In my inaugural statement back in what seems now to have been the simpler time of June 2024, I suggested two priorities for the Association of University Presses (AUPresses). The first was to fully reflect on the opportunity of being a global organisation. We have made great strides in achieving that aim: committees and task forces this year included chairs from several different countries; the annual meeting, developed by the 2025 Program Committee under the leadership of David Famiano (California) and Ana Jimenez-Moreno (Ohio State), has speakers from ten. The Global Partnerships Task Force, co-chaired by Andrew Joseph (Wits) and Michael Duckworth (Hong Kong) has been gaining momentum as the year has progressed, while John Sherer’s (UNC) Admissions & Standards Committee has welcomed applications from Kyiv to Lagos.
The second priority was to engage more fully with our core external constituencies. Initially our focus was libraries, holding an in-person Board meeting at the Charleston conference, allowing Wendy Queen (Johns Hopkins), Jane Bunker (Cornell), John Sherer (UNC), Dennis Lloyd (Wisconsin), the Big Ten’s Kate McCready and myself to present a session on university presses, but also to allow the wider Board to connect with our close collaborators in the library world. The Association continues to work closely with the Library Publishing Coalition, via the Library Relations Committee chaired by Jennie Collinson (Liverpool), and has offered shared booths at both the UKSG and ACRL conferences this year.
Our core constituencies focus then pivoted to authors, and specifically their—and our—intellectual property. We have actively asserted the value of copyright through a response to the 47-question Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence from the UK government, followed in quick succession by a submission to the public consultation on President Trump’s AI Action plan, which will follow this summer. The opportunities and threats of AI have been a reoccurring theme throughout the year, and the Intellectual Property & Copyright Committee chaired by Andrea Gapsch (Purdue) and Kerin Ogg (Duke), Acquisitions Editorial Committee chaired by Carli Hansen (Toronto) and Elisabeth Maselli (Pennsylvania), EDP Committee chaired by Nicole Tilford (SBL), Ian Caswell (UCL) and Sarah McDonald’s (Edinburgh) Journals Committee, and the Marketing Committee chaired by Vanessa de Bueger (Amsterdam) and Steffi Marchman (Notre Dame) have all provided thought-provoking engagement with this topic. Meanwhile, Beth Fuget (Washington) and Phil Hearn (MUSE/JHUP) have worked with the Open Access Committee to significantly improve the Association’s resource library for that other perennial acronym, OA.
Gigi Lamm (Indiana) and the UP Week Taskforce completed an inspiring week of advocacy in November, inviting us all to StepUP. Little did we know how urgent the need to StepUP would become as the year progressed. In this context the ongoing work of Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero’s (Guam) EJIB Committee, the Faculty Outreach Committee led by Katie Cortese (Texas Tech) and Anne Savarese (Princeton), the mentorship scheme facilitated by Kelly Fattman (Harvard Education) and Alodie Larson’s (Oxford) Professional Development Committee, and the great showcase that is the Book, Jacket, and Journal Show under the committee led by Michelle van der Merwe (UBC) have been particularly important.
With potentially choppy waters ahead we have been fortunate to have strong financial leadership within our community. Identifying a potential duplication, the Business Managers’ Meeting Organizers and the Financial Operations Committee were merged into a Business Operations Committee under the inaugural leadership of Alice Ennis (Illinois) and Steve Young (UBC). Paul Ashenfelter’s (Notre Dame) Investment Committee has provided careful oversight of the Association’s quasi-endowment and Tara Cyphers’s (Ohio State) Audit Committee identified a new, more efficient audit regime for AUPresses. Special mention should be made of Alexandria Leonard (Princeton) for agreeing to take on the Treasurer’s role for a second year in exceptional circumstances. Mindful of unprecedented uncertainty over university budgets, the Board of AUPresses voted to forego a planned increase in membership dues this year.
Almost 180 volunteers have staffed committees, task forces, and the Board. It has been a privilege to collaborate with them over the past 12 months and I thank them all for their service. Looking forward, the Nominating Committee, headed by Charles Watkinson (Michigan), has produced an outstanding slate of new directors. I am excited to see the pending return of Stephanie Williams (Wayne State) to the Board as President-Elect, just as I am sad to see Past-President Jane Bunker (Cornell), who did so much to help orientate my term, cycle off. We are fortunate indeed to have Dennis Lloyd (Wisconsin) as incoming President.
Inevitably this has been a policy and politics year of two halves: initially providing guidance for the moral and legal necessity of the European Accessibility Act, negotiating an AUPresses vendor discount for compliance with the European Safety Regulation, and beginning to ponder the postponed European Union Deforestation Regulation. Then from January we have had to contend with seismic changes and challenges facing US higher education.
The staff of the Association have been truly remarkable in this context, continuing to support more than 160 presses across 16 countries and to drive forward an ambitious strategic plan while business has been anything but usual. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to Brenna McLaughlin, Kim Miller, Kate Kolendo, Annette Windhorn, Alexis Fagan, McKenzi Thi Murphy, Trevor Nau, and to our irrepressible Executive Director Peter Berkery.
Providing a sustainable, high-quality forum to amplify humanities and social sciences scholarship—the disciplines that drive critical thinking, justice, democracy, and our understanding of value—has never felt more important. As the former President of the University of Chicago, Robert M. Hutchins, famously put it: “To put an end to the spirit of inquiry … it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations.”
The work of university presses matters.