
The MIT Press is a
university press affiliated with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT published under its own name a lecture series entitled ''Problems of Atomic Dynamics'' given by the visiting German physicist and later
Nobel Prize winner,
Max Born
Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...
. Six years later, MIT's publishing operations were first formally instituted by the creation of an
imprint called Technology Press in 1932. This imprint was founded by
James R. Killian, Jr.
James Rhyne Killian Jr. (July 24, 1904 – January 29, 1988) was the 10th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1948 until 1959.
Early life
Killian was born on July 24, 1904, in Blacksburg, South Carolina. His father ...
, at the time editor of MIT's alumni magazine and later to become MIT president. Technology Press published eight titles independently, then in 1937 entered into an arrangement with
John Wiley & Sons in which Wiley took over marketing and editorial responsibilities. In 1962 the association with Wiley came to an end after a further 125 titles had been published. The press acquired its modern name after this separation, and has since functioned as an independent publishing house.
A European marketing office was opened in 1969, and a Journals division was added in 1972. In the late 1970s, responding to changing economic conditions, the publisher narrowed the focus of their catalog to a few key areas, initially architecture, computer science and artificial intelligence, economics, and cognitive science.
In January 2010 the MIT Press published its 9000th title,
and in 2012 the Press celebrated its 50th anniversary, including publishing a commemorative booklet on paper and online.
The press co-founded the distributor TriLiteral LLC with
Yale University Press and
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...
. TriLiteral was acquired by
LSC Communications in 2018.
In July 2020, the MIT Press transitioned its worldwide sales and distribution to
Penguin Random House Publisher Services.
Business
The MIT Press primarily publishes academic and general interest titles in the fields of Art and Architecture; Visual and Cultural Studies; Cognitive Science; Philosophy; Linguistics;
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...
;
Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...
; Finance and Business;
Environmental Science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...
; Political Science; Life Sciences;
Neuroscience;
New Media; and
Science, Technology, and Society.
The MIT Press is a distributor for
Semiotext(e),
Goldsmiths Press,
Strange Attractor Press, Sternberg Press,
Terra Nova Press, Urbanomic, and Sequence Press. In 2000, the MIT Press created
CogNet, an online resource for the study of the brain and the cognitive sciences.
In 1981, the MIT Press published its first book under the Bradford Books imprint, ''Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology'' by
Daniel C. Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
.
In 2018, the Press and the
MIT Media Lab launched the
Knowledge Futures Group to develop and deploy open access publishing technology and platforms.
In 2019, the Press launched the ''MIT Press Reader'', a digital magazine that draws on the Press's archive and family of authors to produce adapted excerpts, interviews, and other original works. The publication describes itself as one which "aims to illuminate the bold ideas and voices that make up the Press’s expansive catalog, to revisit overlooked passages, and to dive into the stories that inspired the books".
Colophon

The MIT Press uses a colophon or logo designed by its longtime design director,
Muriel Cooper
Muriel Cooper (1925 – May 26, 1994) was a pioneering book designer, digital designer, researcher, and educator. She was the first design director of the MIT Press, instilling a Bauhaus-influenced design style into its many publications. She mo ...
, in 1962.
The design is based on a highly abstracted version of the lower-case letters "mitp", with the ascender of the "t" at the fifth stripe and the descender of the "p" at the sixth stripe the only differentiation. It later served as an important reference point for the 2015 redesign of the
MIT Media Lab logo by
Pentagram.
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Open Access
The MIT Press is a leader in open access book publishing. They published their first open access book in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell's ''City of Bits'', which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition. They now publish open access books, textbooks, and journals. Open access journals include ''American Journal of Law and Equality'', ''Computational Linguistics'', ''Data Intelligence'', ''Harvard Data Science Review'', ''Network Neuroscience'', ''Neurobiology of Language'', ''Open Mind'', ''Projections'', ''Quantitative Science Studies The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics was founded in 1993 in Berlin at the International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics. It is an association for professionals in the field of scientometrics.
Th ...
'', '' Rapid Reviews: COVID-19'', ''Transactions of the Association of Computational Linguistics'', and ''Thresholds''.
In 2021, the Press launched Direct to Open, a framework for open access monographs. In 2022, Direct to Open published 80 monographs. MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies is a digital collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books hosted on the digital book platform, MIT Press Direct.
MIT Kids Press and MITeen Press
In 2019, the MIT Press partnered with Candlewick Press to launch two new imprints for young readers, MIT Kids Press and MITeen Press to publish books for children and young adults on STEAM topics.
List of journals published by the MIT Press
Arts and humanities
* '' African Arts''
* '' ARTMargins''
* '' Computer Music Journal''
* '' Daedalus''
* '' Design Issues''
* '' Grey Room''
* '' JoDS: Journal of Design and Science''
* '' Leonardo''
* '' Leonardo Music Journal''
* '' The New England Quarterly''
* '' October''
* '' PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art''
* '' Projections''
* '' Thresholds''
Economics
* '' Asian Economic Papers''
* '' Cryptoeconomic Systems''
* '' Education Finance and Policy''
* '' The Review of Economics and Statistics''
International affairs, history, and political science
* ''American Journal of Law and Equality
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
''
* '' Global Environmental Politics''
* '' Innovations''
* '' International Security''
* '' Journal of Cold War Studies''
* '' Journal of Interdisciplinary History''
* '' Perspectives on Science''
Science and technology
* ''Artificial Life
Artificial life (often abbreviated ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemist ...
''
* ''Computational Linguistics
Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, comput ...
''
* '' Data Intelligence''
* '' Evolutionary Computation''
* '' Harvard Data Science Review''
* '' Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience''
* ''Linguistic Inquiry
''Linguistic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in generative linguistics published by the MIT Press since 1970. Ever since its foundation, it has been edited by Samuel Jay Keyser
Samuel Jay Keyser (born 7 July 1935) is an American ...
''
* '' Network Neuroscience''
* '' Neural Computation''
* '' Neurobiology of Language''
* '' Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science''
* '' Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments''
* ''Quantitative Science Studies The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics was founded in 1993 in Berlin at the International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics. It is an association for professionals in the field of scientometrics.
Th ...
''
* '' Rapid Reviews: COVID-19''
* '' Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics''
References
External links
Official website
MIT Press Journals homepage
The MIT PressLog (no longer in use, news blog for the MIT Press)
The MIT Press Reader
The MIT Press Blog
The MIT Press Podcast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mit Press
University presses of the United States