Project MUSE Editions and UPeC Announce Merger

["Melanie Schaffner" <melanie@muse.jhu.edu>]

TWO MAJOR UNIVERSITY PRESS E-BOOK INITIATIVES ANNOUNCE MERGER

For Immediate Release
March 10, 2011

For more information, contact:
Dean J. Smith, Director
Project MUSE
djs@press.jhu.edu
410-516-6981

Two major university press e-book initiatives --Project MUSE 
Editions (PME) and the University Press e-book Consortium (UPeC) 
-- have joined forces. The result of this merger -- the 
University Press Content Consortium (UPCC) -- will launch January 
1, 2012.

'This is a great moment,' said Kathleen Keane, director of the 
Johns Hopkins University Press, home of Project MUSE. 'By 
bringing these two initiatives together, we have taken a major 
step forward to ensure the ongoing viability of university 
presses.'

The partnership allows e-books from an anticipated 60-70 
university presses and non-profit scholarly presses -- 
representing as many as 30,000 frontlist and backlist titles -- 
to be discovered and searched in an integrated environment with 
content from nearly 500 journals currently on MUSE.

'Our user community will benefit greatly from the integrated 
research opportunities presented by putting university press book 
content alongside journal collections,' said Dean Smith, director 
of Project MUSE. 'Publishers and authors will see their books 
exposed to MUSE's installed base of several million scholars, 
researchers, and students across the globe.'

'The University Press Content Consortium will be the online 
destination for peer-reviewed university press scholarship,' said 
Steve Maikowski, director of the New York University Press and 
one of the press directors spearheading UPeC. 'The efficiencies 
and cost savings resulting from this collaboration will bring far 
more revenue to participating presses than current third-party 
models,' he said. 'Because both initiatives are university-press 
based, there is a strong mission alliance.'

The merger is part of a multimillion-dollar commitment to the 
ongoing growth and expansion of Project MUSE, according to 
director Dean Smith. 'By leveraging the MUSE brand and investing 
in technology that ensures the program's future performance, we 
can grow at a rapid pace while continuing our 15-year tradition 
of providing quality scholarly content at a fair price.'

Representatives of UPeC and PME worked closely with librarians 
over the past two years to develop a scholarly e-book model that 
benefits both libraries and presses. Incorporating extensive 
research and feasibility analysis from both groups, the UPCC 
Collections will be sold by MUSE in comprehensive and 
subject-based collections, with minimal digital rights 
management.

'Members of the academic library community appreciate that these 
two groups sought our input before developing their product 
offerings,' said Charles B. Lowry, executive director of the 
Association of Research Libraries (ARL). 'We have been saying for 
some time that we would prefer to see university press e-book 
content not proliferated across multiple platforms creating undue 
complexity and duplicative cost. I feel sure that librarians 
nationwide will be excited about this convergence, which is a 
huge step in the right direction.'

'ARL has expressed to our community the desire of academic 
librarians for better collaboration in the distribution of 
university press e-book collections,' said Richard Brown, 
director of Georgetown University Press and current president of 
the Association of American University Presses. 'I am delighted 
that these two groups took the concerns of the library community 
so seriously.'

Research on the feasibility of a university press?based scholarly 
e-book initiative was commissioned by the UPeC directors in 2009 
with grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Working from 
the outset with two groups of highly experienced 
consultants?Informed Strategies, which surveyed the needs of the 
library community, along with Chain Bridge Group, which developed 
and tested the business model?UPeC began its search for a 
business partner three months ago. While a number of potential 
partners offered exciting opportunities, JHUP's success in 
balancing the interests of publishers and librarians informed 
UPeC's selection of MUSE, according to Maikowski.

Content integration, collaboration, and sustainability have 
emerged as watchwords from this new alliance.

'The creation of UPCC signals a new era of inter-university press 
collaboration,' said Alex Holzman, director of Temple University 
Press and one of the founding directors of UPeC. 'In these 
challenging times, presses need to acknowledge one of their key 
strengths -- excellent scholarship -- and work together to be 
able to disseminate this scholarship as widely as possible.'

Keane agrees. 'This is a significant and transformative moment in 
the world of scholarly publishing,' she said. 'It bodes well for 
the future of university presses.'

About the University Press e-book Consortium (UPeC)
The University Press e-book Consortium (UPeC) emerged in 2009 to 
explore the feasibility of a university press?based e-book 
initiative. Five press directors serve as UPeC principals: Steve 
Maikowski, New York University Press; Alex Holzman, Temple 
University Press; Marlie Wasserman, Rutgers University Press; 
Eric Halpern, University of Pennsylvania Press; and Donna Shear, 
University of Nebraska Press. UPeC planning and development was 
supported by two grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

About Project MUSE
Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and 
social science periodical content; since 1995, its electronic 
journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs 
at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. 
MUSE is the sole source of complete, full-text versions of 
journal titles from many of the world?s leading university 
presses and scholarly societies, with over 100 publishers 
currently participating.