The Opposition's Innovation, Industry, Science and Research spokesman Kim Carr proposed the funding model following the University of Melbourne’s controversial decision to overhaul its publishing arm, which led to the resignation of chief executive Louise Adler and five board members.

“I’m open to the prospect of providing seed funding, as we did with The Conversation, to ensure we protect political culture and debate,” Senator Carr told The Age.

It’s not known where the new, independent university publisher would be located, but it’s understood Monash University could be an option.

Senator Carr, whose own book was published by MUP, said the century-old university publishing house was the most “influential and effective” in Australia.

While the publisher receives an annual $1.2 million subsidy from the university, Senator Carr said this needed to be put in context with the university’s $2.5 billion annual budget and $2 million advertising budget.

“MUP brought enormous benefit to the university in terms of its public engagement which could not be calculated by bean counters,” he said.

The research-focused news website The Conversation receives funding from the Victorian government and universities and previously received federal funding when Labor was in power.

Political pressure is mounting on the university to reverse its overhaul of the MUP, which includes restricting the publisher’s focus to academic texts and creating a new editorial advisory board to approve all texts. There are concerns this will mean the political memoirs MUP is well-known for, which include works by Mark Latham, Tony Abbott  and Sam Dastyari, would no longer be published.

On Thursday night at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Creative Industries Minister Martin Foley called on the university to reconsider its "disturbing" decision.

It comes as some MUP employees raised concerns about being kept in the dark about the changes, which were flagged at a December board meeting but only revealed this week. One described the situation as "utterly disgraceful".

It's understood Ms Adler has been negotiating the terms of her departure, including a payout, since that December meeting.

Since the mass resignations on Wednesday, MUP staff have been inundated with calls from authors concerned about the future of their yet-to-be-published books.

The turmoil has sparked a broader debate about the role of the university press.

Some believe the changes are due to Ms Adler’s decision to publish a controversial, award-winning book about Cardinal George Pell by ABC journalist Louise Milligan.

But others say the overhaul is due to the publisher’s financial performance and concerns academics’ work was being ignored in favour of more commercial, political memoirs.

Professor Katy Barnett, a private law expert at Melbourne Law School, said there was a perception among academics that there was no point approaching MUP with academic work.

“I recognise that there is a place for popular and accessible work but not at the expense of academic works,” she said.

“I felt disappointed that it wasn't worth approaching the in-house publisher.”

Professor Barnett said she welcomed the changes announced by the university and hoped they led to more opportunities for academics.

But Mark McKenna, multi-award winner for his MUP-published biography of Manning Clark and professor of history at Sydney University, said the University of Melbourne had failed to consider the possibility of publishing general readership and scholarly books.

It was clear, he said, that the departure of former vice-chancellor Glyn Davis was the key to the change in the MUP’s approach.

`Since he’s gone, there’s no stopping what they have wanted to do for a while. All we know is they’re saying they want it to be more scholarly.’’

Professor McKenna said he agreed with Germaine Greer. "I remember her saying many times, `Why do we write? We want to be read.’ I don’t write for my peers … the measure of good scholarship is its ability to reach the public. If you look at the Australian Research Council, one of the barometers they have just introduced is public impact.

“The thing I keep coming back to is that scholarship has to live. It has to have a presence in the community, a presence in the culture, and MUP was trying to give it that presence.’’

An earlier version of this story included Barnaby Joyce as an author published by MUP. This is incorrect. His book was published by New Holland.