Michigan Publishing is pushing the boundaries of the book. The 2018 launch of Fulcrum—an open source publishing platform developed with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—was not only a symbol of this innovation, but has opened the door for partnerships that sustain the next generation of humanities scholarship.

Fulcrum has enabled us to improve our brand by providing a platform that allows scholars to author the types of multimodal books they have desired for many years. As an open access press, we are thinking about accessibility on many levels and the Fulcrum team is fully supporting us in that endeavor.

Fulcrum helps publishers present the full richness of authors' research in a durable, discoverable, accessible, and flexible form. Several presses already host titles on Fulcrum, which is built on robust, research library infrastructure. "Fulcrum...allows scholars to author the types of multimodal books they have desired for many years,” said Beth Bouloukos, Publisher of Lever Press.

The ACLS Humanities E-Book Collection is available on Fulcrum

Fulcrum is ideal for advancing the American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Book collection, an important resource of over 5,000 core humanities titles from over 70 publishers. As a recent library journal noted, ACLS HEB “combines a carefully selected collection of academic monographs related to the humanities with a straightforward user‐interface.” ACLS HEB has over 900 library clients, including small institutions where it serves as the only ebook collection for students and faculty.

At a time when most of our materials budget goes to STEM content from large commercial publishers, it feels good to support a non-profit university press that publishes monographs on an open source platform.

University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection launches

University of Michigan Press now joins a handful of academic presses selling their own collections directly to libraries. Launched in 2019, UMP EBC began with over 1,100 titles and grows annually. Going directly on Fulcrum ensures that enriched scholarship is widely distributed, and this approach has been well received by purchasing libraries.

Andrée Rathemacher, the Head of Acquisitions at the University of Rhode Island Library, said, “At a time when most of our materials budget goes to STEM content from large commercial publishers, it feels good to support a non-profit university press that publishes monographs on an open source platform. I appreciate the researcher-friendly license terms, affordable pricing, the availability of multiple ebook formats, and the support for multimedia content.”

(ACLS HEB) combines a carefully selected collection of academic monographs related to the humanities with a straightforward user-interface.