About the Press

Conference display of several University of Michigan Press books

University of Michigan Press
839 Greene Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-3209
Phone: 734-764-4388
Fax: 734-615-1540

 

Our Mission 

The University of Michigan Press is a vital component of UM Library's Publishing division (also known as Michigan Publishing), which is the primary academic publishing division of the University. In partnership with our authors and series editors, we publish in a wide range of humanities and social science disciplines. We champion the Library's dedication to helping all learners, researchers, and creators to succeed through our global digital and print publishing and distribution programs.

Together with our authors, we also play a critical role in the teaching and learning mission of the University by applying new pedagogies to the development of instructional materials that promote college success for students. To address the educational and information needs of our regional readers, the Press also produces publications on Michigan and the Great Lakes region.

The Press, with our rich history of publishing expertise, continues to lead in the development of digital scholarship and to support the dissemination of quality knowledge as widely and freely as possible.

Governance and Peer Review

The quality of the publishing program of the Press is assured through a rigorous developmental and peer review process overseen by its faculty Executive Committee and abiding by the Best Practices for Peer Review of the Association of University Presses. The purpose of the Executive Committee is to approve (or decline to approve) projects for publication, proposed series, and proposed distributed clients under the University of Michigan Press imprint, advise the Press director on strategic directions, and serve as a productive interface between the Press, the University of Michigan, and the academic community more broadly. It is composed of nine voting members of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) faculty. The Executive Committee guidelines describe its operations more fully.

Our Commitment to Equity, Justice, and Inclusion

The University of Michigan Press strongly supports the struggle for racial justice. We publish and distribute books in the humanities and social sciences that seek to make sense of society and culture. We must and will question through whose lens those concepts are constructed. In addition, we recognize the important role that we play in helping to determine which voices are able to participate in the social and academic discourse, making it all the more important that we evaluate our practices critically and progressively. We seek to increase the participation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in our publishing as authors, domain experts, and selectors. We commit to developing an anti-racist workplace climate, improving our shared awareness of the language and systems that serve to perpetuate racism so we can change them. We will also continue to develop strategies that improve equitable access to our publications, recognizing that current systems exclude many readers who need the important works that we publish but cannot access them.

Our Commitment to Digital Scholarship

Recognizing that digital tools are transforming how scholars work, the University of Michigan Press is engaged in many initiatives to support high-quality publication, distribution, and preservation of new scholarship and advance electronic access to past publications. Accessibility, durability, discoverability, and flexibility/interoperability are core design principles in our work. We promote inclusive and multimodal types forms of open publication. We also support (and partner to explore) new applications of technology, such as generative AI, that can advance our mission; to maximize access to the expertise that our authors bring.