University Publishing in a Digital Age

Preface

This report has been a collaborative effort between Laura Brown, the former president of Oxford University Press USA, and Ithaka’s Strategic Services group. It was sponsored financially by Ithaka and JSTOR. Laura is a JSTOR Trustee, and I serve as JSTOR’s chairman, in addition to being Ithaka’s president. Both Ithaka and JSTOR are keenly interested in the current state and future of scholarly publishing, and the Strategic Services group of Ithaka specializes in gathering, analyzing and sharing information on topics at the intersection of higher education and technology. This seemed to us a critical moment for university presses and university publishing, and so we undertook this study.

Along with Laura Brown, Matthew Rascoff and Rebecca Griffiths carried out the research for this report. The research effort included a survey of university press directors and an extensive series of interviews with press directors, librarians, provosts, and other university administrators. The original draft report was written by Matthew, Rebecca and Laura, and I worked closely with them to produce this final draft for comment. This draft benefited substantially from suggestions offered by 18 outside readers and commentators. We are very grateful for the considerable time contributed by these commentators to improve the document.

Despite the extensive background research that was conducted, this is not a report presenting findings from an objective, empirical survey of the field. Instead, it is a qualitative review, informed by the survey and interviews as well as the knowledge of the investigators. Laura especially brought to this project a wealth of experience in publishing and a perspective on the important role that university presses have played in scholarly communications. She would be the first to say that she came to the study with assumptions, and perhaps even a vision, but she would also confess that many of those assumptions have been challenged and some have been turned upside down.

One of the proposals presented in this report suggests that it would be beneficial for the community if there were a powerful technology, service and marketing platform that would serve as a catalyst for collaboration and shared capital investment in university-based publishing. We regard this as a potentially transformative concept regardless of who or how it might be carried out. In the interest of full disclosure, we want readers to be aware that we see the possibility of JSTOR playing a role in establishing such a platform given its mission, experience, and existing relationships and infrastructure. However, this report has not been written, nor has the research been conducted, in an effort to provide justification for any JSTOR effort. If discussion motivated by this report were to convey that such a platform is unnecessary, or that JSTOR had no useful role to play in building it, that would be just as valuable (to the community as well as to JSTOR) as if the discussions encouraged the development of such a platform by JSTOR or any other enterprise.

One provost, when he read the first draft of the report, asked if we could get the report to his Library Director and his Press Director so that they could have a conversation about it. Another responded with a much more radical concept of how scholarly communications should be transformed. If the report did nothing but motivate such thinking and conversations in many provosts’ and presidents’ offices around the country, we would consider it a success.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or my colleagues here at Ithaka with comments of any kind.
Kevin M. Guthrie
President
Ithaka
kg@ithaka.org