Scholarly Publishing Office

The Scholarly Publishing Office [http://spo.umdl.umich.edu] (SPO), a unit of the University of Michigan University Library, is devoted to developing innovative and economically sustainable publishing and distribution models for scholarly discourse. Publishing a broad range of online journals and books, as well as offering a print-on-demand service and a small print monograph series, SPO provides publishers and authors a low-cost, flexible, robust, and efficient format to disseminate their work. SPO also participates in and facilitates ongoing discussions of the future of academic publishing and the exploration of experimental models for others to follow.

Background

SPO is unique among publishers because of its affiliation with a major university library. Historically, libraries have defined their mission according to the rubrics of collecting, preserving, cataloging, and distributing the fruits of scholarly inquiry. For many years this broadly conceived mission has sufficed; today, the economics of the publishing world have created a situation in which the status quo is impossible to maintain. Library budgets for public universities like the U-M are either cut or stagnant, while the costs of publishing in print form continue to rise. Publishing conglomerates drive subscription rates up, while libraries struggle—and in many case fail—to keep up. Smaller academic publishing houses do not generate sufficient revenue to support themselves, and their institutional subsidies have been slashed. Many presses have closed, and those that remain have raised prices for their books to a near-prohibitive level, further restricting sales.

Harnessing the flexibility and relatively inexpensive resources of electronic publishing, SPO responds to the economic challenges of scholarly publication by providing a cost-effective, sustainable, permanent, and user-friendly publishing option for journals that could not sustain the cost of print publication and distribution.

Projects and Publications

Starting with [http://www.philosophersimprint.org/ "Philosopher's Imprint"] , a peer-reviewed journal produced by the University of Michigan Department of Philosophy, SPO now publishes thirteen journals, and provides for-fee hosting for non-profit academic organizations' subscription products. For example, SPO hosts the American Council of Learned Society's [http://www.historyebook.org/ History Ebook project] and the Law Library Microfilm Consortium's [http://www.llmc.com/ LLMC-Digital] , a database of legal research materials. SPO also offers limited monograph publication and a print on demand service, as well as offering non-traditional publication services, such as online versions of exhibits curated by the University of Michigan's [http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/ Special Collections Library] .

Recently SPO has begun a collaboration with the [http://www.press.umich.edu/ University of Michigan Press] , called the Michigan Digital Publishing Initiative, to explore the possibilities of new publishing partnerships between libraries and traditional, print-based academic presses. The first fruits of this alliance is [http://www.digitalculture.org/ digitalculturebooks] , an imprint that offers high-quality books on the role of technology in contemporary society in both print and digital formats. The first book to appear under this imprint is the collection, "The Best of Technology Writing 2006". A 2007 edition is also planned.

SPO actively pursues new and promising partnerships and publication opportunities. For example, it recently released the online publication of the "Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists" (BASP), in partnership with the University of Michigan Library's Papyrology Collection. [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/basp/ BASP] is the only journal in the field of papyrology published in North America and is the official journal of the American Society of Papyrologists.

External links

* [http://www.lib.umich.edu/spo/ SPO's homepage]