At Princeton University Press, The Mission is “Our Compass”

In a publishing environment buffeted by digital disruption and calls for open access, university presses in 2024 must manage to remain relevant and sustainable even as their audiences grow.

As a species in publishing, the university press is the long-lived progeny of hybridization – the academic paired with the popular. The world’s first university press at Cambridge University in the UK opened in 1534 and remains a thriving operation as it approaches its sixth century.

Examples of the scholarly and the successful abound among university press catalogs. Interaction of Color from Yale University Press, a handbook for artists and art lovers by Yale Professor Joseph Albers, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies since it first appeared sixty years ago.

In a publishing environment buffeted by digital disruption and calls for open access, university presses in 2024 must manage to remain relevant and sustainable even as their audiences grow.

At Dartmouth College earlier this month, Princeton University Press Director Christie Henry joined colleagues from MIT Press and the University of Michigan to explore with students, faculty, and librarians the ways that “UPs” are keeping up with the changes.

“Our mission is our compass is the way I like to think about it,” she tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “It’s a through line or a narrative that informs all our decision making and that we always have to point back to.

“We’re seeking books that impact and that engage, and while we also need them to sell – some of them at least – because we’re trying to run fiscally responsible businesses, we have an underlying commitment to global impact on the world of ideas and to make sure that knowledge is shared, and especially peer-reviewed knowledge.

“And what our not-for-profit status does and what this mission does is empowers us and enables us to work with more than just a market input. It works with an impact input. So when we’re making decisions, we’re both looking at the fiscal plans and impact.”