mediastudies.press focuses on the fields of media, communication, and film studies. We publish living works, with iterative updates stitched into our process. We also encourage multi-modal submissions that reflect the environments our authors inhabit. We currently have four series: (1) Public Domain: newly-introduced and critically annotated republications of public-domain books that promise contemporary relevance; (2) Media Manifold: original monographs and other book-length works of contemporary media scholarship; (3) Open Reader: media-themed open readers, collections of works available on the open web, selected and ordered with university courses in mind; and (4) History of Media Studies: monographs and other scholarly works centered on the history of media, communication, and film studies.

We have published nine books, all of them open access, with five more slated for publication this year. Our cost per book is difficult to estimate, but we expect that number to stabilize around $5,000 per book. Currently direct costs are primarily copy-editing, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 per book, with cover design costing between $100 to $500. The per title Project MUSE fee is $100, and reviewers’ honoraria is another $200 dollars (or $300 with a second-round). The other steps in the process are run on a volunteer basis: ingestion, editing, peer review management, typesetting, distribution and marketing. We have overhead that is difficult to translate into per-book terms: software (e.g., Adobe CC, Airtable) and memberships (e.g., OASPA, Knowledge Futures Group) as the main expenses. Our aspiration is to provide compensation for facets of the operation that are now provided on a volunteer basis, with the expectation that our per-title costs will rise to $4,500 to $5,500.  

Mission and Values

mediastudies.press publishes monographs and edited collections in the overlapping fields of media, communication, and film studies. The aim of the press is to demonstrate, on a small scale, an open-access publishing model supported by libraries rather than author fees. Open access for readers, we believe, should not be traded for new barriers to authorship. We are committed to scholar-led editorial decision-making, which means that all editorial decisions are taken by active professional academics, using exclusively scholarship-based criteria.

mediastudies.press is committed to open access in scholarly publishing. This means that all of our published works are available for free on the open web. But our commitment goes deeper than public access alone. We believe that ownership and governance matter too—that sustainable OA publishing should be nonprofit and scholar-led. And we are committed to the principle that authorship should be free too. Our serials and singles are free to authors and readers alike.

Governance

The press was launched in 2019 and is registered in the United States. It is a nonprofit corporation registered in Pennsylvania, with federal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

mediastudies.press is structured by its Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws, which are available on our website. We are governed by a Board of Directors, who appoint an executive director and other staff. The press also maintains an Advisory Board of scholarly publishing and/or media studies expertise.

Future Plans

This year, we have five additional works in final production:

• Independent, Alternative, and Community Media: An Open Reader, a collections of open works on the theme, selected and ordered with university courses in mind [Open Reader Series]
• Culture for the Millions? Mass Media in Modern Society, the classic 1959 essay collection in which leading intellectuals debate mass culture, introduced by Garth Jowett [Public Domain Series]
• Early Media Effects Theory & the Suggestion Doctrine, a curated collection of communication-related texts by psychologists, edited and introduced by Patrick Parsons [History of Media Studies Series]
• Del Laboratorio Chileno a la Comunicación-Mundo: Un Itinerario Intelectual de Armand Mattelart, a professional translation into English of this classic history of media scholar Armand Mattelart’s Chilean era, supported by a grant from the Argentinian government, with a new introduction by Peter Simonson
• Mobile Personalisation: The History and Theory of Mobile Streaming Media, an original monograph on streaming media by Justin Grandinetti and Charles Ecenbarger