Supporting Digital Scholarship

“The staff at MUSE was fabulous, and I learned so much from them. I was coming into that position from the editorial side of science publishing, so I appreciated working with a smart and experienced staff. It was also great to have library colleagues involved and available to advise us, and we benefitted from being part of a university community.

“When I joined MUSE, one of our greatest challenges was managing growth. We were growing very quickly, and we were also creating products for different markets, such as packages for four-year colleges versus graduate institutions. Humanities journals aren’t used for tenure as they are in science, so they aren’t ranked in the same way. Establishing criteria for accepting new journals was a challenge, and figuring out how to do this for humanities journals was new territory in which MUSE was a pioneer.

“Non-profit publishers can establish trust more easily than for-profit publishers. I see how packaging is done by the for-profits—and it can be burdensome and not always fair. MUSE was very responsive to the needs of all its constituents and built a lot of trust within those communities. That’s a lesson I took with me from time at MUSE, and it’s followed throughout my career.”

—Aileen McHugh