Abstract: | American university presses, despite a narrow view of their duties and serious undercapitalization, have survived and have grown significantly in performance and in number. Their future development rests heavily on their capacity for making changes in policy and for implementing these changes. Therefore, let us hope, (i) that university presses will serve all fields of scholarly inquiry, including science and technology, responsively and equitably, (ii) that university presses will recognize their responsibilities for encouraging pedagogical, as well as scholarly, experimentation; (iii) that university presses, with the support of their universities, will establish a firm policy of increasing their capitalization through earned surplus; and (iv) that university presses will maintain their strong affiliation with other educational publishers but will base their associational relationships on a clearly defined view of their own mission and then proudly defend their progress toward its achievement. |