The rockefeller university

Lucie Van Emmenis and Susan King in Rockefeller University Press’s newly refurbished office on campus. (Credit: Lori Chertoff)

Rockefeller University Press (RUP) has returned to York Avenue after being located off campus for nearly four decades. The scientific publisher of five journals is now situated on the top floor of the Weiss Research Building in a custom-built penthouse office with stellar views of Roosevelt Island and the Queensboro Bridge.

“There are many benefits to being on campus, but the main thing is that we feel like we’re part of the community,” says Susan King, RUP’s executive director. “It also brings us closer to the work we do and the people we collaborate with.”

The publisher is nearly as old as Rockefeller itself. The Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM) was founded in 1896 at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine by its first dean, William Welch, who soon asked The Rockefeller Institute to take it over. In 1905, JEM published its first issue under Simon Flexner, Rockefeller’s inaugural director. Since then, RUP has developed journals that have defined fields of study. The Journal of General Physiology, launched in 1918, focuses on molecular and cellular physiology. Cell biology emerged and matured as a discipline on the pages of the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB; est. 1955). The broad scope Life Science Alliance journal was launched in 2018 in partnership with EMBO Press and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, in a unique multi-publisher collaboration. This year, RUP and the International Alliance for Primary Immunodeficiency Societies (IAPIDS) teamed up to launch the Journal of Human Immunity (JHI), a publication with a strong emphasis on inborn errors of immunity, genetic defects, and their clinical implications.

In the neighborhood

Back in the late ’80s, a space crunch forced the press to relocate from Nurses’ Residence to a brand-new building nearby, on East 70th St.—then primarily housing for university faculty, today Memorial Sloan Kettering offices—where it remained for nearly 20 years. It shifted to 1114 1st Ave. in 1996, and since 2015 has been located at 950 3rd Ave. in a modern glass skyscraper on the busy southeast corner of 57th St.

While the glossy office building had its perks, the university had to pay rent for the off-campus space, and its distance from campus made things a bit harder for the staff. Regular meetings on campus required a 40-minute roundtrip walk. RUP parents with kids in the Child and Family Center had to make this journey twice a day, every day. And in a world where teams are dependent on digital technology, the logistics of coordinating with an IT department 12 blocks away were challenging.

Coming home would also reconnect the staff to campus life—the remarkable discoveries emerging from labs, which might be published in an RUP journal; the many scientific lectures and fun social events held both day and night; and the various perks and services, from the dining commons to the free health screenings.

Custom buildout

The offices were prepared in May so that they could be fully equipped in June. The buildout was overseen by architect Daria Moore, a project manager on the university’s Planning and Construction team.

But plans began long before that, in 2021. At the time, Plant Operations used existing offices in one wing and a large raw space in the other where they had built mockups for the Kravis Research Building, which opened in 2019. As the termination of RUP’s lease at 3rd Ave. loomed, Plant Ops began completely renovating the ventilation, lighting, and electrical systems in Weiss in 2024.

Keeping budgetary and staff needs in mind, they decided to fill the private offices with the modular furniture from the 3rd Avenue location and create shared offices in the former mockup room.

“The modular furniture was in perfect shape, so we knew we could reuse it,” Moore says. “The more challenging part of the design was to make it fit exactly the way we wanted it to. It took some time to figure out how to take everything apart and reorganize it into a new layout in the new space.”

A statement piece is large sleek oval table, which fits perfectly into the new conference room. They lined the room’s bookshelves with hundreds of bound issues of RUP’s publications going back to each journal’s volume 1, issue 1.

Sixteen cubicles were built into the bright and airy former mockup room, which has wraparound windows displaying views of the waterfront skyline. All staff are remote for part of the week, and some share office space, so the team coordinated their schedules so that everyone has a dedicated solo spot.

It took about a year to go from finalizing the plan to opening the office to RUP staffers, Moore says.

More recently, The Census of Marine Life, a series of fabric pennants by textile artist Judith Wagstrom, has been relocated from elsewhere in Weiss to decorate RUP’s hallway. There are also plans to display a large print of each journal’s best cover, as voted on by the staff. Office Manager Sati Motieram is overseeing the process of printing, framing, and hanging the winning covers.

Campus perks

Since arriving back at Rockefeller in early June, the 31 members of RUP’s staff have dived into university life. “Many people who have worked on campus for a long time probably know about all the amenities that come along with being here, but as relative newcomers to campus, it’s been a voyage of discovery for us,” King says.

That includes meeting with Rockefeller scientists to learn about new findings or research trends or make lab visits (a recent favorite was learning about octopuses at Marcelo Magnasco’s Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience) and connecting with the many heads of lab who serve the journals in various editorial capacities. JCB includes Gregory Alushin, Elaine Fuchs, Hironori Funabiki, Tarun Kapoor, Michael Rout, and Agata Smogorzewska. JEM includes Jean-Laurent Casanova, Daniel Mucida, Michel Nussenzweig, Paul Cohen, and Jeffrey Ravetch. Casanova is also the editor-in-chief of JHI.

Having these research leaders on the editorial board makes RUP unique, adds Lucie Van Emmenis, senior scientific editor at JEM. “These highly respected and successful researchers are all very active within their fields, so they really have a handle on what’s going on,” she says. “It’s an extra layer of expertise that we journal editors can rely on to help us make decisions about which manuscripts to accept.”

King has attended many lectures and events over the past several months, while Rob O’Donnell, RUP’s senior director of publishing, is reveling in the leafy serenity behind the 66th Street gate.

“When you step out onto 57th Street, you’re in the middle of everything, but campus is so beautiful and calm,” he says. “And there are all these additional services and support the university provides that we now have easier access to. A number of staffers have signed up to see the physiotherapist, and I recently got a skin screening at University Health & Wellness.”

Van Emmenis appreciates having her daughter’s childcare and her office just across the courtyard from each other. She also takes advantage of the exercise options on campus. She and Sylvia Cuadrado, senior managing editor of JEM, are avid pickleball players who compete as partners in the on-campus pickleball tournaments. They call themselves the JEM Gems.

“We’ve also done some of the exercise classes,” she adds. “We love everything that Tim Blanchfield organizes.”

Meet the editors

On October 23, RUP will host an event from 4–5 p.m. in the Carson Family Auditorium where campus community members will have a chance to get to know the teams behind the RUP journals. King will deliver opening remarks, while Journal of Cell Biology Executive Editor Tim Spencer, incoming Journal of Experimental Medicine Executive Editor Natalie Cain, and Life Science Alliance Executive Editor Tim Fessenden will provide insights into the editorial process and guidance on how to get published. Additional staff speakers will address how RUP supports the discoverability and accessibility of the research published in its journals. A casual social gathering with light food and drinks will follow from 5–6 p.m. You can RSVP for the event here.

“We feel like we’re part of the Rockefeller community now, but we also want people to feel that we’re part of their community too,” says O’Donnell. “We’re here to help every researcher on their path to publishing in any way we can.”