Open access monographs

["Kimball, Shana" <kimballs AT umich.edu>]

Title: news about publishing at UM

Hi, all,

I am forwarding a message to SPO’s publishing partners about the university’s restructuring of the UM Press. As Maria mentions below, our existing publishing commitments will continue unchanged — this does not get in the way of our working with you all on OHP.

Best,
Shana


------ Forwarded Message
From: Maria Bonn <mbonn AT umich.edu>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:00:01 -0400
To: <spo-partners AT umich.edu>
Subject: news about publishing at UM


Hello SPO partners,

As you may have seen this morning in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle of Education, the University of Michigan is undertaking a reorganization to bring the University of Michigan Press into the Library and to move toward primarily digital distribution of monographs (with a significant POD component). Unfortunately, the press release that went out early to those two news outlets was not-quite-final. The updated press release is available online at the University Record, here:

http://www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Mar23_09/05.php

This change will certainly raise the question of how the university makes use of its two publishing operations based in the library and how we create the optimal set of publishing services that meet the communication needs of scholars. This is only nodded to in the release:

“The move also offers an opportunity for closer coordination between the Press and the existing University of Michigan Library publishing services offered by its Scholarly Publishing Office. A closer alliance of these two efforts will offer the University and its scholars a rich, functional and efficient publishing environment.” 

In brief, we do not know yet exactly how SPO and the Press will work together outside of our existing collaboration, nor do we know exactly what our publishing landscape will look like in a year. In fact, we’ll be talking with some of you as we  figure it out. We’re excited about this change and the opportunities it creates for a reimagination of scholarly publishing. We are, I think, embarking upon a grand adventure. But it will be a lot of work ;).

Please be assured that this change in now way changes our commitment to your publication and our work with you. My hope is that it will help us to build an even better publishing environment for your work.

Please feel free to share the press release with anyone who might be interested and to be in touch with questions (if you’ll have patience for tentative answers and questions in return).

Thanks as always, for your support and your work with SPO,
Maria


-- 
Maria Bonn
Director, Scholarly Publishing Office
University of Michigan Library
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
734.763.3343