How Librarians are Advancing Open Book Publishing at the Lever Press

At an October 2010 meeting of the Oberlin Group, a consortium of over 80 liberal arts college libraries in the United States, one of us (BG) made an audacious proposal: that the Oberlin Group establish an open access press, devoted to the production of peer-reviewed books, rigorously edited and distributed in electronic form without fees. BG noted the amount of time the Group spent bemoaning the scholarly publishing system in which we work—one that effectively locks scholarship produced for the public good behind paywalls—and suggested that it invest those energies instead in building a model press committed to the values of open scholarship. Reactions ranged from curiosity, to cynicism, to excitement; some questioned whether libraries have a role to play in publishing, while others argued that publishing should become central to our mission as libraries.

Fourteen years later, the Lever Press is thriving as the publisher of digital-first diamond open-access monographs on topics of interest to the liberal arts. Lever presents a unique model for how libraries, especially those from smaller institutions, can help transform the open-access landscape.

The Lever Press: Origins and Early Years

The current model of scholarly publishing is inherently flawed and nearly broken. Most of the scholarly narratives published today are accessible to only a fraction of the world’s population. Poorly endowed institutions in the United States and most institutions in the developing world cannot afford to purchase or otherwise obtain quality work … [A new, open access press would] support our institutions’ commitments to life-long learning; it would promote research in the fields taught at liberal arts colleges; and it will inspire our alumni, thus strengthening support for our institutions themselves. We also believe this to be an altruistic endeavor—an attempt to make scholarship available to all, without regard to affluence, location, or ability to travel.

Following the October 2010 meeting, the Oberlin Group commissioned a task force of members to explore the possibility of an open access initiative led cooperatively by libraries and librarians. Iterative conversations led to a meeting in New York City in February 2012 with representatives from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), MediaCommons, the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and Ithaka, all of whom encouraged the idea. Heartened, the task force asked member library directors at the October 2012 Oberlin Group meeting to contribute between $570 and $1,500 USD (based on size of library budgets) to fund a feasibility study. The solicitation document detailed the goals of the imagined venture:

The task force raised the necessary funds and hired Melinda Kenneway at TBI Communications in Oxford, UK, to conduct the feasibility study. Kenneway’s 2014 report identified broad swaths of faculty and librarians who shared our concerns and were eager to support and/or publish with a new press and concluded that a new press could be a going concern. Emboldened by Kenneway’s conclusions, task force members began calling colleagues at other liberal arts colleges. We raised pledges of over $2M, sufficient to fund the venture for three years. The task force determined that a partnership with an existing press offered the best way forward, and it issued a request for proposals to existing university presses. The winning response came jointly from the Amherst College Press and Michigan Publishing. Michigan Publishing is the home of the University of Michigan Press and also supports other values-based publishing initiatives through its publishing services department.

Thus, Lever Press was born. The name speaks to our desire to move the world of scholarly publishing, implicitly referencing Archimedes: “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” With editorial functions provided by the Amherst College Press under the leadership of Mark Edington and Beth Bouloukos, we published our first Lever Press titles in 2018 on Michigan’s Fulcrum platform. Early titles included a study of the role literature played in defining and teaching debt to the literary public (Promissory Notes: On the Literary Conditions of Debt by Robin Truth Goodman, 2018) and an exploration of the comeback of vinyl records (Vinyl Theory by Jeffery R. Di Leo, 2020).

In January of 2022 we agreed amicably that Amherst College Press would withdraw from the project to focus on its own portfolio and editorial functions would move entirely to Michigan Publishing. That same year, to secure Lever’s future as an independent organization that could engage legally in a business relationship with Michigan, we incorporated as a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization in the US called the Lever Initiative. We developed and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Michigan that governs how we collaborate.

Member libraries’ pledges continue to fund Lever in its entirety, and we’ve strengthened our relationship with Michigan Publishing. Under the leadership of Charles Watkinson, associate university librarian for publishing, the team at Michigan has become not only a business partner but a source of support and strategic thinking. Our list of publications continues to grow thanks to the work of acquiring editor Sean Guynes.

A Unique Contribution to Open Access

Lever has carved out a distinctive niche among open access initiatives. With a focus on the ethos of the liberal arts, Lever Press titles present new forms of research, support teaching, and appeal to readers outside academia. Lever titles often cross disciplinary boundaries (Twilight Zone Reflections: An Introduction to the Philosophical Imagination by Saul Traiger, 2024) and modalities (The Chemistry of Character in Breaking Bad: A Videographic Book by Jason Mittell, 2024). Furthermore, titles offer innovations in digital publishing; for La Princesse de Clèves by Lafayette: A New Translation and Bilingual Pedagogical Edition for the Digital Age (edited by Hélène E. Bilis, Jean-Vincent Blanchard, David Harrison, and Hélène Visentin, 2022), new functionality was developed for the publishing platform Fulcrum that allows the original French text to be displayed next to the English translation, alongside extensive annotations in both French and English.

Lever is the only North American open access press led collectively by a group of academic libraries. It is also the only member of the Association of University Presses built and overseen by librarians. Lever’s focus has enticed larger institutions that find the liberal arts relevant to their curriculum and the interests of their faculty and students as well as small liberal-arts colleges where establishing an independent, library-led press would not be feasible. Together, these institutions aim to cooperatively shape the open access landscape. Librarians from member libraries can serve on the Lever Oversight Committee, which oversees Lever’s business functions. Our Editorial Board is composed of faculty residents at member institutions or who have published with Lever and support our values. Having an Editorial Board is a demonstration of our commitment to maintaining the standards of the scholarly press community.

Lever now boasts 48 members (including one international member), which provide funding through three-year pledges. Membership growth and the continued support of our founding members provide financial stability and allows us to plan a few years into the future—an extended timeframe necessary to support the academic publishing cycle. We’ve published 32 books, and we acquire 20-30 new books per year. Usage statistics for Lever’s titles are impressive: total downloads number in the tens of thousands, with some individual titles exceeding 20,000 downloads thanks to readers from dozens of countries and institutions of all sizes. The impact of Lever titles can be seen on our dashboard (https://www.leverpress.org/impact/). We should note that the Book Analytics dashboard does not include usage from all platforms (e.g., Kindle), but the number of contributors is growing. JSTOR is a major source of use. For example, the title Extraordinary Partnerships: How the Arts and Humanities are Transforming America (edited by Christine Henseler, 2020) has nearly 20,000 uses on the JSTOR platform in addition to the over 1,000 uses through OAPEN and Fulcrum.

We are seeing positive reviews of our books in leading journals including Classical Review and Asian Affairs. La Princesse de Clèves by Lafayette has been nominated for awards including the 2024 Scholarly Edition in Translation Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender, and a 2023 Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in the category of Best eProduct.

Lever’s commitment to open access in the service of the liberal arts has been reflected in the feedback we receive from our readers. Comments submitted in a recent popup survey of Lever readers note how access for all, including those outside of large institutions, serves the common good:

“I am grateful for the sharing of books that otherwise would not be available to many of us in more out-of-the way places, such as small Canadian cities and universities. Being able to access so much of the world's literature and research has been critical to my freeing myself from literal oppression related to closed minds and spirits.”

“I'm a PhD student on health leave. As soon as my institution stopped getting tuition from me they closed down my access to the library. I have wanted to keep up with developments in the field and it has been difficult without access. Free resources like this are a lifeline! Thank you!”

“Free unrestricted access to education and knowledge makes us all better.”

One reader noted that having a free digital copy of a title would enable use of text-to-voice software to accommodate a disability.

As part of the book proposal process, we ask potential authors to share their reasons for wanting to publish with Lever. Authors express deep enthusiasm for the values of Lever, including wanting to support teaching and the liberal arts through transformative scholarship, to reach a broader audience including those who cannot usually access academic scholarship, and to take advantage of the affordances of the digital platform. As one author wrote, “Overall, [Lever] aligns with my understanding of the liberal arts mission: interdisciplinary materials shared with a wide audience in the pursuit of better global education and understanding.”

Looking to the Future

In May of 2024, the Lever Oversight Committee and Michigan operations team gathered for a retreat where we mapped new directions for Lever’s future. Having reached the end of our second pledge cycle, we will soon ask members to commit to a third cycle of three-year pledges. This third solicitation seemed a good moment to take stock of our current state and future directions. At the retreat we agreed to keep publishing output stable, to keep costs manageable, and to preserve the quality of our titles. We developed ideas for better publicizing our work and clarified the roles of all those involved in Lever’s operations.

We also agreed that, for phase three, we should develop a funding model that aims to reduce costs for individual member libraries as the number of members grows. We rely on membership fees to cover all expenses of the press, without subsidies from a larger organization and without taking payments from authors. Our fee structure has allowed us to achieve financial stability. But for many member libraries with small budgets who join to obtain a voice in the transition to open access, the cost is high. We recognize the need to broaden the membership and make Lever affordable for all.

In the years since its founding, Lever has demonstrated the power of a singular model for funding an open access press: a group of supporting libraries providing direct oversight of the press’s operations in service to a liberal arts perspective. The response we’ve received from authors and readers shows that our framework for collective action among libraries can result in scholarship with a broad reach. We were founded on the principle that “by living our values we will be responsive to the needs of readers, authors, and member institutions, share our liberal arts focus broadly, and engage globally with others in the exchange of new scholarship” (www.leverpress.org/about). We hope that the success of our example will inspire libraries, authors, and publishers to explore other innovative collaborations in service of open access, with a view towards achieving a critical mass of initiatives that result in significant change to the scholarly publishing landscape.