The University of Michigan Press will be restructured as an academic unit under the aegis of Paul N. Courant, the university’s dean of libraries. The idea, according to statement released by Michigan on Friday, is to position the press “to become a pioneer” in digital publishing—to make it a more direct collaborator in the central mission of spreading research “as widely and freely as possible.”
“This is a watershed time for book publishing and distribution,” Mr. Courant said in the statement. “We are moving beyond spatial limitations and moving toward providing readers and researchers with information wherever they are, and whenever they need it.”
Such sentiments have taken on a higher profile of late. In mid-February the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges issued a joint “call to action” that exhorted universities to ensure the “broadest possible access” to scholarship.
The shift at Michigan also appears to align with some of the principles laid out in “University Publishing in the Digital Age,” a much-discussed report issued in 2007 by Ithaka, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of information technology in higher education.
Michigan’s new press-library hierarchy is not a revolution in itself. Many university presses now report to their campus libraries. But Philip Pochoda, the press’s director, said in an interview that he believes this arrangement is notable because it relieves the press of pressure to be financially self-sustaining.
“It removes the bottom line on a book-by-book basis,” he said. “Basically we will be judged for staying within a budget,” just as academic departments are. “In a sense, it will allow us to do more things that are consistent with university objectives, as opposed to commercial objectives.”
That includes the chance to focus on approaches that may be more cutting-edge than commercially viable—a challenge for many scholarly presses even in good times. The new operating model will emphasize digital monographs, with a small print-on-demand component.
“It opens up opportunities that we had to foreclose because we were so tied to the kind of budgeting and business model that we had before,” Mr. Pochoda said. “This seems to be the first university that’s freeing its press from that model.”
The press director sounded relieved and optimistic about the change. “In many ways, we feel like we’ve come in out of the cold, and boy, it’s been pretty cold,” he said. “There’s never been a colder period in publishing.”
