What Does ‘Community’ Mean to the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network? Conversations with Three ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Presses

The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network (UPN) was founded with the intention of creating a community of open access presses that could learn from each other, share knowledge and best practices, and, where appropriate, band together to further the OA movement.

The UPN is also about enabling universities and libraries to publish in ways that serve their own, immediate academic communities. By having ]u[ Ubiquity provide the technical infrastructure and support necessary to publish Open Access, the presses themselves can focus on establishing a publishing programme that can reflect the research interests of their institution and the students, faculty, and staff that make up their community.

In honour of this year’s International Open Acess Week’s theme ‘Community over Commercialisation’, we decided to reach out to the UPN, to find out what community means to them, and to demonstrate how open access institutional presses can be forces for good in serving their communities. We spoke to Kate Petherbridge, White Rose Libraries Executive Manager from White Rose University Press (WRUP), Regine Tobias, Publishing Director from KIT Scientific Publishing (KSP), and Anna-Mari Vesterinen, Managing Editor and Communications Manager from Helsinki University Press (HUP).

]u[ Ubiquity: Thank you for taking the time to be a part of our Open Access Week series! To begin, could you each introduce your press and give us a brief overview of its history?

Kate: White Rose University Press (WRUP) was the UK’s first collaboratively run, fully open access university press, launching in early 2016 and covering the universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. The libraries-led press is one facet of the long-standing White Rose Libraries collaboration.

WRUP looks to support all types of open scholarship, and though we primarily publish open monographs, open textbooks, and open journals, we are open to proposals of other types of open publications too. Academic quality is very important so all content goes through a rigorous peer review and commissioning process led by the WRUP Editorial Board.

Regine: KIT Scientific Publishing (KSP) is the in-house publishing arm of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). It was established in 2004 with the aim of promoting scholarly publishing and clearly advocating for open access. Back then, open access was not as widely recognised as it is today, and KSP successfully introduced this business model at our research institution.

Currently, approximately one-third of our proceedings and collected works and nearly 90% of our theses are published as open access. This success is also attributed to the seamless integration of the publishing house with other publication infrastructures, such as our institutional repository.

Anna: Helsinki University Press (HUP) is a non-commercial, researcher-driven scholarly publisher that brings researchers to the fore of academic publishing. The press is a joint venture of Gaudeamus publishing house and Helsinki University Library, both of which possess extensive expertise in scholarly publishing from different perspectives. HUP publishes journals, open monographs, edited volumes, and book series, and welcomes submissions from researchers globally.

]u[ Ubiquity: What does ‘community’ mean to your press?

Kate: Community is really important to WRUP. Central to how WRUP approaches publishing is the ethos of “publishing as a service” and, as a library-led press, WRUP is part of the wider support for the open scholarly comms environment offered by Leeds, Sheffield and York. We offer help and advice on OA publishing to our academic communities from a position of practical experience of the key issues. We also look to engage with different sections of our communities, with one example being WRUP’s support for initiatives in Leeds and Sheffield helping recent doctoral graduates publish a monograph based on their doctoral research.

Regine: “Community” is a central keyword for us. As an in-house publisher, we are closely connected to the various research groups at KIT. Currently, the publishing house oversees 75 series of publications. In doing so, we work closely with the editors and authors in the creation of their works and identify the best dissemination methods for them.

Anna: For us, ‘community’ is a key factor. When establishing HUP in 2017/2018, we collaborated with the research community in finding out how they felt about academic publishing, and in which direction they felt scholarly publishing should be going. We discussed with individual researchers who shared their views on what kind of services and support they would appreciate from their publisher, but also what publishing-related concerns they have. We did this because we really wanted to establish a publishing house that meets the needs of our community.

]u[ Ubiquity: Outside of the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network, are there any other communities, networks or groups that your press is a part of that you would like to highlight?

Kate: WRUP is part of the new Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA), which is in the final stages of launching. OIPA was founded to connect those across the UK HE sector who deliver OP publishing activities, whatever the publishing model and approach. This includes many of the new-wave of OA university presses as well as other activities such as journal hosting and infrastructure provision. The association is looking to create a new community of practice to support these OA publishing activities, and a call for members is currently live with more information available through the website. We are so pleased to be involved from the start and to have the chance to help others moving or looking to move into the OA publishing space.

Regine: As a library, we could never have developed our publishing activities so successfully without the help and support of several academic groups. We are connected to research groups both nationally and internationally, fostering a vibrant exchange of experiences. This exchange is invaluable for sharing our own experiences and learning from other institutions and publishers.

Equally important for us is the co-publishing partnership with ]u[ Ubiquity, which enables us to disseminate our publications at the highest level of information technology standards. We are also members of the Association of European University Presses (AEUP).

Anna: We’re part of quite a few networks and groups, such as the Association of European University Presses (AEUP), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). We also follow discussions on open access and participate in them whenever possible, to ensure we are keeping up to date with industry standards.

We are always pleased to see our presses support and engage with their local academic communities, and watch their growth as part of wider scholarly communities. Institutional presses offer an alternative to commercial academic publishing that can be truly community-centric, which is why we are delighted to be able to support the founding and development through our partner press services.

Is your society or institution interested in developing its open access initiatives, and becoming a publisher? The UPN is always growing; get in touch to find out more about setting up a ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Press.