MIT Open Publishing Services
MIT Open Publishing Services (MITops) is a scholar-focused, MIT-branded hosting and publishing services operation. Working with our partner the Knowledge Futures Group, we provide a portfolio of services to mission-aligned partners, including peer review support and editorial development; professional copyediting and design; marketing and publicity; and hosting on the PubPub open source platform.
The MIT Press believes that the full potential of institutionally owned and managed infrastructure will be realized by pairing publishing technology innovation with economic incentives that will make it possible for the academy to reclaim the marketplace for scholarly communications. “This model will accelerate the shift away from the academy’s growing dependence on large multinational information service providers,” says Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “Because we are mission-aligned with the institutional environments that we serve, we can meet the needs of researchers, authors, and readers ‘where they are.’”
One of the first projects published with support from the MITops program is a new case studies series that examines the social, ethical, and policy challenges of present-day efforts in computing. Published as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) cross-cutting program within the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing and edited by associate deans David Kaiser and Julie Shah, the series aims to facilitate the development of responsible “habits of mind and action” for those who create and deploy computing technologies.
In 2018, the MIT Press and the MIT Media Lab launched a joint initiative to transform research publishing by developing and deploying open source publishing technologies in the service of open access scholarship. In the context of ongoing changes in the mechanics and economics of scholarly publishing, the Knowledge Futures Group invents and launches innovative products and services. PubPub, an open authoring and publishing platform, is one of these products.
PubPub socializes the process of knowledge creation by integrating conversation, annotation, and versioning into short- and long-form digital publication. MIT Press has employed the PubPub platform for a variety of both traditional and experimental projects that fall under the following categories.
- Journals: Peer reviewed, open access journals from The MIT Press. These journals go through the same rigorous publishing process as The rest of our journals program.
- Published Titles: Books from The MIT Press. The content of these books is the same as the final published version available from the Press.
- COVID-19 Collection: A selection of titles on pandemics, epidemiology, and related topics from The MIT Press.
- Strong Ideas: A book series for general readers, that provides fresh, strongly argued, and provocative views of the effects of digital technology on culture, business, government, education, and our lives.
- Goldsmiths: A selection of open access titles from Goldsmiths Press, distributed by The MIT Press.
- Visit PubPub to view all MIT Press projects.
If you have questions about The MIT Press open access publishing program please contact Nick Lindsay, Director for Journals & Open Access, at nlindsay (at) mit.edu.