Publishing Services

The mission of the MIT Press Journals Division is simple: to be the publisher of choice for those seeking to be at the forefront of scholarly communication.

For over 40 years the MIT Press journals division has lived up to that ideal by publishing journals that are at the leading edge of their field and launching new journals that have nurtured burgeoning areas of scholarship. In both form and content, the Press continues to push at the edges of scholarship. In 2000, the Press launched the first university press aggregation of book and journal content, CogNet, and in 2016 announced the development of the highly interactive Journal of Design and Science published in conjunction with the MIT Media Lab. These examples, along with many others, are indicative of our commitment to experimentation while maintaining the highest quality standards. It’s this commitment that has allowed the Press to grow from two journals in 1972 to over thirty today.

As a not-for-profit publisher our participation in the scholarly communication ecosystem is unique and we see all aspects of it –publishers, librarians, authors—to be partners in pushing scholarly communication forward. In recent years, the Press has committed to publishing certain titles on an open access basis and welcomes proposals for new journals that wish to publish OA as well as more traditional subscription-based journals. The Press continues to actively seek to publish journals with societies, universities and others as well as start new titles on its own. We have a particular interest in developing new titles based at MIT. MIT Press offers a full suite of publishing services, including production, financial, customer service, sales and marketing, and rights management. We also preserve our entire collection of journal content via Portico, a leading digital preservation service, to ensure access and discoverability for all time.

MIT Press Journals Production is a project management group offering a full suite of production services, including copyediting, proofreading, composition, manufacturing, and conversion. We deliver PDF, XML, and ePUB to the MIT Press Journals website and to aggregators ranging from IEEE to Project MUSE to RePEc . Each journal is assigned a primary and secondary production coordinator who work closely with the journal editorial staff and Press vendors to ensure quality, on-time publication.

The Journals and Digital Products Customer Service team handles all subscription, single issue, and newsstand orders for the Press’s journals. Our team provides customer support for online access to journals, pay-per-view articles, ebooks, and our databases, CogNet and ARTECA. We assist institutional administrators with IP setup, usage retrieval and manage license agreement negotiations.

The MIT Press has a single marketing department which serves both its Books and Journals divisions, maximizing the number of cross-Press promotional opportunities. Over 20 individuals contribute to the promotion of our content, including the four members of our London office, who market to many of our international customers. Our staff have decades of experience under their belts, lending our knowledge, our finely-honed expertise, and the power of our deep professional networks to everything that we do. We execute customized marketing efforts to grow the reach and readership of our content, including print and digital campaigns, advertising, exhibition and conference promotions, publicity and social media, samples and free trials, and much more.

Please contact Journals Director, Nick Lindsay at nlindsay@mit.edu for further information on how to start a new journal or bring an existing one to MIT Press.

TESTIMONIALS

When the Journal of Cold War Studies was being set up at Harvard University 20 years ago, I approached MIT Press about publishing it because the press already put out other academic journals I greatly respected (and for which I had been an author). Some 20 years later, I am very happy about the choice of MIT Press. The JCWS has been approached over the years by numerous other academic presses that have sought to lure it away, but I have never hesitated about staying with MIT Press. For those interested in putting out high-quality academic journals, you couldn't come up with a better choice.
– Mark Kramer, Editor, Journal of Cold War Studies and Program Director, Project on Cold War Studies, Harvard University

In two decades of working with MIT Press as a journal editor, I have had invariably positive experiences. All individuals, whether in management, production, marketing, legal, or customer service, have been professional, responsive, and friendly.
– Doug Keislar, Editor, Computer Music Journal and Senior Engineer at Audible Magic Corporation

The MIT Press has an excellent production process (most notably, outstanding copy-editing) in place. The best aspect about the Journal Division is that this production process is staffed by a truly responsive and exceedingly helpful team of professionals. It is a fantastic arrangement where I could focus just on building up the quality of the work of my authors, with full confidence that everything else will be taken care of very well by MIT Press.
– Wing Thye Woo, Editor-in-Chief, Asian Economic Papers and Professor of Economics, UC Davis

Starting a new journal is a daunting task. The broad experience and dedication of MIT Press was essential for getting Network Neuroscience off to a successful start.
– Olaf Sporns, Editor, Network Neuroscience and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Co-director of the Indiana University Network Science Institute, and Head of the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Indiana University Bloomington.

The success and sustainability of the Leonardo family of publications is due to MIT Press’s commitment to working with editors and authors to develop the best ways to document innovative research practices of our art-science-technology professionals. We have successfully, thanks to MIT Press leadership, navigated from a traditional print scholarly journal to a fully online publishing program including ebooks and articles, and with ARTECA multimedia documents including music, podcasts and videos.
– Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor, Leonardo and Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology, and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche, for the CNRS in France.

As the editor of a new open-access journal at MIT Press, I am impressed with the creativity, professionalism, and responsiveness of the staff as they've worked with me and my editorial manager to bring our journal from concept to reality. The level of detail involved in starting a new journal -- from creating the format, style, and art-work for journal identity to ensuring quality control in the production process -- is incredibly complex. It requires a team with extensive experience and an ability to solve problems efficiently and with good cheer. MIT Press exhibits all of these qualities and has been a pleasure to work with as our new journal enters its second year of operation.
– Richard N. Aslin, Editor-in-Chief, Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science and William R. Kenan Professor Emeritus, RCBI and Center for Visual Science and Director of Rochester Center for Brain Imaging at the University of Rochester

For forty years, MIT Press has provided International Security with exceptional service. We are especially grateful to the Press for its role in helping us to expand the reach and impact of the journal within the international relations community.
– The Editors, International Security

MIT Press has a distinct focus on precision (e.g., with tables and equations) and overall quality. The Press takes several important steps to ensure every manuscript is perfect before it reaches publication. We have had several authors express their gratitude for MIT’s careful copyediting of their manuscripts, at times catching important errors. Given its relatively small size, journal editors get a lot of personal attention from MIT Press personnel. We greatly appreciate the personal touch.
– Frank Sloan, Editor-in-Chief, American Journal of Health Economics and J. Alexander McMahon Professor of Health Policy and Management.