How Sputnik Helped Academic Publishing

American University Press Publishing in the 1960s and 1970s

Nov 9, 2009

Scholarly publishing does not happen in a vacuum but is highly influenced by world events. Find out how the launch of Sputnik indirectly supported university presses.

Though the first university presses date back to the late 19th century, it was not until the 1960s that university presses and scholarly research experienced their heyday. One sole event was responsible for this positive development, namely the Soviet Union’s launch of the world’s first-ever satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957.

A Brief History of University Presses

Cornell University Press was the first university press that was founded in the United States. It started operations in 1869, shut down already after 15 years in 1884 and reopened as the current press only in 1930. The oldest, continuously operating US-university press is Johns Hopkins University Press, founded in 1878. The University of Chicago Press, University of California Press and Columbia University Press soon followed and Oxford University Press opened a New York office; all before the turn of the century.

Other presses were founded in the next two decades so that by 1920, their managers had a separate meeting about their concerns after the National Association of Book Publishers’ annual meeting. About one new university press a year was founded, so that the lose organization of the presses was formalized in 1946 with the formation of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP). Only 11 years later in 1957, AAUP already had 38 members and should grow even more in the following decades.

The Launch of Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act

The launch of the world’s first-ever satellite into space by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 had Americans transfixed. U.S. scientists feared a "brain gap" and that they might fall behind their Soviet counterparts, and the whole nation started to doubt the superiority of the American education system. The Space Race had officially begun and added a whole new dimension to the Cold War: It was not just about physically defeating the Russians any more, they also had to be outsmarted.

As a consequence, the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was signed into law on September 2, 1958. It provided private and public educational institutions with financial aid, focusing especially on the improvement of American education in the fields of science, mathematics and technology but also other fields like foreign languages and geography. In addition, more high school graduates went on to college. In 1940, only about 15% of them enrolled for college; in 1960, around 30% and by 1970, a record 40% of college-age youth were attending college.

Scholarly Publishing after the Sputnik Launch

For scholarly writing, academic publishing and university press publishers, these were the golden years as money suddenly poured into higher education: for teaching, research and its publication, educational media, libraries and their growing collections. As key customers of university press products and distributors of scholarly publications like monographs, scientific journals, compendia and others, the libraries’ increased budgets and therefore spending helped university presses tremendously. Not surprisingly, their numbers kept increasing – by about one a year and 10 from 1970 to 1975.

The NDEA’s educational efforts seemed to pay off as in 1969, the United States sent the first man to the moon, a sensational end to the Space Race. At the same time, the Vietnam War was raging, diverting the nation’s attention to pressing issues at hand. Soon, education spending decreased and with it library budgets. University presses had to adjust to this new situation and find new and innovative ways to publish and market their academic products.

One can see how university press publishing is highly dependent on world events that influence education, universities and their key customers, libraries in particular. The state of university press publishing therefore seems a valid indicator of the status of higher education in general.

The copyright of the article How Sputnik Helped Academic Publishing in Book Publishing is owned by Simone Preuss. Permission to republish How Sputnik Helped Academic Publishing in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.