Mission and core principles

We will produce scholarship in the fields comprising the liberal arts on which our faculty, students and graduates rely, by leveraging new technologies and open access principles to publish quality work.

Core Principles

1. We will experiment with “medium-form narratives” or “scholarly novellas”: narratives longer than the journal articles to which the open-access movement now largely devotes itself, but shorter than tomes that struggle to find readers. We are particularly inspired by the the work of Byliner Press, The Atavist, and Princeton University Press Short Takes.

2. All “books” (for lack of a better term) will be open access and thus freely available to anybody with an Internet connection.

3. We will only publish work with a good chance of finding a meaningful audience. We have no interest in producing work nobody wants to read.

4. We will employ excellent editors, equal or superior to editors at other university presses. These editors will be entrepreneurial, actively seeking and soliciting good manuscripts. Our editors will establish outstanding lists in their fields of specialty.

5. The quality of our publications should be apparent to all. Nobody will ask of our publications, “Yes, but is this scholarship?” The press will produce peer-reviewed works with complete credibility among peers.

6. We will be a first-choice press. Works published will have a positive impact in their respective fields.

7. We will align the mission of this venture with the mission of our institutions, thus gaining support from deans, provosts, and presidents.

8. The venture as a whole must be financially solvent and sustainable over the long term. It is in nobody’s interest to produce “one-offs.”

9. We will not develop a new platform for our work, but rather identify an existing platform best suited to our needs.

Advertisement