This year’s University Press Week draws to a close today, and as in years past the event has offered a nice chance for AAUP member presses to pipe up about what we do when our heads are down.
One thing we do as much as anyone is think and talk about the future of scholarly publishing, as evidenced by UP Week Blog Tour posts from a number of presses of varying size and focus. The University of Georgia Press sees a future of partnerships and collaboration, in which the resources of a community are brought together to support continued pursuit of projects no commercial publisher would touch. Johns Hopkins UP also highlights collaboration, along with continued innovation and a focus on interactive and multimodal projects. Oxford University Press draws attention to the variety of business models evolving in step, and an increasing need to “serve as a bullhorn for thoughtful, empirical work in an arena of public debate that has become muddled by a rising drone of white noise.” All while Indiana University Press cautions against losing sight of “the human beings behind the monograph, the stories, the designs, the editing, and marketing.”
Along with all the forward looking, the week helps us keep sight of our past, and the University of Minnesota Press—celebrating its 90th anniversary this year—put together a great timeline of founding dates for members of the AAUP along with select other publishers.
For our part we offered a little case study into the design of a book cover, and we had great company in the effort to show how a book’s looks stay true to its contents while attracting the readers who know what they want and also some of those who don’t. MIT Press shows how the presentation of brain books has seen as much change over the decades as the scholarship contained within:
And Princeton UP goes even further, launching a really lovely Tumblr to showcase their always-lovely books.
If you’ve any interest in scholarly publishing you’ll find much to savor in clicking through the whole Blog Tour and the other UP Week resources, but we’ll close out here with this infographic designed to give a full look at the wide and deep cultural impact of the work of AAUP member presses:
