A scholarly book or journal puts knowledge literally in a person’s hands. That knowledge might point a young scholar toward a new discovery. It might help a physician save a life. It might interpret great historic events—or inspire them.

No wonder Daniel Coit Gilman, the first president of the Johns Hopkins University, called scholarly publishing not simply the necessary business of a great university, but one of its “noblest duties.”

The Press he established at Johns Hopkins in 1878 continues to fulfill that duty—through books and journals, and across the Internet—with knowledge for a complex and changing world.