News & Events Lever Press Sets Its Sights

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Lever Press, the open-access scholarly press founded late last year by Amherst College Press, Michigan Publishing and a consortium of 80 liberal arts colleges, kicks into gear this summer.

The press’s editorial board, made up of 11 faculty members from participating institutions, convenes its first meeting Aug. 22 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“Our editorial board has the task — unparalleled in my publishing experience — of being the architects of a completely new editorial program,” said Mark D. W. Edington, Director of the Amherst College Press. He was appointed Lever Press’s publisher earlier this year.

“We’ll leave our first meeting in Ann Arbor next month with a list of half-a-dozen or so topics, ideas for series, and areas of focus for what we’ll produce.”

Their mission will be to both set the standards by which publications are reviewed and determine what areas of research will be given priority.

Funded by The Oberlin Group, a consortium of 80 liberal arts college libraries, and guided by a partnership of the Amherst College Press and Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan, Lever Press will offer peer-reviewed, open-access, and digitally native scholarly publications. Forty libraries, mostly from the Oberlin Group,  have committed to contribute more than $1.2 million to Lever Press over the next five years.

The Oberlin Group launched Lever Press out of a concern that access to scholarly materials has become increasingly expensive, creating a field of haves and have-nots when it comes to accessing educational resources.

“It shouldn’t be the case that only the wealthiest institutions can afford to purchase the best and most recent books addressing issues and fields at the heart of our campuses,” said Mike Roy, Dean of Libraries at Middlebury College and the president of the Lever Press oversight committee.

In addition to Edington’s role as publisher, Amherst is represented by Bryn Geffert, Librarian of the College, who serves on Lever’s Oversight Committee, its elected governing board.

Lever Press publications won’t be limited to the participating institutions. “We’re looking for work that reflects the identity and characteristic emphasis on excellence in teaching and research that is the hallmark of our sponsoring colleges,” said Edington. “We keep returning to the idea of the books that all of us encountered as undergraduates, that opened our eyes and changed our lives.”

Edington said the press will be looking for work that embraces the interdisciplinary, engages in important social issues, and blurs the boundaries between research and teaching.

Over the next five years, Lever Press is expected to publish some 60 titles, all of which will be available for free online —both as downloadable files and as screen-readable web pages— and in print for a nominal cost.

Lever Press is already accepting proposals from scholars for individual works and series of works. Proposals for individual works are welcome from faculty and scholars anywhere; proposals for series should come from faculty or teams of faculty from Lever’s sponsoring institutions (a list of these institutions may be found at http://www.leverpress.org/who-we-are/).