A university press is an academic, nonprofit publishing house that is typically affiliated with a large research university, and publishes work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. It produces mainly scholarly works. Because scholarly books are mostly unprofitable, university presses may also publish textbooks and reference works, which tend to have larger audiences and sell more copies. Most university presses operate at a loss and are, perforce, subsidized by their parent universities. However, certain presses, notably Yale University Press, are self-sufficient, often because of endowments.
Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press are the two largest university presses in the world. The largest university press in the United States is the University of Chicago Press.
University presses tend to develop specialized areas of expertise. For example, Yale publishes many art books, the University of Chicago publishes many academic journals, the University of Illinois press specializes in labor history, and MIT Press publishes linguistics titles.
A more extensive list, with links, of university presses in the United States and Canada is available from the Association of American University Presses.
University presses in the United States include: