The future of the University of Ottawa Press (UOP) is looking very promising according to Professor Emeritus Gilles Paquet. He chairs a management board mandated to review the UOP’s operations.
Paquet’s optimism is founded on “very strong assurances” he has received from the University’s administration regarding its commitment to long-term investment in the UOP. He believes that, by establishing a solid business plan and revitalizing operations, the UOP will take its place among Canada’s most important scientific and academic publishers. It will take about two years to reach that objective, according to Paquet.
During the transition period, the UOP will remain “open for business” and continue to consider and publish new manuscripts by researchers.
This month, the management board under Paquet will table a report to the University administration that will set out the major elements of restructuring. In addition to Paquet, the board is composed of Robert Yergeau, Éditions du Nordir; Alain Malette, Les Éditions David; Pierre-Yves Boucher, secretary of the University, and Lucie Mercier-Gauthier, associate vice-president, financial resources.
According to Paquet, the UOP’s greatest challenge is at the governance level. For the last few years, production, marketing and distribution of material from UOP have been sub-contracted – first with Gaëtan-Morin in the 1990s and then with University of Toronto Press (UTP) since 2001. These arrangements did not prove to be satisfactory.
The University is presently negotiating the end of its agreement with UTP. Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr, who worked for the University of Ottawa Press as a UTP employee, resigned from her position as editor-in-chief in December 2005.
Paquet is confident the UOP will come out of this transition period a much stronger entity. The new structure will “assure UOP has greater independence,” he explains. It will be a not-for-profit organization with its own board of directors. This arrangement will ensure UOP is on the right track both strategically and objectively. Ultimately, the University of Ottawa Press must be “academically respectable and financially viable.”
It will then fall upon the 15 editors, who will become the “great college” of the UOP, to ensure works that are published support the University’s strategic areas of development in research. “We must have a very clear direction,” insists Paquet, stressing the importance of “remobilizing the University’s vibrant energy to recreate a prestigious and first-class University of Ottawa Press.”
