P R E S S R E L E A S E FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 27, 1999 PROJECT MUSE� EXPANDS WITH JOURNALS FROM OTHER UNIVERSITY PRESSES Baltimore, MD -- Project MUSE�, the online journals database published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and one of the pioneers in online scholarly publishing, announces yet another groundbreaking initiative. Beginning with the year 2000, Muse will expand to include full-text online access to titles from other university presses. To date, nine other presses have committed 62 titles to joining Muse, bringing the total to 110 and more than doubling the size of the collection. The publishers involved are Carnegie Mellon University Press, Duke University Press, Indiana University Press, MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, University of Hawaii Press, University of Texas Press, and the University of Wisconsin Press. It is expected that even more titles may be added by the end of 1999. "Project MUSE has set a standard for scholarly electronic journals in the humanities and social sciences," explains Mark Nolan, Project MUSE manager at the Johns Hopkins University Press. "Our subscribing libraries have asked us to provide greater depth of coverage in these underrepresented areas. We saw this as an opportunity to develop a cooperative effort with other university presses to make their titles available within an established online publishing model that has been widely accepted and appreciated by the library community." Marie Hansen, director of Project MUSE, adds: "Such a joint effort by publishers who are, after all, in competition with one another, to collaborate in a publishing venture is an unprecedented undertaking. By working together we can create an exciting collection of scholarly materials that will be of far greater value to publishers, scholars, and librarians than any of us could produce singly. Not only that, we will be creating a broad and deep range of titles in many subject areas. We would like scholars in many fields -- for example, history or literary theory -- to think of MUSE as the first portal to performing online research." With the addition of the new journal titles, Nolan believes MUSE will become even more attractive to libraries that wish to increase their holdings while providing a variety of quality periodicals to their communities. As of June 1999, over 650 universities, colleges and other institutions worldwide have subscribed to Project MUSE as a cost-effective means of supporting the research and education needs of their patrons. The main thrust of Project MUSE's initial expansion will be in the subject areas in which a number of university presses have established strong reputations, such as literary theory and criticism, history, cultural studies, philosophy, social sciences and performing arts. The new titles represent a broad array of interests, including African-American literature, gender studies, medieval studies, higher education, health policy, political science, and Asian culture and history. Over the next year, science, technical, and medical periodicals will also be added to the collection. With the addition of the new titles to Project MUSE, a number of flexible subscription options will be available to institutions wishing to access either all or a selection of the journals offered. Details on the packages available, as well as pricing and discount plans, will be announced shortly. A major mission of Project MUSE has been to create an economical publishing alternative in an effort to help libraries deal with the high prices of serials. The library price for all 110 titles is expected to be in the range of $8,500 to $10,000 --still less than some single titles in the sciences. Hansen sees this initial expansion as the first step in an effort to provide a quality online collection of academic journals with great depth of coverage. "We expect to eventually offer several hundred titles from a group of publishers comprising university presses, scholarly societies and other not-for-profit institutions," Hansen explains. "We believe we can successfully provide a competitive model to those offered by commercial publishers, while enhancing MUSE's commitment to partnerships as already evidenced by our relationships with library consortia, aggregators and third party vendors." Project MUSE was launched in 1995 by the Johns Hopkins University Press, in collaboration with the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University, to offer the full text of JHUP scholarly journals via the world wide web. In 1999, MUSE publishes online 46 JHUP titles in the humanities, social sciences and mathematics, which are available for institutional subscriptions either as a package or individually. Project MUSE has been hailed for its library-friendly licensing and usage policies, easy online navigation, reasonable pricing, and generous discount plans for consortia and various categories of libraries. The Johns Hopkins University Press is one of the country's oldest and largest university presses, publishing more than 170 books each year and 52 scholarly journals. By long tradition the Press has published with distinction in such disciplines as literary studies, classics, history, economics, political science, and the history of science and medicine. Its innovative publishing program embraces both traditional and newer modes of scholarly communication. Sample journal issues and more information about Project MUSE may be accessed online at: http://muse.jhu.edu. Trial access to the entire Project MUSE database may be arranged for media review and for prospective subscribers by contacting Melanie Vandermark, Marketing and Sales Manager for Online Products at the Johns Hopkins University Press. Please call 410-516-3846 or email melanie@jhupress.jhu.edu for more information. ** A complete list of the titles to be included in Project MUSE in 2000 follows as a separate message. ** CONTACT: Melanie Vandermark (410) 516-3846 melanie@jhupress.jhu.edu or Mark Nolan (410) 516-6950 jmnolan@mail.press.jhu.edu http://muse.jhu.edu
