we face so that you have a better understanding of the
> challenges, the actions we have (and have not) taken, and the direction
> that I, personally, would like us to take:
>
>
>  1.  If revenue and profit margins were our only concern, we would not
> have appointed new editors three years ago.  Lectura y Vida has never
> been profitable.  It's fiscal performance has been under continuous board
> review far before the resignation of Maria Elena Rodriguez and the
> commencement of the 2007 search that produced the two current editors,
> Mirta Castedo and Celia Diaz. We celebrated Maria Elena's extraordinary
> tenure at the Atlanta Convention, and introduced the new editors to the
> IRA publishing community at the authors' reception. Thereafter, the IRA
> publications director prepared and assigned a lengthy time and event
> regimen for the new editors so that they could complete a half year
> transition under Maria Elena's continuing stewardship before assuming
> complete editorial control.  Part of this was the development of a
> larger, more visible, editorial board.  We were hopeful that we could
> substantially increase the impact that the journal had in Latin America,
> serving teachers and others in more substantial ways.
>
>
>  1.  Three years of sustained board attention have been given to the
> Lectura y Vida matter; there has been no rush to judgment and no final
> termination decision, yet. We are doing everything that we can to avoid
> seeing the journal disappear.  We have been concerned about many elements
> of the LyV operation including, but not limited to, its financial
> operation and its subscriber base in Latin America. Throughout this
> process, my good friend and fellow Board member, Adelina Arellano-Osuna
> of Venezuela, has helped all of us to better understand the special
> context of this journal and its importance to Latin America.  As our
> concerns grew, Adelina visited the Buenos Aires office to gather
> additional information about this matter. Finally, Linda Gambrell, during
> her presidential year, asked that a special board committee be formed to
> study the Lectura y Vida situation. Appointed to this committee were four
> board members (Barbara Walker, Adelina Arellano-Osuna, Carl Braun,
> myself, and the director of publications, Dan Mangan). The efforts of
> this committee continue to this day. Everyone has worked many long hours,
> trying to figure out how best to increase the influence of this journal.
> Dan Mangan, Director of Publications, and Adelina Arellano-Osuna have
> worked especially hard.  I believe that our work has been carried out
> with great honesty, dignity, and respect.  We care very deeply about how
> best to solve this issue in the best possible fashion.
>
>
>  1.  At the level of raw subscriber numbers, LyV has very little
> readership; it can be said to have a market penetration of zero, given
> that its target audience, Latin America, has a population base of half a
> billion with over 400 universities. In the summer of 2007 the
> publications director prepared a breakout study of the Lectura y Vida
> subscriber list. The breakout study made clear that the journal had a
> negligible subscriber base of 1,397.
>
>
>  1.  The ironic fact is that most of the subscribers to this international
> journal are in the U.S. About two thirds (905/1397) of all subscriptions
> to Lectura y Vida are to addresses in the U.S., many of those were to
> institutional entities such as university libraries (403). These data,
> from our recent study of the matter, suggest that Lectura y Vida is
> having little, if any, impact within the communities we seek to support.
>
>
>  1.  I am not sure I would agree that LyV is competitive, in academic
> terms, with JAAL. Perhaps I misunderstood your use of the phrase "in
> academic terms," but in terms of impact I might question this conclusion.
> LyV has a subscriber base of 1,397.  JAAL, by contrast, has about 15,000
> print and 1,000 online only subscribers.
>
>
>  1.  Lectura y Vida is an important financial expense for the Association
> and appears to have had very little impact at a time when deteriorating
> economic conditions, world-wide, are placing a much greater strain on our
> limited resources. In addition to its negligible subscription levels,
> Lectura y Vida has never been a viable publication from a financial
> perspective. In the 2008 fiscal year, the journal's subscription revenue
> was $39K against direct expenses of $113K. IRA would lose approximately
> $50 for every additional subscription to Lectura y Vida, at least using
> figures from the past year.  Moreover, conversion to online delivery does
> not eliminate costs, but simply trades one set of costs for another. What
> many tend to ignore are the necessary hosting, access control, and
> maintenance costs, as well as the continuing costs of web-based
> marketing. There are also costs associated with an editor's time.
>
>
>  1.  Our whole approach is to be as flexible and imaginative as possible
> with respect to finding a partner who can help us continue publication of
> the journal. In February 2008, the publications director prepared an
> analysis of the Lectura y Vida situation for the Board LyV Committee. His
> conclusion was that IRA had three distinct options: terminate the
> journal, convert to online, or find another agency, such as a publishing
> company or a university that could take over the journal, perhaps in
> continued partnership with IRA. The committee could have terminated the
> journal then; we recommended to try to find another agency. To pursue
> this third option, three documents were prepared: a solicitation letter,
> a non-disclosure agreement, and a detailed information prospectus. The
> solicitation letter communicates that IRA is taking action on a resource
> of interest, and it invites the recipient to sign and return the NDA in
> order to receive a detailed information prospectus. The prospectus, which
> includes a financial statement, does not mandate a sale and purchase;
> rather, it invites the recipient to suggest a workable structure that
> achieves the desired objective.
>
>
>  1.  Careful preparations were undertaken to launch the canvassing for a
> new agency, and the journal editors themselves were invited to be a part
> of the process. Two of these transfer documents had to be translated into
> Spanish. Moreover, a list of solicitation targets in the region had to be
> identified. Adelina Arellano-Osuna assisted with both tasks. At the Board
> committee's meeting during the IRA Phoenix convention in February 2009, a
> timetable was decided upon that called for communication to be sent out
> in early March. Recipients who returned signed NDAs were to receive the
> information prospectus, and the prospectus called for a general proposal
> to be returned to IRA by April 20th. It was also agreed to at this point
> that the publications director would contact the LyV editors and inform
> them of the actions being taken and the reasons behind them. While the
> editors were naturally stunned by the news, they understood the situation
> and made additional suggestions as to whom the solicitation packages
> could be sent.
>
>
>  1.  We have not, yet, terminated Lectura y Vida.  We are in the middle of
> an ongoing transition process, where we seek to transfer publication of
> this journal to another group or entity. Solicitation letters went out to
> 15 nominated agencies. We received a total of 3 signed NDAs by the
> deadline. Each of the signing parties was then sent the full prospectus,
> which called for a draft plan to be submitted to IRA by April 20th, a one
> month window.
>
>
>  1.  We have extended our initial deadlines in order to cast a wider net
> for potential publishing partners. No plans were received by the
> deadline. A week before the April 20th deadline the LyV editors contacted
> the publications director to say that the deadline was too tight, that
> they had additional agency candidates they wished to recommend, and
> further, that they requested an opportunity to present their personal
> plan to relocate the journal to their own universities. Consequently, the
> deadline for receipt of a plan was pushed back to June 1, 2009,
> additional parties have been sent the solicitation letter, and the
> editors will present their own plan via a conference call following the
> IRA Minneapolis convention.
>
>
>  1.  We do plan to terminate Lectura y Vida if we are unable to transfer
> the publication of this journal to another party. The board committee had
> agreed that if another agency cannot be confirmed by December 31, 2009,
> Lectura y Vida would cease publication at the end of 2010. It takes a
> year to move a subscriber base off our internal systems, and the editors'
> contracts expire in December of 2010.  We take our contractual
> obligations with editors very seriously.  Despite our best efforts, our
> time is running out.
>
>
>  1.  The comments on the Hall of Fame Listserv may likely have caused more
> harm than good.  I worry about this trend on our listserv.  This is a
> group revered by many in the reading community.  I am incredibly honored
> to be a member of such an illustrious group.  It harms our reputation, I
> think, when we post claims on our listserv that are not based on accurate
> information.
>
>
>  1.  I have not operated in a manner that did not take other voices into
> account, nor in a "secret" procedure.  With all due respect, I do wish
> the next time something that involves me takes place like this, that the
> person call me to discuss the matter rather than post unsupported claims
> with inferential leaps that go unsubstantiated.  (I hope I have not
> offended anyone with this sentence.  I do not mean to.)  I would be happy
> to share as much as I can, certainly anything that would not hurt IRA or
> another individual.
>
>  I hope this is not typical of our conversations on the Hall of Fame
> Listserv.  If it is, I will be unsubscribing.  Our list could be so much
> more, with discussions of recent studies that have been published or
> research that needs to be conducted. To have conversation revolve around
> rumor or hearsay does not benefit ourselves as individuals, nor our
> organization, I think.
>
>
>  1.  We need to understand the difference between secrecy and
> confidentiality. The former entails the deliberate withholding of
> information, while the latter deals instead with the controlled release
> of information to prevent harm to others. The board committee has
> scrupulously observed a rule of confidentiality in order to explore
> realistic options for the journal without unduly alarming either the
> journal's staff (including the review board) or the broad base of the
> Association's Latin American members. We value the goodwill of our Latin
> American membership very highly, and we had hoped to put off general
> announcements until we had good news to share.
>
>
>  1.  IRA is trying to strengthen its international commitments and find
> new ways of providing per-reviewed articles about literacy to colleagues
> around the world, in first languages. Latin America is but one of the
> international regions which IRA serves. It is the only region that has
> been supported with a separate journal and regional office, and this
> support has been provided for the better part of 30 years.  Most
> importantly, the model of support has always seemed to not feel quite
> right to me.  It seemed to be based in more of a
> colonialist/paternalistic model. This has caused some of us, on the IRA
> Board, to wonder if we need to develop a better model for supporting
> communities in regions of the world where such journals do not exist in a
> local, or regional, language.
>
> The Board has recently implemented a new strategic initiative to assess
> the prospects for helping regional memberships develop self-supporting
> publishing operations to disseminate critical information about research
> and practice. This idea was first suggested by Kathy Au. A committee is
> being appointed to explore new publishing and subscription models for the
> regional memberships, perhaps through the enhanced use of online
> technologies. The goal is to forge tighter connections with our
> international constituencies while leveraging our limited resources
> prudently, and to offer similar services across regions. Personally, I
> would like to see the money we save from turning over Lectura y Vida to
> another entity used in this way.  Perhaps, we could figure out a model to
> develop rotating 5-year projects that initiate and build self-sustaining
> journals of literacy around the world. A model like this would be
> something all of us could be proud of.  This is a new strategic direction,
> and more will be said about it as the exploratory effort continues.   If
> you have any ideas about this I welcome conversation.
>
> There is my best attempt at explaining our concerns and our plans for
> Lectura y Vida, Emelia.  I always like to look for the positive elements
> in any situation.  I am certainly hoping we can find someone to take over
> Lectura y Vida.  Most importantly, though, I hope we can use this
> experience to help us develop a model for journal support that is based on
> egalitarian, not quasi-colonialist, principles of mutual respect,
> temporary support, and self-sustaining interest and impact.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Don
> --
> Donald J. Leu, Ph.D.
> John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology
> Board of Directors, International Reading Association
> University of Connecticut
> 249 Glenbrook Road
> Storrs, CT  06269-2033
> Office:  860.486.0202    Office Fax: 860-486.2994
> Cell:  860.680.3752      Home: 860.447.8881
> The New Literacies Research Lab: http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/
>
> "Every  one of us is given the gift of life, and what a strange gift it
> is.
> If it is preserved jealously and selfishly, it impoverishes and
> saddens. But if it is spent for others, it enriches and beautifies."
>
> -- Geraldine  Ferraro.
>    Acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic Party National  Convention.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: <ferreiro at cinvestav.mx>
> Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 02:21:50 -0400
> To: HOF List <reading-hall-of-fame at nottingham.ac.uk>
> Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] Concerns about Spanish Journal of IRA
>
>
>
> Dear colleagues of the Reading Hall of Fame:
>
> I guess that I am the only Latin-American member of the RHF.  As such, I
> feel the need to share with you an astonishing action taken by IRA Board
> without further discussion. To say it shortly, they decided to drop out
> the only Spanish Journal of IRA (Lectura y Vida) taking into account only
> financial reasons. This Journal has 30 years of continuous existence. It
> reaches all the countries of the region and has also many USA readers.
>
> I was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of LyV (Lectura y Vida)
> since the early years of this Journal. I can certify of the growing impact
> this Journal had over the years. It started when reading and writing
> research was at its beginnings in the region.  It was a time when military
> dictatorships were alive in many countries (having well known consequences
> in scientific and educational life). Little by little, LyV increased its
> influence through Latin-America. Many (if not all regional subscribers)
> knew about IRA through LyV.  Contributions from many researchers and
> educators of various countries enhanced progressively the level of the
> Journal. Nowadays, LyV is competitive, in academic terms, to other IRA
> journals such as JAAL.
>
> The present Editors were appointed end 2007, after a long and careful
> competition process. The first 2008 issue of LyV represented a big
> accomplishment since the Advisory Board included 52 names of leading
> educators and researchers from 14 different Latin-American countries plus
> USA, Israel and four European countries (Spain, France, Belgium and
> Switzerland).
>
> Of course, financial arguments need serious consideration. Probably the
> Journal, in its present printing form, cannot survive. But there are
> alternatives to reduce production and distribution costs (including an
> on-line version),  The Board has put a deadline to LyV (December 2010),
> taking this decision without hearing other voices and in a "secret"
> procedure.
>
> I am sharing these concerns with my colleagues of the RHF for two reasons.
> First, because we are attached to IRA and, some way or another, we are
> affected by the decisions made by the Board. Second, because IRA aims to
> be, by its very name, International. There seems to be a contradiction
> between the Obama's policy towards LA region and the IRA Board's policy.
> We are in a period of financial crisis, ok. Could we ignore policy
> reasons? Did IRA's Board evaluate the political impact of their decision
> on the Latin American members of IRA?
>
> Unfortunately, I will not be able to join you at the Minnesota Meeting.
> That is why I am sending this message. I am not suggesting that the RHF,
> as such, take position. I am only sharing a concern. A major one.
> Best regards,
> EMILIA FERREIRO
> (By the way, I inform you that I was recently appointed Emeritus
> Researcher of the Mexican National System of Researchers)
>
>
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