The new endeavor, called Lever Press, will allow roughly 40 small liberal arts college libraries to combine resources to publish, share, and archive digitally native content.
Haverford is a part of a group launching a pioneering new scholastic press. Known as Lever Press, it is the creation of Michigan Publishing, Amherst College Press, and a consortium of 41 liberal arts college libraries, including Haverford's. This new endeavor, which leverages the resources of those colleges to create a collaborative, open-access monograph publisher, aims to address some of the publishing industry's current problems, namely the barriers to publication that researchers at smaller institutions face and the current inadequate options for sharing and archiving digital-native content.
"We are looking at this press as something that strikes at the heart of the liberal arts experience," says Librarian of the College Terry Snyder. "The liberal arts environment fosters interdisciplinarity and collaboration in scholarship in a way that may not be happening as readily at larger institutions. And we're hoping this press will tease out the best of that experience."
Lever Press will publish digital-native titles distinguished by their editorial alignment with the mission and ethos of liberal arts colleges. One of the publisher's key commitments is to provide open access to its content—meaning, anyone internationally is free to read, cite, or reuse the content without copyright or licensing restrictions. But unlike typical "open-access" publishers, which ask authors to pay for operating costs, Lever Press is offering a “platinum” approach in which the pledging institutions front all publishing expenses.
"It's a values-based proposition that helps us test the best vision of what publishing can be," says Snyder. "We talk a lot here about situating ourselves in the world and being part of the global conversation, and this is one way to help tap faculty and students into a much bigger conversation."
The liberal arts college libraries in the consortium have committed to contribute more than $1.2 million to a five-year pilot program for Lever Press. Supported by these pledges, Lever Press aims to acquire, develop, produce, and disseminate 60 new open-access titles by the end of 2020.
The institutions that have so far pledged to support the first five years of Lever Press are:
Agnes Scott College
Allegheny College
Amherst College
Atlanta University Center—Morehouse & Spelman Colleges
Bard College
Bates College
Berea College
Bowdoin College
Carleton College
Claremont Colleges
Coe College
College of St. Benedict/St. John University
Denison University
Earlham College
Furman University
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Haverford College
Kenyon College
Knox College
Lafayette College
Lake Forest College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
Oberlin College
Rollins College
Skidmore College
Smith College
St. Lawrence University
St. Olaf College
Swarthmore College
Trinity University
Union College
The University of the South
Ursinus College
Vassar College
Washington & Lee University
Whitman College
Williams College
The College of Wooster
Lever Press will be governed by an Oversight Committee, including representatives from pledging libraries as well as staff from Amherst and Michigan. One of the first tasks of this committee will be to assemble an editorial board comprised of faculty members from the participating colleges, which will be responsible for vetting and approving Lever Press publications.
“The collaboration between these highly-regarded liberal arts college libraries, Michigan Publishing, and Amherst College Press allows us to combine scholarly excellence, administrative expertise, and financial resources in such a way as to offer global access to outstanding scholarship,” says Snyder. “As new forms of digital scholarship are explored, it is important to generate peer-reviewed publication avenues that leverage technology in generating and promulgating that new knowledge. Similarly, giving global, free and open access to these resources is equally important. The Lever Press accomplishes those goals and more.”
