The MIT Press has long been a leader in open access publishing, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits in a dynamic, open web edition. Today, over two decades later, the Press supports a variety of open access publishing models for both books and journals. To coordinate and grow the Press’s burgeoning portfolio of open access efforts, we are delighted to announce that Nick Lindsay has been promoted to Director of Journals and Open Access at the MIT Press, effective immediately. Lindsay will be responsible for open access strategy and communications for the Press, and will put policies and procedures in place to further our goals in this important area.
Current MIT Press open access efforts range from participation in Knowledge Unlatched and digitizing select backlist titles to be hosted on the Internet Archive, to publishing several open access journals. The suite of relevant activities has grown rapidly in recent years and expanded well beyond the boundaries of any one department at the Press. Elsewhere at MIT, the focus on open academic and teaching resources continues to grow, as evidenced by the strong recommendations regarding open scholarship within the MIT Future of Libraries report, and the creation of the MIT OA Task Force. The new role under Lindsay’s direction addresses the need for consistent strategy and messaging in our approach to open digital models at the MIT Press, along with our capacity to grow open publishing partnerships at MIT and beyond.