Project MUSE

Project MUSE was founded in 1993 as a joint project between the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at the Johns Hopkins University. With grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Project MUSE was launched online alongside the JHU Press Journals in 1995.[5] Beginning in 2000, journals from other scholarly publishers were integrated into MUSE's online collections. Additional publishers have added journals each subsequent year. In January 2012, a new interface was launched which incorporated its current journal collection with electronic books published by members of the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC).

The platform is powered by the WAIS searching utility called SWISH (Simple Web Indexing System for Humans), which allows Boolean searching in single issues, volumes, or across all 40+ titles.[6] In cases where footnotes exist in articles, the footnote number is presented as a hyperlink to the article's bibliography or notes section.[6]

Project MUSE offers tiered-pricing structures to meet budgetary and research needs of subscribing institutions.[7]

Subscribers may choose from four interdisciplinary journal collections, as well as two broad discipline collections in the humanities or social sciences. Content is grouped into seventeen interdisciplinary research areas: Area and Ethnic Studies; Art and Architecture; Creative Writing; Education; Film, Theater, and Performing Arts; History; Language and Linguistics; Library Science and Publishing; Literature; Medicine and Health; Music; Philosophy; Religion; Science, Technology, and Mathematics; Social Sciences; Studies by Time Period; Women's Studies, Gender, and Sexuality.

Project MUSE is the sole source of full-text versions of journal titles from a number of university presses and scholarly societies.[8] Journals are published electronically at the same time as their print counterparts and remain available permanently within the database. Subscribing libraries are not required to maintain a print subscription to the same journals they access through Project MUSE. Although much of the journal content consists of current publications, archival issues of many of its journals are regularly added to the database. More than 800 journals from over 250 university presses and scholarly publishers are available. Of the 800+ journals in the database, more than 100 of them include complete runs.

A number of resources are provided including tutorials, instructional materials, and subject guides. End-users have the capability to search the database and, if affiliated with a subscribing institution, immediately retrieve content in 100% full-text PDF or HTML formats. The complete content of each journal is available in the database, including all charts, graphics, and images. MUSE supports various research and discovery tools such as social bookmarking, citation management functions, and RSS feeds. Subscription licenses allow unlimited simultaneous access to its content, as well as the ability to retrieve content through interlibrary loan.

Supported by two grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The University Press e-book Consortium (UPeC) emerged in 2009 to explore the feasibility of, and later develop, a university press-based e-book initiative that would balance the interests of both the publishing and library communities.[9] In Spring 2011, UPeC announced its partnership with Project MUSE, and the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC) Book Collections on Project MUSE was established. Launched in January 2012, the UPCC Book Collections consist of thousands of peer-reviewed book titles from major university presses and related scholarly publishers. Book collections are fully integrated with MUSE's electronic journal collections, allowing users to search across books and journals simultaneously or limit searches by content type. In 2016, it launched an initiative to create an open access platform that also digitized out-of-print scholarly books under the effort called MUSE Open.[10]

Project MUSE provides access to thousands of books across a large range of subjects within the humanities and social sciences. A wide variety of acquisition options makes it easy to build digital scholarly book collections to meet your institution’s needs and budget. Participating publishers select the titles they offer on the MUSE platform, and decide through which product models they will make their books available.

MUSE offers tiered pricing on our Annual Frontlist Book Collections, providing value for all sizes and types of libraries. The Books Custom Collection option allows a library to build and buy a set of books tailored to its specific needs and available funds, with discounts for larger collections. Highly flexible Evidence-Based Acquisition.

Project MUSE collaborates with hundreds of mission-driven publishers to curateour collection of essential books in the humanities and social sciences. Enhancing the discoverability of high-quality scholarship is crucial to growing our collective knowledge. Our business model sustains our publishers while keeping our collections affordable for libraries. Our participating publishers include university presses of all sizes from around the globe, scholarly societies, academic departments, scholar-led presses, and related not-for-profit publishing entities. Publishers may have gated titles, open access titles, or a mixture of both, on the MUSE platform.

• Aluka
• ARTstor
• ArXiv
• Digital preservation
• Japanese Historical Text Initiative
• List of academic databases and search engines

• Official website