Mission
To connect ideas for a better world.
Vision
We are a global leader in cultivating and communicating consequential ideas that positively impact society. Across multiple channels, our commitment to diversity broadens perspectives, inspires loyalty, and fuels innovation, making UTP the enduring brand of choice for our people and our customers.
Values
Respect, Innovation, Accountability, and Customer Focus
Introduction from the Chief Executive Officer
Jessica Mosher
President, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer
It is currently spring of 2024 and very hard to believe we are already well into our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan! Our plan represents exceptional collaboration and work by our senior leadership team and our key stakeholders. As one of the largest university presses in North America and among the most recognized globally, we at UTP know the university and publishing sectors are constantly changing. Maintaining our place as an industry leader necessitates growth and dynamism in response to shifting landscapes. Our Strategic Plan will guide us there. In 2026, UTP celebrates its 125th anniversary; this plan both honours the rich tradition and history of UTP and outlines how we continue to pursue relevant, innovative, and essential scholarship and service.
Publishing landmark scholarship since 1901, UTP now annually releases close to 200 new scholarly, course, and general interest books in both print and e-book format and 60 distinguished journals. In addition, UTP manages the distribution for more than 225 publishers and imprints in Canada, the United States, and around the world, with warehouses in Ontario and New York. UTP also runs the University of Toronto (U of T) Bookstores across the three main campuses, serving more than 97,000 students, 15,000 faculty, and 10,000 staff members.
Our world’s current events demand our attention and the need for informed and dynamic dialogue. The depth and diversity of scholarship UTP represents propels this essential exchange, and we are proud to seek innovative ways to continue our reach in the sharing of ideas, including perspectives from historically excluded populations. UTP strives to continually foster an inclusive work culture that inspires loyalty, broadens perspectives, and promotes innovation. Connecting ideas to cultivate knowledge requires us to be responsive, and we strive to engage with our local, national, and global audiences through multiple channels and formats. With strong commitment from our senior leadership, we are collectively focused on these principles across the organization, both within our company culture and in our publishing, distribution, and retail endeavours. Our mission and vision embody these ideals.
Our Strategic Plan outlines three strategies that enable our work towards our vision. Over the three years we must invest in our people and our company, develop sustainable business and service models that reflect a changing landscape, and expand our relationships and our reputation.
Keep reading
The opening image on the previous page depicts a proposed new U of T building for 90 Queen’s Park. We chose this image because the building so poignantly represents a cultural and intellectual gateway between the university and the city; so too, UTP functions as a cultural and intellectual gateway in the work we do across all our divisions. I believe the overarching priorities for UTP should correspond closely with the university’s top priorities: to leverage the location of the university and of the press in the city of Toronto, to strengthen global partnerships, and to help to reimagine the academic journey for students. UTP is uniquely positioned to partner with the university in these pursuits.
UTP’s core values will continue to govern our actions and decisions in ensuring the effectiveness of our mission and pursuit of our goals: Respect, Innovation, Accountability, and Customer Focus. These are and will continue to be the guiding principles by which we operate our organization and treat our co-workers, customers, clients, and the community.
The work of a university press is deeply relevant in today’s world as UTP and other university presses further the democracy of readership, ideas, and access. Our 2023–2026 Strategic Plan will ensure we continue to be an industry leader in this worthy pursuit. Thank you for partnering with us,with these inspiring goals guiding our way!
How We Developed Our Plan
We started our strategic planning with an external review to better understand the current landscape of both the university and the publishing worlds in which we operate. Working alongside Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA), we sought out tangible data to learn from and to guide how we can continue our growth and innovation at University of Toronto Press.
Crafting our 2023–2026 Strategic Plan has been an iterative, multi-stepped process involving many stakeholders. Our external review highlighted how both the university landscape and the publishing industry are experiencing many changing dynamics—as an active partner and an industry leader in both these sectors, UTP must continue its innovation. As shifts in market demands, demographics, delivery models, and customer attitudes toward content occur, we must respond. Over twelve months, our UTP community engaged in efforts to map ways it can best prepare for the future; working with HESA has been an essential part of this effort as we gathered exceptional qualitative and quantitative data to support and inform our planning.
HESA team members engaged in interviews with many key stakeholders, including:
- UTP staff, clients, and authors
- Members of the Board of Directors
- University of Toronto colleagues
- Industry peers including members of:
- the Association of University Presses
- the Association of Canadian University Presses
- the Association of Canadian Publishers
- Representatives from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Representatives from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
- Representatives from the Ontario Arts Council
Additionally, HESA reviewed the business plans for each UTP division and compiled research on industry trends and drivers. Areas of focus included projected and current shifts in higher education enrolment, publishing access models, and the operating environment. HESA also supported our planning in considering the relationship between UTP and U of T and how to further strengthen this partnership.
Equipped with this diverse information, along with feedback from UTP’s Board of Directors, the senior leadership team worked closely with members from across the divisions to establish our objectives and key strategies, to determine how we will implement these strategies, and to define how we will measure our progress along the way.
With this extensive review, we are confident our 2023–2026 Strategic Plan thoroughly articulates and expresses a collective vision for UTP’s future—a future we can all be excited about!
Environmental Trends
Key Environmental Drivers
The most significant environmental drivers with the potential to shape UTP’s business over the next three-plus years:
- Fundamental shifts in environmental values promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion
- A significant shift in how our customers acquire and consume content
- Supply chain disruptions impacting the means by which all parts of UTP will fulfill their objectives
- Changes in the methods guiding publication value and increasing the importance of discoverability
- The increasing expectation for research to be Open Access and challenges around the equity and sustainabillity of existing models
The landscape of publishing is constantly changing. Recent environmental trends influencing the publishing industry as well as academia—significant shifts in global enrolment, increased diversity of delivery models, and changing attitudes toward the value of books and information—demand our attention and a response.
While we must be responsive to these overarching trends in our future planning and focus, we must also be aware and act on the environmental drivers that have immediate, direct impact. We are continuing meaningful engagement as a leading publisher to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring UTP remains relevant, credible, and committed to its mission. Global supply chain dynamics and disruptions impact all UTP’s divisions, and particularly our distribution services, with space availability, rising costs, and transportation reliability demanding our focus and response. UTP’s Strategic Plan addresses these trends directly. Continual shifts occur in how our customers acquire and consume knowledge and in response we are increasing our focus on discoverability, not just in processes such as metadata tagging but also through engagement in podcasts and other mediums to expand our reach. We are also continuing our investment in access models, providing open access materials wherever possible and working alongside several partners to determine the most sustainable and equitable models.
Amidst this changing landscape, UTP will continue to grow our partnership with the University of Toronto—while also seeking out new global partners to support these strategies and goals. We are deeply invested in our scholarly community, our customers, and our employees, and by responding to these environmental trends actively, we are investing in our present and our future.
Strategic Priorities
Our extensive research, external review, and planning informed the development of our strategies: investing in our people and company ensures we continue to prosper as an organization; developing sustainable business and service models ensures continued and further efficacy and excellence; and expanding our relationships and reputation broadens our global reach. Our three strategic priorities guide us in our continued commitment to be a global leader in cultivating and communicating consequential ideas that positively impact society. Across multiple channels, our commitment to diversity broadens perspectives, inspires loyalty, and fuels innovation, making UTP the enduring brand of choice for our people and our customers.
In order to move substantively in the direction of our goals, over the next three years we must…
Invest in Our People and Our Company
- Recruit and develop our people and our culture in line with our vision
- Enhance our technology systems and platforms
- Optimize our facilities
The heart of any organization and company is its people. Investing in our employees is key to our success. We can do this tangibly in many ways, all while ensuring we are focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion to allow for a broad perspective which reflects the city we work in and the global community we are a part of. Ensuring we attract, develop, and retain talent is imperative. As part of our investment in our people and company, we will develop career pathways, supply training, and enable systems that allow us to do our work efficiently and provide an engaging experience for all. We will also optimize our warehouse and warehouse systems, as well as enhancing our bookstore facilities, allowing us to continue the growth and diversification of our distribution and retail services.
Develop Sustainable Business and Service Models Reflecting a Changing Landscape
- Collaborate to innovate current offerings to be more customer centric
- Generate new product and service streams
- Partner with organizations to expand our reach
We will continue to review and survey to better understand how our authors, scholars, students, and clients use and value our content and services, and will explore alternative delivery modes to better respond to changing needs. We recognize the landscape has changed from exclusively print to print/digital and other ways of providing content and services. We will continue to invest and innovate with this shift in mind as we pursue diverse ways to deliver content and services and to expand our global reach, whether through new models or by seeking to partner with other organizations.
Expand Our Relationships and Our Reputation
- Explore external partnerships to address growing supply chain challenges
- Deepen our relationship and partnership with the University of Toronto
- Build the University of Toronto Press identity in Canada, North America, and globally
Further reach locally, nationally, and globally will expand our impact. We will remain open-minded and focused on our mission both by exploring external partnerships to allow for new service models and to address growing supply chain issues, and by looking at alternative partners to ensure diversity and reliability. Additionally, deepening our partnership with University of Toronto and better aligning with U of T libraries, departments, schools, administration, and campuses builds our identity and outreach within the broader community.
How We Will Implement Our Plan
UTP has a unique business model with three main functions: we publish both books and journals; we distribute for our own press as well as the other English-language university presses (UPs) in Canada, plus close to 50 US and international UPs and more than 180 Canadian and international trade publishers; and we run five bookstores across the three campuses at the University of Toronto.
We have Information Technology (IT), Finance, and Human Resource (HR) departments working across our company. The senior leadership team from all our divisions were actively involved with creating our Strategic Plan, ensuring our priorities reflect the whole of UTP. We have specific goals for each of our functions and across the company we are focused on initiatives that will ensure we fulfill our commitments and enable us to realize our vision.
Our IT department is working to update and streamline our systems and processes so we are well equipped to respond to the changing needs in both publishing and academia. Our Finance department is setting ambitious yet achievable targets for us to meet through the three years of this plan, ensuring we can reinvest back into our company and thrive well into the future. Our HR department is focused on attracting, retaining, and developing the talented individuals who make up the UTP organization, including establishing internal career progression pathways, building the capability of our managers to be strong people-oriented coaches, and providing great employee experiences.
One cross divisional area of particular importance to our company is our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team. We acknowledge our role and responsibility in effecting positive change. With this, we seek to continuously improve the diversity and representation of our publications and the clients we represent, as well as within the makeup of our organization. We will continue to develop, communicate, measure, and integrate DEI into the fabric our culture by embedding inclusion and belonging into our work practices, behaviours, and values. We strive to foster a caring, respectful, flexible, and empathetic work environment. With strong commitment from leadership, we are collectively bringing forward change across the organization, both within our company culture and in our publishing, distribution, and retail endeavours.
