Recommendations from AEUP for University Presses to go digital
We would like to contribute to this year’s theme “Open access in order to…”.
At this year’s annual members meeting there was a discussion of seven (7) recommendations that the board addressed on the AEUP Conference in Stockholm May 16-17 “Going digital in Europe – joining forces in scholarly publishing”.
Two of the recommendations focus on Open Access and Open Science. AEUP suggests that in order to go digital (open access), we as university presses need to discuss those recommendations openly.
The third (3) recommendation states:
Access to scientific communication needs to be as free and as inclusive as possible to let society benefit fully from research. Open Access and Open Science are the right means to reach these objectives.
And the sixth (6) recommendation states:
To face pending challenges for society, we need to unlock the full potential of scientific communication in the Humanities and qualitative Social Sciences. Adequate funding models and beneficial infrastructures (including governance structures) for open access monographs enable European UPs to contribute to the potential of those disciplines.
The board of AEUP believes that European University Presses can make a special contribution for open access monographs. We are very much aware that we need to discuss quality and costs in relation to open access. There are still many preconceptions especially about the quality of open access books and Journals.
Open Access University Presses in Europe
AEUP has 33 member presses from 16 countries. Many of the university presses publish open access books (monographs, edited volumes and textbooks), although most of them are not yet fully open access (CC-BY).
Within AEUP we strive to promote peer reviewed open access publishing as default, although we know that the conditions are very different in the European countries and most presses have local regulations which limit their prerequisites and possibilities to open access publishing.
Therefore we need the good examples of high quality open access university presses publishing. We hope that AEUP can be part of this discussion both on a European and international level.