University presses publish valuable, peer-reviewed scholarly work and thought-provoking content that advances our understanding of the world. In today’s “post-truth” media environment, where reliable, well-researched sources exist alongside pseudoscience and political screeds, this type of authoritative information is more valuable than ever.

As the Association of University Presses (AUP) notes on its website, AUP members “publish works and perform services that are of vast benefit to the diverse scholarly network—[including] researchers, teachers, students, [and] librarians.”

But their reach extends well beyond higher-ed campuses. Their books, journals, and research reports are used by policymakers, opinion leaders, journalists, nonprofit organizations, and others worldwide to inform key decisions and understand a broad range of perspectives.

For example, the work of scholarly presses helped minimize the damage caused by the Los Angeles wildfires by advising first responders on the chemistry of wildfires in urban areas. It’s shaping how we understand language and the influence of art forms like hip hop music. And it’s helping us to engage in civil and respectful conversations across political boundaries when discussing topics that are foundational to our democracy.

University presses are also at the forefront of the open access publishing movement, as the concept of open access aligns with their mission to share and disseminate important information as widely as possible. As the publishing world evolves, university presses are changing as well, making many of their works available online free of charge while publishing print-on-demand versions for those who request them.

“Many people still prefer to read an actual book over a PDF, and I don’t see that changing any time soon,” says Thomas Kraus, editorial director of books for the University of Vermont Press.

Here are some of the latest developments in university publishing.

University of Vermont Press

Established in 2023 by the University of Vermont Libraries, UVM Press is a Diamond Open Access publisher that does not charge fees to either authors or readers. “Our goal is to provide free content that can be downloaded anywhere to support the scholarly mission of land grant universities,” says Thomas Kraus, editorial director of books. “We’re trying to reconfigure the model of university publishing to make it more equitable and sustainable.”

UVM Press’s operations are funded entirely by the university. “I like to think of it as a long-term research initiative,” Kraus says.

The press consists of two divisions: books and journals. The journals division is launching with two open access academic journals initially, with plans to publish at least two more journals in the future.

The Journal of Ecological Engineering and Design focuses on the intersection between ecology and design, with an eye toward designing and building structures in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. “Ecological engineering is something UVM does very well,” Kraus notes. The Journal of Black Military Studies aims to promote worldwide understanding and appreciation of the Black military experience.

The books division plans to publish about a dozen books per year, with the first titles available in late 2025 or early 2026. They will be available online in PDF format, and libraries and individuals can also buy printed copies on demand.

The division’s focus will be a collection of works called the “Janus Debates” series. In these short, 30,000-word books, two scholars will debate important topics “in a way that’s fair, sensible, well researched, and doesn’t rely on specious reasoning or misinformation,” Kraus says. Topics will include hate speech, capital punishment, universal basic income, and nuclear energy. The idea emerged from UVM’s Janus Forum Lecture Series, in which policy experts with opposing points of view occupy the same stage and debate major issues of the day. “We hope these books will be used in classrooms,” he adds.

Other areas of focus for UVM Press’s books division will include Vermont history and culture, planetary health, and public health. “Public health still tends to have its research hidden behind paywalls,” Kraus explains. “It can be difficult to access scholarly literature if you’re a rural doctor or a nonprofit organization. We’d like to remove that barrier.”

Wayne State University Press

Founded in 1941, Wayne State University Press is a publisher of books and journals based in—and shaped by—the city of Detroit. “What makes us different is that we were founded not only by Wayne State University faculty but also Detroit businessmen who felt strongly that the university needed a press to communicate the exceptional work being done in the city,” says Director Stephanie Williams.

Wayne State University Press publishes about 30 titles per year. Its areas of focus include topics that are strengths for the university, such as Black and Jewish studies, fairy-tale scholarship, film and media studies, and the history and culture of Detroit and the Great Lakes region.

The Promise of Language: A Memoir, January 2025, ISBN 9780814351949, is a coming-of-age memoir from author, scholar, and linguist Keith Gilyard, whom the press first published in the 1970s. From his earliest days in the segregated New York City public schools through his rise in academia, Gilyard recounts how the rhythm of Black America’s vernacular provided a backdrop to his intellectual awakening. The book is a testament to the transformative power of language.

Detroit is home to one of the largest Arab and Chaldean populations in the country. Beyond Refuge in Arab Detroit, edited by Yasmeen Hanoosh, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock, March 2025, ISBN 9780814351161, is a collection of essays from 19 contributors who explore the evolution of the diverse Arab Detroit community, its rich cultural influence on the region, the challenges it faces, and what its future holds.

The Civility Book: A Guide to Building Bridges Across the Political Divide, written by veteran journalists and political opposites Nolan Finley and Stephen Henderson (with Lynne Golodner), June 2025, ISBN 9780814352182, is a guide to engage in respectful dialogue and maintain relationships despite ideological differences. Built around four pillars of civility, the book demonstrates that civil conversation is not only possible; it’s also a key component of our democracy, which is especially important in today’s highly charged political climate.

“Together, these books are about community,” Williams says. “They’re about the ways communities change and how we speak to one another. They’re very relevant to the times in which we’re living.”

National Academies Press

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the National Academies Press publishes authoritative reports issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. It publishes about 500 titles per year on a wide range of topics in the sciences, engineering, medicine, and transportation.

Although it occasionally publishes books authored by individuals, its most recognizable publications are “consensus studies” produced by teams of researchers, says Publisher Alphonse MacDonald. Its titles are available to read free of charge online, with more than 1 million downloads per year—and it also publishes ebook and print-on-demand copies of its works.

Publications from the National Academies Press routinely inform the work of policymakers, researchers, and practitioners in the field, including first responders. A 2022 publication, The Chemistry of Fires at the Wildland-Urban Interface, ISBN 9780309277051, was critical to the work of firefighters responding to the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025—and the number of online downloads spiked that month.

Fires that occur where wildlands and urban areas intersect have distinct characteristics and can lead to public health effects unique to these situations, the report notes. And these findings have important implications for how emergency personnel are trained and what equipment they use.

Social media is prevalent in the lives of most youth today, raising concerns about its effects on the mental and physical health of children and teens. Social Media and Adolescent Health, 2024, ISBN 9780309713160, addresses this pressing topic. Produced by an ad hoc committee of academics across multiple fields, the report examines the existing research on social media’s effects on youth and lays out recommendations for policymakers, regulators, industry executives, and caregivers for how to leverage social media safely and effectively.

Understanding and anticipating changes in our oceans, and how these will affect marine ecosystems and humans, has taken on new urgency amid global climate change. Coming in May 2025, Forecasting the Ocean: The 2025–2035 Decade of Ocean Science, ISBN 9780309722223, “lays out a research agenda for helping us make the most of our ocean resources,” MacDonald says. The report was produced at the request of the National Science Foundation.

Paradigm Publishing Services

Created in 2023 and based in Boston, MA, Paradigm Publishing Services aims to support university presses and other academic publishers by partnering with them to handle services such as digitalization, sales, and distribution of their content. Paradigm is a subsidiary of De Gruyter Brill, a leading academic publisher especially in the humanities.

“We’re committed to supporting small and independent academic publishers in particular,” says Senior Communications Manager Heather Goss. “We’re working to support them where we can, so their content remains accessible to researchers and librarians worldwide.”

Paradigm’s research shows that 85 percent of small university presses failed to make their budget in the last fiscal year, and 89 percent said they lost market share to large commercial publishers. “We’re part of this community, and as community leaders, we’re determined to invest our time and resources to find creative solutions for the operational and financial success of smaller publisher and university press partners,” says Paradigm’s Chief Strategy Officer Emily Poznanski.

With Clarivate recently moving to shift their perpetual sales agreements to a new model, these smaller publishers might be losing sales, Goss notes. Paradigm acts as a sales consortium to help these smaller presses get in front of library decision makers.

In addition, Paradigm collaborates with academic, professional, and open access (OA) publishers who sometimes lack their own platforms, providing them with publishing and global distribution services, including paywalled and open access. Some of Paradigm’s newest partners within this spectrum include John Benjamins Publishing Company, an independent linguistics publisher based in Amsterdam; State University of New York (SUNY) Press; University of Wyoming Press; and University of Alaska Press. In 2024, Paradigm raised $1.1 million that was distributed to university presses for open access publishing support.

University Press Library Open (UPLOpen) is a comprehensive e-book platform and OA initiative from Paradigm. Launched in April 2024 with a goal of drawing attention to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, UPLOpen now hosts more than 10,000 OA titles from more than 50 academic publishers—and it’s helping university presses meet their OA goals.

The titles on UPLOpen (https://uplopen.com/) cover a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and natural and social sciences. Among the university publishers represented in UPLOpen are Chicago, Cornell, Duke, NYU, Penn, Stanford, Toronto, Edinburgh, and Manchester. UPLOpen is also home to two unique and complete series collections: Luminos, a collection of monographs from the University of California Press, and Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME), a five-year pilot project of the Association of American Universities, Association of Research Libraries, and Association of University Presses.

Paradigm also partners with smaller academic publishers to digitize and archive their content. “If universities have books that are out of print, for example, we can take the physical copy, digitize it, and make it accessible to everyone through our platform,” Goss says. This content can be made available free of charge or can exist behind a paywall.

The University of Pennsylvania Press recently partnered with Paradigm to digitize the backlist of its distribution client, the American Philosophical Society Press (APS Press), which was founded in 1743 and is the oldest continuously operating scholarly press in North America.

Some of APS Press’s oldest published titles, including the first 27 volumes of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, will be digitized in Paradigm’s Boston office, as will writings from Benjamin Franklin, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Margaret Mead. “These titles have been unavailable to the public for a long time,” says APS Press Director Kimberly Guinta. “I’m looking forward to seeing these publications earn new life online. Their contents remain invaluable to this day.”

University of Michigan Press

Founded in 1930, the University of Michigan Press publishes more than 100 titles per year, about 80 percent of which are scholarly monographs. Three-fourths of its content is immediately available as open access material online, and it also sells print copies on demand.

“We’re not just trying to print and sell books but ensure that we’re publishing as much as we can as open content,” says Library Relations Manager Kelsey Mrjoian. “We have a lot of support from our own institution to be able to do this.”

Greenland’s geopolitical significance was explored in detail in Greenland in Arctic Security: (De)securitization Dynamics under Climatic Thaw and Geopolitical Freeze by Marc Jacobsen, Ole Waever, and Ulrik Pram Gad, February 2024, ISBN 9780472904396. The publication delivers a comprehensive overview of how security dynamics unfold in relation to Greenland. With Greenland at the center of current political debates, this book offers timely insights for readers.

Owning My Masters (Mastered): The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions by A.D. Carson, October 2024, ISBN 9780472999088, is a digital archive of original rap music and spoken-word poetry containing two volumes of music, an annotated timeline, videos, and a digital book exploring Black life in America. Carson is an associate professor of Hip Hop and the Global South at the University of Virginia. This interactive, multimedia work demonstrates the capabilities of Fulcrum, the press’s open access e-book platform.

“The platform itself attracts authors who want to do something a little different, beyond publishing a traditional monograph,” Mrjoian says.

A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Recipes for the Kitchen by Malinda Russell, February 2025, ISBN 9780472904358, brings new life to the oldest-known cookbook published by an African American woman. A Domestic Cook Book first appeared in 1866, containing 260 recipes that drew from Russell’s experience cooking in Southern kitchens. This new edition includes an introduction by the late food historian Janice Bluestein Longone that contextualizes Russell’s cookbook. By digitizing the only known copy of the book, housed in the Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan Library’s Special Collections Research Center, the new edition preserves an important part of American history and makes it widely available for the first time.

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