Author: mdvorakova (Page 6 of 7)

February 13th – 14th, 2018 | The Knowledge Centre at The British Library, London, United Kingdom

Written by Christina Lenz, Managing Editor, Stockholm University Press and AEUP board member (Secretary)

The first conference University Press Redux Conference was held in 2016, organised by Liverpool University Press (LUP) and Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). Every two year a new University Press Redux Conference takes place, so the 2018 University Press Redux Conference was the second conference with support from ALPSP and this time hosted by UCL Press.

The 2018 University Press Redux Conference gathered all kinds of university presses and affiliated organisations from all over the world, to learn about practices and the latest developments in scholarly publishing that have consequences on the way we work now and in the future. The slides and Audio files are available online, as well as the program and speaker biographies.

I will refer to and comment on some of the topics discussed at the conference in this AEUP blog post.

What do we do at university presses and what do we have in common?

That was a question raised at the conference, pointing out that we need to be more transparent. I couldn’t agree more, that is something we all need to be better at.

What do university presses have in common? European university presses as well as American university presses have widely varying organisational and cultural relationships with their host institutions. That’s what I learnt from Lisa Bayer’s (Director of UGA Press) keynote speech ‘Let’s Stay Together: A Taxonomy of Relationships between American university presses and their Host Institutions’ at the conference.

Lisa Bayer addressed the importance for UGA Press to cultivate a close relationship to the host university, so that the press can grow stronger and share the goals of common good for the community. This is something many university presses surely can agree with and have different experiences of, which could be an interesting topic to discuss among us.

Relationships are about communication and this is what Simon Bell (Head of Author Engagement Emerald group / Emerald Publishing) highlighted in his speech, “It’s good to talk”. Simon Bell pointed out that we need to understand the researchers’ world, which is a “competitive and tough cycle from funding to research to the sharing and articulation of that work, to the impact of that in the wider community”.

Simon Bell about different author communities need different levels of support – so true! @_ChristinaEmery#redux18 https://t.co/u16fFCkMfP

— Christina Lenz (@ChristinaLenz_) February 14, 2018

Another inspiring talk by keynote speaker Amy Brand (MIT Press) was that university presses need to embrace change, when we are going towards being more technology-centric, trying to be as “open” as possible, and still being print publishers, and strive to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Amy Brand also mentioned how increasing transparency around peer review based on creative commons-licenses.

That’s something we support for UPs #redux18 @creativecommons #oabooks https://t.co/x4Npxk0qlX

— AEUP (@AEUP_info) February 13, 2018

“Is Peer Review Working at University Presses?”

Regarding peer review, Brian Haley (Senior Editor University of Massachusetts Press) had a provoking heading to his speech: ‘Is Peer Review Working at University Presses?’ All European Association of University Presses (AEUP) member presses apply “peer-review procedures”. Most of the time, the peer review process works fine at university presses, but it is a tricky process and all of us involved can always strive to become better.

A good recommendation from Brian Haley was to follow the Association of University Presses’ Handbook Best Practices for Peer Review. That is something AEUP can strongly recommend as well. There are always challenges with the peer review process which we need to discuss about and good guidelines can really help.

This is really good – read it! Thanks @brianbhalley #redux18 pic.twitter.com/6WyAUnILz0

— Christina Lenz (@ChristinaLenz_) February 14, 2018

Publishing Open Access Monographs – how do we do what we do best?

This conference was mainly focused on books and one topic at a plenary was on Open Access Monographs.

Frank Smith from JSTOR pointed out that the demand for Open Access content is high, but there is no clear definition of an Open Access book and that there is still low awareness of Open Access books among faculty, students and even many librarians, and that funding for Open Access remains uncertain.

Funding, regarding the Open Access Monograph, was something Peter Berkery (Executive Director, Assocation of University Presses) addressed in his speech Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem. This is something that many European university presses struggle with, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

An interesting speech was made by Allison Belan (Associate Director for Digital Strategy and Systems, Duke University Press). She talked about why Duke one topic was partnered with a commercial provider to create and host the new platform for humanities and social science publications. Alison Belan highlighted that university presses should keep doing “what we do best”, which is to focus on editorial processes and not have to deal with developing platforms.

This is something that will be discussed at the #AEUP18 workshop in Riga June 5-6. We know that it looks very different at European university presses, depending on business models, capacity, the relationship to the presses university hosts, etc.

The power of social media and a beautiful book

A panel run by Charles Watkinson focused on the relationship between the publisher and the authors. The authors Ilan Kelman,@IlanKelman, Laura Varnam,@lauravarnam, and Jane Winters @jwinters, talked about their experiences.

To sum up, this was about communication, how publishers can help their authors on all levels, in the editorial process, proof reading and how to make a beautiful book for them:

“If you are going to make a print copy make it beautiful” @jfwinters #redux18

— Christina Lenz (@ChristinaLenz_) February 13, 2018

Authors and publishers also have a joint agenda for the dissemination of the work. A beautiful cover could help in marketing, i.e. used in social media. Social media as a marketing channel for both authors and publishers today could be huge, but publishers do not always have that expertise.

The importance, or let us say “power”, of social media was something many speakers discussed during the conference – none mentioned, none forgotten – and it was widely twittered about.

Commissioning challenges and cultural change in academic publishing

All university presses need to work with commissioning, in some way or another, whether it is to have new or “the best” authors (researchers), receive more book proposals, journals, etc. Katharine Reeve (Bath Spa University) talked about how commissioning editors can add value for authors, readers and the publishers. What they often meet is criticism from academics for being gatekeepers.

As I see it, we all need to have a dialogue with our authors, the researchers, pointing out a win-win-situation for both the press and the author’s work, whether we have commissioning editors or not.

The most popular and refreshing talk was made by Sarah Kember (Director, Goldsmiths Press / Professor of New Technologies of Communication). She was provocative in a good way, calling for a cultural change in academic publishing.

Sarah Kember’s main point was that open access has become about how to serve commercialism in the business models we now see, whereas it should serve for the better good. Branding, through identity and storytelling, should be for the good of society, not to gain more profit for commercial university presses.

“Who Needs Academic Publishers?”

The final keynote speaker was by Richard Charkin on ‘Who Needs Academic Publishers?’ He stated that “publishing is not about profitability, it is about your assets – your authors”. Richard Charkin also said that what we should do is “to put more money into editorial, cut technology and develop real innovation around research content.”

I think we can all agree upon that we should focus on content and never forget to ask ourselves: “Why and for whom do we do this for?” The answer for all university presses in my point of view – inspired by Sarah Kember – is for the public good and a better society – that’s what it’s all about.

The University Press Redux Conference has come to an end. It’s been two intensive and very interesting days. We hope to see some of you at the #AEUP18 workshop in Riga June 5-6. Thanks to @alpsp and the host @UCLpress #redux18

— AEUP (@AEUP_info) February 14, 2018

Riga (Latvia), June 5-6, 2018.

The workshop is for all AEUP members (full, associate, and patron members).

The following guest post was written by Andrea Bertino who offers an interesting summary of the MUNIN conference. Andrea is the project manager of HIRMEOS  – High Integration of Research Monographs in the European Open Science Infrastructure. HIRMEOS is not a platform but a project that coordinates the further development and integration of five publishing platforms for open access monographs. It is is part of the larger network OPERAS which AEUP is partner with. 

 

Conference report including presentation of HIRMEOS

On the Conference

On 22nd to 23rd of November 2017 the MUNIN conference on scholarly publishing has taken place at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. The conference is an annual event primarily focussing on Open Access, Open Data and Open Science. We took the chance to present the EU-project HIRMEOS and to learn more about what is being done in northern Europe to advocate and promote Open Science.

The conference offered a rich and well-structured programme with participants from across Europe and from different kinds of communities, including scholars, university library officers, scholarly publishers and research administrators. The advisory board and the organising committee found a convincing balance between presentations with different concepts and ideals of Open Access and Open Science: Together with speakers intending the Open Science paradigm as a radical alternative to the current logic of scholarly research and publishing, there were also scientific publishers interested in presenting their tools and services for scholarly research.

Different Views on Open Access and Open Science

The conference was opened by Sir Timothy Gowers, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Fields Medal Winner and initiator of the boycott against Elsevier, who discussed the various incentives that give the current system its robustness and made some suggestions on how to weaken it (Perverse incentives: how the reward structures of academia impede scholarly communication and good science). Nevertheless, Federica Rosetta of Elsevier presented the publisher’s services to support the reproducibility of research results (The reproducibility challenge – what researchers need). It would have been interesting to bring such different views on Open Access and Open Science into direct confrontation within a round table. However, the audience participated lively in the discussions and gave the speakers the opportunity to further articulate their positions.

On Open Science in the Scandinavian world

Among the talks dealing with the dissemination of Open Science in the Scandinavian world, we were particularly impressed by Beate Ellend’s speech on the activities of the Swedish Research Council (Coordination of Open Access to Research publications in Sweden). Sweden seems to have a well-structured plan to outline an overview of the national open science. In its Proposal for National Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Information (2015), the Swedish Research Council has identified a number of obstacles to the transition to an Open Access publication system. On this basis, the Swedish National Library initiates and coordinates five studies to be carried out in the period 2017-2019. One of these concerning Open Access to academic monographs is expected by the HIRMEOS consortium great interest. Like the Landscape Study on Open Access and Monographs (2017) presented by Niels Stern, such studies can confirm how important it is to base concrete policies for Open Science on a precise reconstruction of the needs and problems of individual scholars and research institutions.

On HIRMEOS and OPERAS

HIRMEOS discussed its tasks and activities with many participants at its poster. The project is already well known to the public, especially to officers of academic libraries and university presses. We observed an increasing interest in the growing research infrastructure OPERAS. Some projects presented at MUNIN has already contact points with the concept of a distributed research infrastructure; e.g. SCOSS: A Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services presented by Vanessa Proudman. This new global coalition is currently in the middle of a pilot project. It intends to enable the international research community to take responsibility for developing and maintaining Open Science services through its institutions and funding organizations. It will create a new coordinated cost-sharing framework to ensure that non-commercial OS services supporting the development of broader global Open Access and Open Science will continue to be maintained in the future.

The participants of the conference we came into contact with were particularly interested in the annotation and name-based entities recognition services which HIRMEOS is implementing on the five digital platforms involved into the projects. Some relevant applications of the entity recognition techniques will already be presented at the beginning of the next year.

In order to learn more about it, we invite you to follow the project activities on our website and on the social networks (follow twitter: @hirmeos, #hirmeos, @OPERASEU; or on facebook) or to sign up for our newsletter.

I would like to present Stockholm University Press as one of the first Open Access University Presses in Sweden. As the Open Access paradigm shift is well under way; being a front runner in providing researchers with full open access for both books and articles to reasonable prices is something that drives everyone who works with Stockholm University Press.

The Vice Chancellor of Stockholm University decided in December 2012 to found an Open Access University Press at the Stockholm University Library.

In November 2014 the first Journal started and in January 2015 the first book was published. Since then the Press has eight journals and has published 13 books (one coming in December). We publish in the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences from researchers all around the world.

Widest Possible Dissemination

Stockholm University Press aims to make journals and books affordable, and to enable the widest possible global dissemination so that researchers can find and access the information they need without barriers.

To ensure that all our journals and books are published under the terms of Creative Commons Licenses, and the copyright remains with authors. Our recommended license is CC-BY which is best aligned to the principles defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and recommended by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).

The Press provides access to electronic journals and books free of charge in formats for reading on all devices (e.g. ePub, Kindle, HTML), and print on demand books at low prices, available at online book retailers.

Rigorous Peer Review and Publication Ethics

Our main focal points are rigorous peer review and we guarantee that all work we publish meets the highest academic standards. The minimum requirement is that reviewing is conducted by independent peers, and that editorial boards and editors (including series editors) should not act as main reviewers.

Our publishing committee consists of a majority of researchers from all faculties at Stockholm University. The press maintains close links with the Stockholm University Research Ethics committee to ensure that all publications are processed according to guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Professionalism and quality

Our editorial staff has many years of experience in academic publishing, who has worked with both books and magazines. There are staff with a Ph.D., as well as experienced communicators and designers.

Our main challenge is to convince researchers that it could benefit them to publish Open Access with us and that it will have the same impact, or even better, than to publish with traditional publishers. As part of the University Library, we can and must drive the Press without profit. We therefore publish results based on its quality and not profitability.

Christina Lenz
Managing Editor Books
Stockholm University Press
christina.lenz@su.se
Twitter: ChristinaLenz_

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.

About 16,000 books are published annually in the Czech Republic. Per capita, this places this country (along with the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Spain, and Norway) among European “reading superpowers”. Two thousand titles are published by Czech academic publishers every year, half of which comes under Brno-based universities.
Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic and an important university hub: five major public universities have their seats here, four of them maintaining their own academic publishing houses. The largest one is Masaryk University Press.

Tradition going back to early 1920s

With over three hundred professional and popular-educational books and fifty academic journals per year, Masaryk University Press (member of AEUP since 2014) is comparable with the oldest Czech academic publisher, Carolinum (Charles University, Prague).
Since its founding, Masaryk University has been focusing on publishing professional literature and textbooks. “Several editions of ours, such as Opera Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Masarykianae Brunensis, have a tradition going back to early 1920s,” says Alena Mizerová, Masaryk University Press director. However, all academic publishing halted with the World War II and our licence to publish books was not restored until 1964.

Celebrates its 10th anniversary

For some time after the Velvet revolution (1989), our university was primarily focusing on producing textbooks, but it soon became clear that one of the major tasks of a university is to spread knowledge beyond its own academic community. Therefore, the original editorial department was transformed into a proper academic publishing house at the turn of the new millennium and so Masaryk University Press celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
Besides the cooperation with university faculties and their own editorial centres (which are currently releasing most of the university’s book production), the university press maintains an editorial plan of its own. It is focused on popular books that make knowledge available to the public. It also brings important works of world academic literature in Czech translations.

First Czech university to sign the Berlin Declaration

Like other publishers, Masaryk University Press is facing changes that have affected all academic publishing worldwide. Masaryk University was the first Czech university that signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in Sciences and Humanities in 2010, acknowledging the need for global dissemination of Open Access to research results. That is why it makes a part of its production publicly available through its newly-opened Munispace online reading platform. The Government of the Czech Republic approved the National Strategy for Open Access to Scientific Information in June 2017. This trend of making academic outputs more accessible is expected to evolve and our academic publishers are ready.

Martina Tlachová
PR & marketing
Masaryk University Press

tlachova@press.muni.cz

We would like to share some information about our member presses on this News website. Please, feel free to email us a blog post about your University Press: info@aeup.eu

Please also give us ideas a inspiration about what you would like us to discuss here in 2018. You are always welcome to take part in and join the forthcoming discussions.

Christina Lenz/Secretary AEUP Board

AEUP likes to welcome two new members from Germany and from Armenia. This is how the presses present themselves:

Heidelberg University Publishing from Germany:

The mission of Heidelberg University Publishing is to provide open access to outstanding academic publications. We see the opportunities afforded by digital publishing as a way to advance the visibility of research output beyond the confines of academic disciplines. For us, this means that we publish open access, follow a consistent e-strategy, use innovative digital publication formats, and ensure quality with double-blind peer review. In addition to electronic formats, we offer high-quality printed versions of all our titles. Our decision to accept a submission does not depend on its provenance, but on its quality. [source: website]

YSU Publishing House from Armenia:

The history of the Publishing House of Yerevan State University is closely linked to the activities that the Main University has been carrying out for the past more than 90 years of its existence. Throughout the past nine decades, YSU Publishing House has published more than 5,500 books. […] The journals, magazines and yearbooks published since the first years have highly contributed to the development of science. The representatives of the YSU Publishing House have always participated in the international book fairs held in Frankfurt, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Geneva and other cities. Most of the books published by the YSU Publishing House have won honorary awards. [source: catalogue, website]

First phase completed

We invited all our members, but also other interested university presses and institutional scholarly publishers or alike from all over Europe to participate in a survey.
Its aim is to get information on the presses’ needs, challenges, as well as scope the horizon for future questions and opportunities, thus establishing a rounded picture of your actual situation.

The first phase is completed,. We like to thank the 38 European university presses who took part.

Now evaluation has started. We will present preliminary views at the COASP in Amsterdam, September 15th-17th, 2015. An outline and the aggregated results will be presented at the annual meeting of AEUP at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This year the meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 14th, 2015, 4.30-6.30 in the Brillanz Room (in Hall 4.2).

Second phase started

We still like to learn more about the needs of European university presses. If you haven’t participated yet, please feel still invited to do so.
Participation will only take about 10 to 15 minutes.

Please note: any data you fill in will be kept in strict confidence. The results of the survey will be published in an entirely anonymous form.

The Association of European University Presses (AEUP) is pleased to welcome Research Libraries UK (RLUK) as a new patron member.

Publishing in the Humanities and Arts to a large extent is taking place in university presses, especially in those disciplines communicating their research via the “long argument” – the monograph as the predominant publishing format – and in national languages. Among university presses, there are major players such as Oxford or Cambridge University Press. The majority of presses serving those disciplines however is rather small and specialised. Hence close collaboration within associations like AEUP allows them to pool resources (joint catalogue, joint Book fair presence), lobby and network with each other as well as with vendors and other stakeholders, plus stay in touch with current trends and developments.

John MacColl, Chair of RLUK stated:

“RLUK supports all forms of scholarly publishing, and we believe that a flexible approach is necessary. The monograph occupies a proud and distinctive place in the research library, with which it is strongly identified, especially for research in the humanities. As we move increasingly to online publication, and towards new business models for access to monographs on the web, it is pleasing to find that this enduring expression of scholarship is alive and well. We are very pleased therefore to work within the AEUP on the future form of and revitalized prospects for the academic book.”

David Prosser, Executive Director of RLUK, said:

“There is presently a great deal of dynamism in monograph publishing, both as format and as an organizing principle of doing research. Despite the challenges for the monograph and its publishers, several recent developments show that there is a healthy future ahead, if forces are joined and potentials explored. RLUK is very happy to support the AEUP as a player paving the way towards that future, for the benefit of researchers, students and the wider public. By joining AEUP, RLUK also signals encouragement of the library as publisher. There has been a call for experimentation in this area, and RLUK is delighted to take an active role through and with AEUP to promote that openness of approach towards monograph publishing in and for the sector.”

About RLUK: Research Libraries UK is a consortium of 34 of the largest research organisations in the UK and Ireland, including the three UK national libraries. Founded more than 30 years ago, RLUK has directly and indirectly sponsored some of the major free online UK resources in support of research. RLUK’s mission is to work with its members and partners, nationally and internationally, to shape and to realise the vision of the modern research library.
on the Internet: http://www.rluk.ac.uk/

press release AEUP-RLUK