Johns Hopkins University Press

• 1. Introduction

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  Johns Hopkins University Press has been publishing continuously since 1878, making it the oldest university press still operating in the United States. That year, Daniel Coit Gilman, the very first president of Johns Hopkins University, launched what would become a durable institution of scholarly life. He called it the Publication Agency, a modest name for something that would outlast almost every comparable enterprise in American academic history.

  How does an institution survive without interruption for nearly a century and a half? What does it mean to publish knowledge at that scale, across that span of time? And what happens when the digital age arrives at the door of a granite church in Baltimore? Those are the questions this story sets out to answer.

• 2. The First Years

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  The American Journal of Mathematics was the first thing the Publication Agency sent into the world, in the press's inaugural year of 1878. The following year brought the American Chemical Journal, a second title that signaled the press was committed to the full breadth of scholarly inquiry, not a single discipline.

  The first book came in 1881: a memorial tribute to Sidney Lanier, a poet who had been one of the university's first writers in residence. Publishing a tribute to a poet was not the obvious first move for a scientific institution, but it announced that the press would honor the humanities alongside the sciences. Lanier's connection to Johns Hopkins gave the book a personal weight that a more commercial publisher might never have pursued.

  The name Publication Agency gave way to the Johns Hopkins Press in 1891. The press would carry that name for more than eight decades before becoming the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1972, the form it still uses today.

• 3. Eight Directors, One Mission

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  Nicholas Murray led the press from 1878 to 1908, a tenure of thirty years that established the institution's foundations. Christian W. Dittus then served for four decades, from 1908 to 1948, a run of stewardship that carried the press through two world wars and the Great Depression.

  Harold E. Ingle followed from 1948 to 1974, and Jack G. Goellner from 1974 to 1996. Willis G. Regier held the directorship for just two years, from 1996 to 1998, while James D. Jordan served from 1998 to 2003. The press has had only eight directors across its history, a striking continuity of leadership for any organization, let alone one operating in the turbulent world of academic publishing.

  Kathleen Keane, who served from 2003 to 2017, is credited with modernizing the press for the digital age. When she retired, the university appointed Barbara Pope as the new director, continuing a succession that stretches back to the university's founding president.

• 4. A Church Becomes a Press

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  In 1993, the press found a permanent home in Baltimore's Charles Village neighborhood, settling into a building with a history entirely unlike its own. The structure had been built in 1897 as the original church of the Saints Philip and James Roman Catholic parish. Its granite and brick exterior gave it a solidity that suited an institution built on permanence.

  The renovated former church now houses the offices of the press across five floors. Before this, the press had moved on and off the university's Homewood campus over the years, without a fixed address. The 1993 relocation ended that wandering and gave the press a landmark presence in the city it has always called home.

  Project MUSE, the press's online platform for scholarly journals and electronic books, also dates to 1993, the same year the press moved into the church building. The coincidence placed two defining moments of the press's modern identity in the same year.

• 5. Publishing at Scale

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  JHU Press publishes 90 scholarly journals and more than 200 new books every year. That output makes it one of the most productive university presses anywhere, and sustains a presence across virtually every field of academic inquiry.

  Project MUSE, which the press has run since 1993, has grown into an online provider of more than 550 scholarly journals and more than 20,000 electronic books. That collection gives researchers access to a library of material that no single institution could build on its own.

  The press operates through three divisions: Book Publishing, which handles acquisitions, manuscript editing, design, production, and marketing; Journals and Electronic Publishing, which includes Project MUSE; and Hopkins Fulfillment Services, which manages order processing, information systems, and the distribution center. The headquarters for all of this activity remains in the Charles Village section of Baltimore, Maryland, where the press has been anchored since it moved into the old church building more than three decades ago.