UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When Penn State University Press staff receive calls, they often get curious queries: No, their office doesn’t print posters or stationery; No, they don’t field media questions about the football team. Many people in higher education may not know exactly what a university press does, so Executive Director David Aycock decided to help demystify the objectives of the Press and the activities of academic publishing through a podcast titled “Vetted: Penn State Conversations on Scholarly Communications.”
The podcast’s aim is to underscore the various processes that university presses like Penn State’s undertake with the scholarly research they select for publication in their journals and books.
Watch the inaugural episode of “Vetted,” where Aycock interviews Dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications Faye A. Chadwell under the theme of “What is a university press?” and they also discuss the changing landscape of scholarly communication.
Recently, the Press hosted “Inside Academic Publishing,” a half-day virtual symposium for Penn State graduate students and faculty new to the university press publishing process. Watch the recording of the symposium’s two virtual sessions, “Pitching Your Project and Navigating Peer Review” and “The Production Process and Maximizing Your Project’s Impact.”
Also, Aycock was the featured speaker for Penn State University Libraries’ Library Discovery Hour series’ September event, where he spoke on the topic, “Inside Penn State University Press: Disseminating Knowledge Since 1956.” Watch the recording of Aycock’s presentation.
Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge — new information, interpretations, methods of analysis — widely in books, journals and digital publications.