SSP’s Early Career Development Podcast Episode 20: Industry Primer — University Presses and Their Unique Role in Scholarly Publishing

This episode of SSP’s Early Career Development Podcast serves as a primer on university presses: how the university press model and structure can differ or align from the traditional for-profit model, what books and journal operations look like in this environment, and how to break into the university press world. Dawn Durante, the Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director at the University of North Carolina Press addresses these key themes and guides listeners to a plethora of resources to learn more. Hosted by Meredith Adinolfi (Cell Press) and Sara Grimme (Digital Science).

A Taxonomy of University Presses Today

University presses bring a diversity not only of costs, scale, and business models, but also of organizational capacity, incentives, and objectives. As efforts are mounted to transition monograph publishing to open access, it is vital that we recognize the richness and complexity of this community.

Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Journal Publishing and the University Press

University presses are not well positioned to thrive in journal publishing because they have not adopted any of the (relatively few and common) business strategies that are necessary, given market dynamics, for success. I do not put forth this thesis lightly. I have great affection and admiration for university presses, their value — craftsmanship, attention to detail, “getting it right”— and their mission. This is not admiration from afar: I served, in the formative years of my career, at the University of Chicago Press (Chicago), where I learned the tools of the trade and many of the practices and protocols of scholarly publishing still in use today. But after nearly two decades of observing university presses, from within and without, this thesis seems to be inescapable.