June 5, 2014

Dear Project MUSE Publishers,

We hope this finds you well and enjoying the summer. We’re writing to update you on the status of Project MUSE’s platform development and technology roadmap.

Highwire informed us a few months ago that Stanford University was planning to sell its majority ownership stake in HighWire to Accel-KKR, a private equity firm. The sale officially closed last week and a public announcement went out Friday, May 30th. 

We’ve worked closely with our HighWire colleagues over the past year in building a new Project MUSE platform for our publishers and library customers. We’ve learned a great deal together in the process and now believe that it is in our best interest to part ways. The collaboration between the Johns Hopkins University Press and HighWire has ended.

We wish the HighWire team every success in their future endeavors as an industry-leading platform provider. Both organizations will continue to serve the scholarly publishing enterprise well and evolve to meet the changing needs of our customers.

Project MUSE remains committed to enhancing its industry-leading platform and to maximizing the discovery of journal, book and reference content.  The MUSE technology staff under the direction of Deputy Director Wendy Queen has been actively engaged in upgrading our platform and introducing new features such as a new advanced search option throughout our engagement with HighWire.  

We’ve created a long-term developmental roadmap designed to meet the evolving needs of our publishers.  Highlights include an automated publisher statistics portal with enhanced visualization tools and the development of more granular business models for the sale of journals and books (for example, a pilot hosting program for journals and an expansion of the Single Title Sales Program for books). We will continue to engage users of Project MUSE with the introduction of a subject-based taxonomy to create a new platform-wide discovery tool and the launch of a reference work, both later this year. And in May we launched a social network—the Project MUSE Commons—designed to foster discussion and debate among all MUSE stakeholders (publishers, librarians, and end users).

Our investment in technology is ongoing and most importantly, we will continue to provide a high level of performance and customer service to you.  We will be sharing aspects of this plan with you in the coming months and as always appreciate your feedback and insight.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Dean Smith
Director

Terry Ehling
Associate Director

Elizabeth Brown
Publisher Relations