University of Michigan Press, a component of UM Library’s Michigan Publishing, champions the library’s research and scholarly communication missions through global digital and print publishing.
The press specializes in scholarly monographs and other materials in the humanities and social sciences. It publishes 170 new titles each year.
The Press’s Mission
The Press’s mission is to advance knowledge through the dissemination of scholarly books and journals, promoting the work of academics around the world. We publish in the humanities and social sciences, and we serve both the university community and the general public.
We also support the mission of the University of Michigan Library through our global digital and print publishing. Our business practices place service to scholarship above commercial interest, and we are a model of nonprofit, efficient operations that do not sacrifice long-term goals for short-term profits.
As a university publishing division of the University of Michigan Library, our mission is to promote the scholarship of the faculty and students of the University and its community worldwide. We do this by publishing a broad range of books and journals in the humanities and social sciences, in both print and electronic formats.
Our goal is to advance the humanities and social sciences, to provide access to a wide variety of research and ideas, and to encourage collaboration among scholars across disciplines. This is best done by providing the highest quality scholarly works and presenting these works in ways that allow readers to explore their own intellectual interests.
At the same time, we strive to create a culture of excellence in our publications and our staff by adhering to rigorous editorial standards, producing outstanding book design, and using sophisticated typography. This has resulted in the Press earning recognition for its thoughtful editorial work and excellent book design, and it has established a reputation as one of the most highly regarded university presses in the country.
Today, our publishing program encompasses more than 1,000 titles in languages & linguistics, international affairs, religion & theology, political science, regional studies, and global business and the economy. These books and journals are primarily used by scholarly communities, and they offer insight into and understanding of the world’s most important issues.
In addition to its publishing programs, the Press supports the work of a number of not-for-profit organizations and other not-for-profit institutions through funding and partnerships. The Freedom of the Press Foundation, for example, protects, defends, and empowers public-interest journalism in the 21st century through the development of encryption tools, documentation of attacks on the press, training newsrooms on digital security practices, and advocacy for First and Fourth Amendment rights guaranteed to the press.
The Publishing Process
The University of Michigan Press produces books that address critical issues in the humanities and social sciences. These include English language teaching textbooks, scholarly monographs in political science, disability studies, media studies, classical and medieval studies, performing arts, Asian studies, African studies, and books about the Great Lakes region.
The publishing process at the University of Michigan Press is organized around the acquisitions editor, who works with authors to identify potential projects and develop proposals that reflect their research. The editorial staff also includes peer reviewers, series editors, and faculty editors to help authors craft their manuscripts.
If your proposal is accepted by the Press, you will work with the production team to prepare your book for publication. The process typically takes about three to four weeks. Your production editor will contact you to give you an overview of the production process and a projected schedule for editing and proofing.
Your book will be assigned to a copy editor for copy editing, which can take between four and six weeks. Your copy editor will send you page proofs, which you should read thoroughly to ensure that there are no errors or corrections in your work. Make sure to check cross-references and note numbers, and check for any missing citations.
A good book is the result of careful planning, hard work, and collaboration between authors and editors. The author should provide a thorough description of the book, its focus and scope, its purpose, and its argument; a brief introduction to its key themes; and a table of contents and detailed chapter synopses if it is a contributed volume.
Once the manuscript is completed, it will be reviewed by the acquisitions editor and the faculty Executive Committee. This group is composed of nine voting members of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) faculty and is responsible for approving projects for publication, proposed series, and distributed clients under the University of Michigan Press imprint, advising the Press director on strategic directions, and serving as a productive interface between the Press, the University, and the academic community more broadly.
Open Access
Open Access makes research freely accessible to readers around the world, allowing researchers to expand their reach and impact. Its advantages for authors, readers, and funders are clear: increased visibility for scholarly work and broader dissemination of research findings.
The University of Michigan Press publishes highly curated and peer-reviewed monographs in humanities and qualitative social sciences. Areas of particular focus include performing arts and media studies; classical studies; political science; American studies (especially disability and class studies); Asian studies; and digital culture.
For each new scholarly monograph, the Press seeks to release an open access edition in the collection year following publication. As a result, most of the Press’s monographs are available free to read online or for purchase in paper.
As part of its commitment to sustainable OA, the Press participates in several prestigious OA initiatives and programs that provide financial support to presses to offset the cost of producing open access monographs. These include Knowledge Unlatched, Towards an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME), and the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot.
In addition, the Press has recently established an agreement with Wiley, a leading publisher of academic journals, to make the articles published by U-M authors from February 1, 2020 through December 31, 2022 freely available via the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s scholarly journal repository. This agreement, which represents 65% of the U-M’s total article count for 2020, is a major step in helping the Press fulfill its mission of making scholarly works freely available to the public.
Moreover, the Press has partnered with ScienceOpen to increase the discoverability of its open access titles. In this partnership, the Press’s rich ONIX and MARC records for books are transformed into Crossref metadata that increases discoverability for these titles within ScienceOpen’s platform by linking to their publisher websites.
As a result, the Press is proud to be a leader in the development of digital scholarship. During the past decade, the Press has become an innovator in the field of open access, publishing a range of high-quality scholarly titles that are free to read and reuse.
Book Distribution
The University of Michigan Press has a strong tradition of open access (OA) publishing that dates back to its Scholarly Publishing Office in 2000. Since then, the Press has put out about 120 front list OA titles and made about 800 more books available through HathiTrust.
UMP has been working to build a more sustainable model for its book distribution, one that aligns with the University of Michigan’s goals for its press to be self-sustaining and advance its values and mission. Its distribution policies were updated in 2008 to reflect this commitment.
In the future, UMP will continue to seek out partnerships with other presses that align with its mission and adhere to its publication standards and processes of peer review. It is especially important to us that these partners offer a variety of library-friendly terms, which are key components in the Press’s open access strategy.
We are also looking for ways to promote UMP’s work to readers beyond the university community. For example, we have a number of partnerships with other presses and universities that focus on teaching and research in the humanities.
These relationships help to ensure that UMP books are widely available, both in print and in digital form. Our scholarly ebooks are distributed through the BiblioVault platform, which offers file conversion, delivery and metadata services for scholarly publishers.
Another way we are promoting our books is through our Booksshare program, an e-book library that provides books in DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System), BRF (Braille Refreshable Format), EPUB and MP3. We encourage libraries and individuals with reading barriers to sign up for these libraries.
UMP is also exploring ways to sell digital editions directly on its website. To this end, UMP is using an enhanced shopping cart solution developed by the Chicago Distribution Center to connect its website to BiblioVault’s real-time fulfillment capabilities.
This cart also enables UMP to link its website to other e-vendors, such as Amazon for Kindle. This is a common practice for many presses, but it can make it difficult to place orders directly through UMP’s website.