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Find ]u[ Ubiquity, WRUP, HUP, and LARC at the London Book Fair 2024From 12th-14th March, we will be returning to the London Book Fair for the second year in a row.The London Book Fair is one of the largest publishing fairs globally, attracting around 30,000 attendees each year. Having a presence at LBF 2024 alongside so many major players in the publishing industry is a great opportunity for us to promote the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network (UPN), and to generate some conversation around open access, university press publishing, and the open movement in general.We are especially thrilled to be sharing our stand this year with three members of the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network — White Rose University Press (WRUP), Helsinki University Press (HUP), and Latin America Research Commons (LARC). All three presses are pioneering open access publishing, and producing first-rate publications that explore cutting-edge scholarship across a wide range of disciplines. As fully open access presses, all of their content is freely available online — however, each press also offers high-quality print copies of their books, a selection of which will be available to explore on our stand. You can find out more about each press below:White Rose University Press (WRUP) is a non-profit, open access publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books, publishing across a wide range of academic disciplines. The press was founded in 2016, and is run jointly by three of the UK’s leading universities; the University of Leeds, the University of Sheffield, and the University of York.All three universities have a strong research presence both within the UK and globally and came together to establish WRUP, due to their shared values and commitment to making research open access.WRUP strives to provide ‘service-led’ publishing that serves the academic community by providing high-quality publishing services as well as expertise and support for scholars publishing in open access for the first time or looking to experiment with different forms of publishing. Over the last few years, WRUP has focused in particular on its book and monograph publications, producing many impactful and incredibly high-quality books across a wide range of disciplines.Helsinki University Press (HUP) is a fully open access university press, which launched in 2020. It was established with the aim to further the transition to open research, and publish research literature with as global a reach as possible. The press is particularly conscious of being accessible to researchers and readers in the Majority World, where paywalls are a major challenge, as well as to audiences outside of academia.HUP aspires not only to provide accessible publications with as wide a reach as possible, but to produce publications of the highest quality. The press publishes high-quality books and journals across a wide range of academic fields and disciplines, with a particular focus on the humanities and social sciences.Latin America Research Commons (LARC) is the first open access publishing press dedicated to the publication of monographs in Spanish and Portuguese.It is a project that originated in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and its main goal is to ensure the widest possible dissemination of original monographs and journals in all disciplines related to Latin American studies. It is oriented to ensure that scholars from around the world can find and access the research they need without economic or geographic barriers.We will also be representing the University Press Library Open (UPLO), a new open access initiative from Paradigm Publishing Services, which will host content from fifty-plus traditional print University Press Library partners, making them fully available as open access. The platform will have a central focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and is funded by De Gruyter’s not-for-profit foundation, eBound.You will be able to find us on Stand 7A34, from 12th-14th March at Olympia London. Make sure you stop by to look at just a small selection of some of the innovative titles published by WRUP, HUP, and LARC, plus our own publishing imprint ]u[ Ubiquity Press. We will also be on hand to talk about the UPLO, our Partner Press service, or any other aspect of open publishing. We look forward to seeing you there!Would you like to set up a meeting in advance of the London Book Fair? Get in touch.Find ]u[ Ubiquity,WRUP, HUP, and LARC at the London Book Fair 2024 was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Welcome to the first ]u[ Ubiquity Press newsletter of 2024!Spring is nearly here and we are looking ahead to another fruitful year, as are our journals; we have plenty of calls for papers going, plus an exciting opportunity to shape the future of the Journal of Open Research Software.Since our last newsletter, we have seen the publication of two hotly anticipated ]u[ Ubiquity Press books, and our journals have been busy producing some innovative special collections. Read on to find out more…]u[ Ubiquity Press attends London Book FairHot off the press — ]u[ Ubiquity Press publishes two new booksBuildings and Cities publishes three new special collectionsJournal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) publishes new special collectionJournal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) team win award for ‘Deep Impact: A Study on the Impact of Data Papers and Datasets in the Humanities and Social Sciences’Spotlight on: Ubiquity ProceedingsCalls for papersJobs and opportunities]u[ Ubiquity Press attends the London Book Fair, alongside White Rose University Press (WRUP), Helsinki University Press (HUP), Latin America Research Commons (LARC), and University Press Library Open (UPLO)]u[ Ubiquity Press is heading to London Book Fair 2024! We are excited to announce that we will be exhibiting on a stand alongside three presses from the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network; White Rose University Press (WRUP), Helsinki University Press (HUP), and Latin America Research Commons (LARC).We will also be representing the University Press Library Open (UPLO), a new open access initiative hosted by ]u[ Ubiquity, which will host content from fifty-plus traditional print University Press Library partners, making them fully available as Open Access. The platform will have a central focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and is funded by De Gruyter’s not-for-profit foundation, eBound.You will be able to find us on Stand 7A34, from 12th-14th March at Olympia London. Make sure you stop by to look at just a small selection of some of the innovative titles published by ]u[ Ubiquity Press, WRUP, HUP and LARC, and to find out more about the UPLO.Arrange to meet with us at LBF 2024.Hot off the press — ]u[ Ubiquity Press publishes two new booksOur book publishing team had a busy end to 2023, with two new ]u[ Ubiquity Press titles coming out late last year. To find out more about either book, simply click the link below the cover image, or the title below.Leaving No One Behind, Leaving No One UnaccountableLeaving No One Behind, Leaving No One Unaccountable, by Luka GlušacLeaving No One Behind is the 22nd paper in the SSR paper series, a series that explores and analyses the challenges of security sector governance and reform, and is produced in collaboration with The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).Based on state-of-the-field, interdisciplinary research with a global perspective, Leaving No One Behind offers the first comprehensive account of the role of ombuds institutions in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 16. It offers a granular analysis of all SDG 16 targets, demonstrating how ombuds institutions could contribute to achieving each of them.About the author: Luka Glušac, PhD, is Assistant Director and Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, where he focuses on human rights, good governance, and security. His main area of expertise is the institutional design of independent oversight bodies, especially ombuds institutions and anti-corruption agencies. He is particularly interested in their role in security sector governance.Read the book now.Can’t Touch This: Digital Approaches to Materiality in Culture HeritageCan’t Touch This: Digital Approaches to Materiality in Culture Heritage, by Dr Chiara Palladino and Dr Gabriel BodardCan’t Touch This is a broadly interdisciplinary volume exploring the tension between the materiality of cultural heritage artefacts and the intangible aspects of digital methods.Palladino and Bodard argue that the ever-increasing digitisation of cultural heritage and immaterial knowledge is affecting the ways in which people relate to their culture and history. They address many of the most pressing issues in the field of Digital Humanities, asking provocative questions such as ‘who “owns” a digital artefact?’.About the authors: Chiara Palladino is Assistant Professor of Classics at Furman University. She works on the application of digital technologies to the study of ancient texts. Her current main interests are in the use of semantic annotation and modelling for the analysis of ancient spatial narratives, and in the implementation of NLP methods for reading and investigating historical languages.Gabriel Bodard teaches Classics, Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage at the University of London. His research includes standards for digital encoding of inscribed texts, especially from Northern Africa, applying linked open data to place and person records, 3D approaches to built heritage, and ancient religion and magic.Read the book now.Buildings and Cities publishes three new special collectionsThe journal Buildings and Cities had a productive end to 2023, publishing three special collections in late November. Each collection features a wealth of innovative research surrounding the journal’s subject area. You can find out more about each special collection, and read the collection in full, by clicking on the titles below:‘Social value of the built environment’ explores current and potential approaches to defining, delivering, monitoring, and evaluating social value in the built environment, its benefits and consequences, and its relation to other existing policy mechanisms.‘Data politics in the built environment’ aims to improve our collective understanding of the practices, politics, and power implications of data-driven buildings and cities.‘Understanding demolition’ explores why demolition occurs and its environmental, socio-economic, and cultural drivers, potentials and consequences, as well as policy and practices pertaining to avoiding demolition at different scales.Read the journal now.Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) publishes new special collectionThe Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) has released a new special collection entitled ‘Interdisciplinarity Open Technology-Enhanced Learning’.The collection brings together work by researchers both inside and outside the Open Technology Enhanced Learning (OpenTEL) group, addressing major barriers to learning — lack of resources, unequal access to resources, limited access for people with disabilities, growing recognition of the scale of mental health issues — and identifying ways of reducing these barriers in TEL contexts.Read the collection now.Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) team win award for ‘Deep Impact: A Study on the Impact of Data Papers and Datasets in the Humanities and Social Sciences’We were delighted to hear that members of the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) editorial team won the Publications 2022 Best Paper Award for 10th Anniversary, run by MDPI.‘Deep Impact: A Study on the Impact of Data Papers and Datasets in the Humanities and Social Sciences’ was authored by JOHD editorial team members Barbara McGillivray, Paola Marongiu, Marton Ribary, Mandy Wigdorowitz and Eleonora Zordan, along with Nilo Pedrazzini. The paper demonstrates that data papers for humanities data improve the visibility of data sets, support research articles, and contribute to open research. Congratulations to the authors!Read the journal.Spotlight on: Ubiquity ProceedingsThis month’s journal spotlight falls on Ubiquity Proceedings, ]u[ Ubiquity Press’ own conference proceedings journal.Ubiquity Proceedings was established to provide conference organisers with a platform to easily publish and disseminate conference output in a cost-effective and professional manner. The journal is not subject-specific, and is open to publishing conference output from across all disciplines.To date, Ubiquity Proceedings has published the output of three conferences, including the 5th International Small Sample Test Techniques Conference, taking place at Swansea University in 2018, and the 2022 conference Pandemic Perspectives: Reflections on a Post-Covid World, organised by the Pandemic Perspectives group.Most recently, Ubiquity Proceedings published the output from the 2023 EDEN Dublin Annual Conference, the conference of Eden Digital Learning Europe, an international educational association and not-for-profit organisation. The conference explored the theme, ‘“Yes we can!” — Digital Education for Better Futures’, challenging participants to think critically about what a better future might look like, and how digital education can contribute to this future.If you are interested in publishing your conference proceedings in Ubiquity Proceedings, you can get in touch with the journal manager to find out more.Find out more.Calls for papers:Tilburg Law ReviewThe Tilburg Law Review is seeking papers for its 2025 special issue entitled ‘Technology as a Connector of Organizations in a Socially Sustainable World’. This issue will explore the pivotal role of technology in fostering socially sustainable connections among organisations within the complex framework of interconnected activities and globalised relations.The deadline for manuscript submissions is 1st November 2024.Download the full call for papers.Transactions of the International Society for Music Information RetrievalThe journal Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TSMIR) is now accepting submissions for contributions for a special collection entitled ‘Multi-Modal Music Information Retrieval’, which will feature papers on multi-modal systems in all their diversity. The journal particularly encourages under-explored repertoire, new connections between fields, and novel research areas.The deadline for submissions is 1st August 2024. The journal recommends that you get in touch with the editorial team in advance if you plan to submit.Download the full call for papers.Insights: the UKSG journalUKSG’s journal Insights is seeking submissions for its new issue ‘Innovation in academic libraries and academic publishing’. The focus of this call is on innovation, and stories about the projects and initiatives that are identifying new ways to support education and research. It is an opportunity for information professionals to share their wisdom and experiences.Find out more.Jobs and opportunities:The Journal of Open Research Software (JORS) is seeking applications for the positions of Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor, to start in Spring 2024 at the latest.JORS is an international, peer-reviewed journal, publishing Software Metapapers describing research software with high reuse potential, as well as full-length research papers covering different aspects of creating, maintaining, and evaluating open source research software.The team is looking for qualified candidates who can commit to investing time in working to develop and grow the journal. The deadline for applications is 26th March 2024; interested candidates can get in touch with the journal’s Editorial Account Manager.Find out more.That’s all from us for now — we will be back with the latest ]u[ Ubiquity Press news in two months time.In the meantime, you can always keep up to date with what’s going on at the press via X, and also via our community portal, ]u[ Community. Not a member, but believe you should be? Get in touch to request access.Until next time!- The ]u[ Ubiquity Press Team]u[ Ubiquity Press February Newsletter was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Cardiff University Press was established in 2014, and is an open access, Diamond model publisher of journals and books. The press launched its Monograph Publishing Programme in 2019 during Open Access Week, with the initial aim of publishing 2–3 books per year. The programme has been highly successful, and last year the press published its tenth monograph, entitled The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250–1600. Authored by Ben Jervis (formerly Cardiff University, now University of Leicester), Chris Briggs (University of Cambridge), Alice Forward (University of Leicester), Tomasz Gromelski (University of Oxford), and Matthew Tompkins (University of Leicester), the book draws on the results of the Leverhulme funded project of the same name. It constitutes the first national-scale interdisciplinary analysis of non-elite consumption in the later Middle Ages.Research concerning the lives and habits of the people of the past has long been limited to the elite, ignoring the majority of the population. When it comes to the study of material culture in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period in England, there has been considerable research on the possessions of elite households and people living in larger towns. This is often attributed to the lack of extant sources for non-elite households and those living in smaller, rural towns and communities. The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250–1600 addresses this gap in the field, using an interdisciplinary approach to bring together archaeological evidence and archival documentation.The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250–1600 sheds new light on the rise in living standards in England following the Black Death, the commercialisation of the English economy, and the birth of modern conceptions of consumerism. The study combines three sources of data to address two key questions: what goods did medieval households own, and what influenced their consumption habits? The first source is archaeological evidence, comprising over 14,000 objects recovered from archaeological excavations. The book brings together this data, much of which is unpublished and therefore inaccessible to researchers. The second dataset comes from lists of the seized goods of felons, outlaws, and suicides collated by the Escheator, a royal official, in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Escheator’s work is poorly understood, but these lists, relating to some of the poorest people in medieval society (for whom traditional sources such as wills and probate inventories simply don’t exist), provide new insights into the living standards of rural households. The final dataset comes from equivalent lists compiled by the Coroner for the 16th century.The publication of The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250–1600 in open access is a great achievement for the field of material culture studies, and for the advancement of open scholarship in the humanities more broadly. Titles such as this one demonstrate the value of university press publishing in producing groundbreaking, important research that addresses big gaps in research fields.You can read or download The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250–1600 in full now, from Cardiff University Press.]u[ Ubiquity is proud to support a major resurgence of university press publishing, to be able to help new presses become established, and to provide them with the capability to grow and flourish. Is your society or institution interested in developing its OA initiatives, and becoming a publisher? The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network is always growing; find out more about setting up an open access press with ]u[ Ubiquity.Exploring The Material Culture of English Rural Households: CardiffUP’s Tenth OA Book was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Welcome to the first ]u[ Ubiquity newsletter of 2024!We hope you had a restful festive period and a good start to the new year. 2024 has already gotten off to a flying start, with members of the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network launching some exciting new open access projects, plenty of interesting new book publications, and the launch of a brand new ]u[ Ubiquity Repository. Read on to find out more…Science belongs in the hands of scientists: KIT announces the ‘Diamond Thinking’ ProjectLSE Press to publish the Royal Geographical Society RSG-IBG book seriesNiagara University’s Digital Repository launches on ]u[ Ubiquity RepositoriesUniversity of Westminster Press celebrates 8th anniversaryIndian Institute of Technology — Knowledge Sharing in Publishing (IIT KSHIP)Open Access News: Key updates from the wider OA worldNew books from our Partner PressesScience belongs in the hands of scientists: KIT announces the ‘Diamond Thinking’ Project]u[ Ubiquity’s long-standing partner KIT is expanding its publishing activities with the ‘Diamond Thinking’ Project, backed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and developed with Stuttgart University, in pioneering scholar-led open-access publishing. Running from September 2023 to August 2025, the project aims to establish top-tier scientific journals across major disciplines at KIT or to facilitate the transition of existing commercial journals to open access.The project has already made a significant impact by transitioning the conference proceedings of the International Association for Hydrogen Safety (HySafe) from Elsevier to KIT Scientific Publishing (KSP). The project seeks to go beyond simply ‘flipping’ journals and inspire the scientific community to take back control of their publishing output.]u[ Ubiquity is thrilled to be supporting this trailblazing project through our work with KIT Scientific Publishing (KSP).Find out more.LSE Press to publish Royal Geographical Society RSG-IBG book seriesLSE Press and the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) have entered into a new publishing partnership, which will see LSE Press publish the highly respected RGS-IBG book series from mid-2024, comprising up to four open access titles each year.The RGS-IBG book series publishes work of the highest international standing with an emphasis on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography. By publishing all titles in open access, the series will be able to reach a broader audience and achieve greater impact for research.This is great news for LSE Press, who are continuing to grow and develop as an open access university press, and for the open access book landscape in general.Find out more.Niagara University’s Digital Repository launches on ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories]u[ Ubiquity is delighted to announce the launch of a brand new ]u[ Repository, Niagara University’s Digital Repository. A service of the Niagara University Library, the repository will provide open access to the scholarly and creative work of faculty, staff, and students, as well as items of historical interest from the University Archives.The repository has been set up under ]u[ Ubiquity’s agreement with the Empire State Library Network (ESLN), which enables ESLN members to build a new institutional repository from scratch, or transfer an existing one to ]u[ Ubiquity’s next-generation repository platform. There is also the opportunity for ESLN repositories to be included in ESLN Academic Institutional Repository, the multi-tenancy instance ]u[ Ubiquity created for the content from participating ESLN repositories to be cross-searchable on one platform.Find out more about ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories.University of Westminster Press celebrates its 8th anniversaryOn Monday 4th December 2023, members of the University of Westminster community came together to celebrate the 8th anniversary of the founding of the University of Westminster Press (UWP), and the publication of the press’ 55th book, SMELL.UWP was founded in 2015, acquiring its first journal in September of that year and publishing its first book Critical Theory of Communication the following year. The press is a digital-first, open access publisher of peer reviewed academic books, policy briefs and journals, and exists to provide global public access to academic work.UWP was one of the very first presses to join the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network; we are delighted to see how much the team has achieved so far, and look forward to watching the press continue to grow.Check out UWP’s booklet.Indian Institute of Technology — Knowledge Sharing in Publishing (IIT KSHIP) publishes its first bookIIT KSHIP has published its first book, Indian Electronic Literature Anthology, a pioneering collection that marks an important development in Indian literary publishing.Indian Electronic Literature Anthology brings together 17 digital works that demonstrate new and evolving computational and literary aesthetics across multiple genres and media, and English and Indian languages. It showcases the vast opportunities and experimental freedoms provided by digital platforms and paves the way for further innovation and cultural inclusivity in electronic publishing.Read it now.Open Access News: Key updates from the wider OA worldThe European University Association (EUA) seeks participants for focus group on “Co-designing Diamond OA recommendations and guidelines for institutional leaders”The EUA is seeking participants for a focus group on “Co-designing Diamond OA recommendations and guidelines for institutional leaders”, organised in the context of the EU-funded DIAMAS project.The focus group will bring together institutional practitioners from universities, research performing organisations, and learned societies to discuss their needs and challenges in the transition to Diamond Open Access at institutional level. Their input will directly feed into the development of the “Diamond OA policy recommendations and guidelines for institutional leaders”, which the DIAMAS project is set to publish in February 2025.We strongly recommend that representatives from our university-based partner presses apply to take part. The deadline for participation has been extended until February 9th, with the focus group due to take place online Wednesday 13th March.Find out more and take part.Introduction To Publication Ethics: Online workshop from COPEThe Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be hosting a workshop on publication ethics on Monday 26th February. Registration is open to anyone, is free to join, and will provide a solid introduction to the principles of publication ethics within academic publishing, and how to use the guidance and tools available to embed publication ethics in a journal’s daily practice.Register here.New books from our Partner PressesCheck out this selection of recently published, open access books from some of our partner presses, including Stockholm University Press, Kriterium, and the Latin America Research Commons. To find out more about any title, simply click on the book title in the caption below each row of images.Ukraine//Nordic and Baltic Perspective in Canadian Studies//Ground TruthsWater: A Dutch Cultural History//Diamela Eltit: Essays on Chilean Literature, Politics and Culture//Auslegung von Verstärkungen ermüdungsgeschädigter Stahlbauteile mit aufgeklebten FaserverbundwerkstoffenBeing Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages //Genetic Criticism in Motion//”Slava Ukraini!”That is all from us for now. You can keep up to date with us over on X, Mastodon and Linkedin, and you can also keep up with news from our publishing imprint ]u[ Ubiquity Press on X.]u[ Community members can also keep in touch with ]u[ Ubiquity team members and other users of ]u[ Ubiquity services on our Community Portal. Not a member but think you should be? Get in touch with us to request membership.If you have any news or announcements you would like to be featured in a future newsletter, or shared via our socials, you can always get in touch with us.Until next time!— The ]u[ Ubiquity TeamBusy year ahead! The latest news from ]u[ Ubiquity was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Welcome to the final quarterly ]u[ Ubiquity newsletter of 2023. We may be approaching the end of year, but things at ]u[ Ubiquity are showing no sign of winding down for the holidays just yet!In the past three months, we’ve welcomed a migrated journal to ]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals, made some crucial improvements to elevate our journal platforms, and celebrated both International Open Access Week and University Press Week. We’ve also got plenty of new publications to announce from our ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network and some exciting opportunities and calls for papers from our own publishing imprint ]u[ Ubiquity Press, not to mention some key updates from the wider open access world. Read on to find out more…In this newsletter…]u[ Ubiquity Takes Action with Fully OA Publishers Group]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals Welcomes Two New Journals]u[ Ubiquity Celebrates University Press Week]u[ Ubiquity Team Releases Integral Journal Platform UpgradesOpen Access News: Key Updates from the Wider OA WorldLSE Press Publishes First Issue of Philosophy of PhysicsHelsinki University Press Publishes Special Issue of Estetika: The European Journal of AestheticsNew Partner Press BooksSilk Roads Archaeology and Heritage Publishes First IssueJournal of Open Psychology Data Launches Mentorship ProgrammeCall for Papers]u[ Ubiquity Takes Action with Fully OA Publishers GroupFor the first time ever, members of the Fully OA Publishers Group came together in person to represent the group on a shared booth at the 2023 Charleston Conference Vendor Showcase. ]u[ Ubiquity was pleased to attend alongside fellow members Frontiers, MDPI, and JMIR Publications, and to be able to represent the group’s mission to conference attendees.The Fully OA Publishers Group is a collective of publishers who are all dedicated solely to open access publications. The group meets regularly to exchange ideas, and to identify opportunities, like Charleston, to collaborate and work together. Recently, members of the group published an open letter in support of the Lofgren CJS Amendment; this amendment would strike Sec 552 of the Subcommittee’s FY24 spending bill, a bill which the group has previously spoken out against on the grounds that it would ‘be a block on the advancement of US research and its influence within the international scientific community’.We are proud to be members of the Fully OA Publishers Group and look forward to many more opportunities to collaborate in the future.Find out more about the Fully OA Group.]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals Welcomes Two New JournalsWe are pleased to announce the migration of two journals to ]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals; the Interprofessional Journal of Healthcare and Research, and the Journal of Historical Network Research.The Interprofessional Journal of Healthcare and Research has migrated to ]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals from Digital Commons. The journal is published by the College of Health Studies and Professions at the University of North Georgia, and exists to promote collaboration between healthcare professionals across multiple fields of practice.The Journal of Historical Network Research is maintained by members of the Historical Network Research Community and sponsored by the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) — University of Luxembourg. The journal publishes research applying the theories and methodologies of network analysis to historical research.We are excited to be a part of the next chapter for both of these journals, and to support them in publishing in open access.Find out more about ]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals]u[ Ubiquity Celebrates University Press WeekIn November, celebrated University Press Week (UP Week). Organised annually by the Association of University Presses (AUP), UP Week is a chance to celebrate the invaluable role that university presses play in scholarly communications all over the world.Over half of the presses in our ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network (UPN) are university presses; we are proud to support such a diverse group of university presses, and to watch them all grow and flourish. This year’s theme #SpeakUP encouraged the celebration of the creative, diverse and groundbreaking research that university press publishing facilitates. We spoke to two of our partner presses, White Rose University Press and Helsinki University Press, about some of their recent book publications, and how they exemplify the kind of high-quality, innovative research each press seeks to publish.We also spoke to ]u[ Ubiquity founder and CEO Brian Hole about the benefits of an institution starting their own university press, and addressed some of the common misconceptions surrounding university press publishing. For all of this, and more, you can visit the ]u[ Ubiquity blog.]u[ Ubiquity Team Releases Integral Journal Platform UpgradesThe ]u[ Ubiquity Journal platform team has been hard at work over the past few months, releasing a number of new platform updates. This has included enhanced multilingual support, improved security measures, and journal website updates to ensure better accessibility. Details about all new improvements can always be found on our community portal. Not a member, but believe you should be? You can always get in touch to request membership.The team is also in the process of upgrading all ]u[ Ubiquity journals to OJS 3.4, which was released by PKP over the summer. Work is being undertaken to document the required upgrade process, as well as updating individual plugins, to ensure compatibility with the new version of the system. All involved parties and journal teams will be kept informed as the process develops.Open Access News: Key Updates from the Wider OA WorldApplications Open for UKRI Open Access Book FundingFrom 1 January 2024, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s new open access policy will apply to monographs, book chapters and edited collections as well as journals. This requires any research funded by UKRI or one of its research councils to be compliant with a number of requirements. Read the full policy.UKRI is providing a £3.5 million dedicated fund to support open access costs for long-form publications within the scope of the policy. Stage one of applications for the new fund opened on 28th November, 2023. Research organisations will be able to register publications for funding and receive confirmation from UKRI that the publications are eligible. Find out more.]u[ Ubiquity’s publishing imprint, ]u[ Ubiquity Press, offers fully open access book publishing services, ensuring compliance with UKRI’s open access book policy. Research articles published in ]u[ Ubiquity Press journals, or in ]u[ Ubiquity hosted journals, will also remain compliant with the policy; we guarantee to remain dedicated to fully open access.Find out more about publishing with ]u[ Ubiquity.cOAlition S Release New Draft Proposal ‘Towards Responsible Publishing’cOAlition S, the group of funders who launched Plan S five years ago, has released a draft proposal that lays out a move towards a scholar-led, more ‘responsible’ publishing landscape.Read the full proposal.Open Access Week 2023 — Community Over CommercialisationThe last week of October saw open access advocates from all over the world come together to celebrate International Open Access Week. This year’s theme, ‘Community over Commercialisation’ prompted many interesting conversations surrounding different approaches to open scholarship, and how best to prioritise the needs of the research community and the wider public.Over on the ]u[ Ubiquity blog, we published a series of posts centred around this year’s theme:Community-Centric Publishing: The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner NetworkWhat Does ‘Community’ Mean to the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network? Conversations with Three ]u[ Ubiquity Partner PressesLocal Impact, Global Reach: How the Journals Online Project Fosters Community-Centric ResearchCode, Collaboration, and Commitment: An Insight into ]u[ Ubiquity’s Role in the Open Source CommunityFinding Community in the Commercial: The Fully OA Group to Collaborate at the Charleston Conference 2023Visit the ]u[ Ubiquity blog.LSE Press Publishes First Issue of Philosophy of Physics]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network member LSE Press has published the first issue of a new journal, Philosophy of Physics. The journal aims to be a flagship journal for the field and to span the various axes of the philosophy of physics, such as metaphysical, historical, and mathematical. We are delighted to see the first issue published and look forward to many more to come.Read the first issue.Helsinki University Press Publishes Special Issue of Estetika: The European Journal of AestheticsHelsinki University Press (HUP) published a new special issue of Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics earlier this Autumn.The issue explores the theme ‘Failures in Aesthetic Judgement’, and is guest-edited by María José Alcaraz León. Estetika is a generalist journal in the field of philosophical aesthetics, publishing research articles that engage with the diverse traditions of aesthetics in Europe and beyond. It is published twice a year by HUP in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.Read the special collection.New Partner Press BooksCheck out this selection of recently published, open access books from some of our partner presses, including the Finnish Literary Society, LSE Press, and Cardiff University Press. To find out more about any title, simply click on the link in the caption below.Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648//Children’s Culture and Citizenship in Argentina//Maverick MoviesBaker & Singh’s Interactive Guide to the Human Brain//How Did Britain Come to This?//Human and Planetary HealthMiten tutkia kohteliaisuutta?//Afterlives//Living Communities and Their Archaeologies in the Middle EastRed Pope//Materialitet//The Material Culuture of English Rural Households C.1250–1600Hot Off the Press…The latest news from our publishing imprint, ]u[ Ubiquity Press.Silk Roads Archaeology and Heritage Publishes First Issue]u[ Ubiquity Press journal Silk Roads Archaeology and Heritage has published its first articles. The journal aims to be a forum for the dissemination of current research on the archaeology and heritage of the Silk Roads, and publishes high-quality research work from across a range of disciplines including History, Anthropology, Architecture, and Ethnography.Silk Roads Archaeology and Heritage is a Diamond Open Access Journal, and welcomes submissions on a rolling basis. Find out more about submitting an article.Read the journal.The Journal of Open Psychology Data Launches Mentorship ProgrammeThe Journal of Open Psychology Data (JOPD) is now offering researchers wishing to gain editorial experience the opportunity to take part in a trial of a brand-new mentorship programme. The programme will support up to 2 individuals pursuing a career in academia, and the JOPD team are particularly keen to offer this to individuals who identify with marginalised or historically excluded communities.Find out more.Call for Papers:Swiss Psychology OpenThe journal Swiss Psychology Open (SPO) is seeking papers for a new special collection entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence and Research in Psychology’. The collection will focus on the applications and impact of AI on psychological research, and the deadline for submission is 29th February, 2024. The journal recommends that interested authors first send an abstract to Fernand Gobet to check the suitability of their paper. Download the full call for papers.Buildings and CitiesBuildings and Cities is seeking papers for a special collection entitled ‘Energy Sufficiency in Buildings and Cities’. Authors interested in contributing should send a 500 word (maximum) abstract to editor Richard Lorch by 15 January 2024. Download the full call for papers.That’s all from us this time. We will be back in the new year; until then, take care and have a wonderful festive season.The ]u[ Ubiquity TeamThe Latest News from ]u[ Ubiquity was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Close-up photograph of the corner of a computer screen, showing Gmail inboxWelcome to the October edition of the ]u[ Ubiquity Press newsletter.As we head towards the end of the year, things show no sign of slowing down at the press. On top of plenty of conference attendances, and celebrations for International Open Access Week, we have several interesting new publications to announce, plus an exciting opportunity for an open access book enthusiast to join our team! Read on to find out more…]u[ Ubiquity Press Represent Fully OA Group at the 2023 Charleston ConferenceJournal of Open Humanities Data Host London Get-TogetherAnnals of Global Health Publishes ‘Universal Health Coverage Through Integrated Care’Perspectives on Medical Education Publishes ‘The Writer’s Craft Collection’“Yes we can!” Ubiquity Proceedings Publishes EDEN Dublin AC 2023 Conference OutputNew ]u[ Ubiquity Press Book Out NowSpotlight on: International Journal of Educational and Life TransitionsBook Reviews Wanted: Journal of Interactive Media in EducationCall for PapersJobs and Opportunities: Join the ]u[ Ubiquity Press Team!Charleston Hub Conference logo, ]u[ Ubiquity Press logo, and Fully OA logo on top of a faded picture of Charleston, South Carolina street]u[ Ubiquity Press Represent Fully OA Group at the 2023 Charleston ConferenceThe Fully OA Group is headed to Charleston! We are proud to be representing ]u[ Ubiquity Press as a part of the Fully OA Publishers Group at the Charleston 2023 vendor showcase. We will be joined by fellow Fully OA members Frontiers, MDPI, and JMIR Publications.The Fully OA Group is a collective of publishers who are all dedicated solely to open access publications. In light of last week’s International Open Access Week’s theme, ‘Community over Commercialisation’, we want to demonstrate that even as commercial entities, with a range of differing approaches and business models, we believe there is space for community and collaboration in the face of a common goal: a transition to fully open scholarly communication.We are looking forward to representing the group’s mission and generating conversation about open access at the conference, as well as being able to get together in person with our fellow open access publishers. You will be able to find the Fully OA Group booth at the Charleston vendor showcase on 7th November, booth number 97.Find out more.Journal of Open Humanities Data Host London Get-TogetherPhotograph of editors from Journal of Open Humanities Data, smiling and standing in front of a blue sofaJust this week, we had the pleasure of welcoming the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD)’s editorial team to our London office, for a day of meetings and team-building.Many of our journals are made up of team members from all over the world, something that undeniably contributes to their value and diversity. However, it means that opportunities to get together in person are often few and far between, so we are always glad to be able to facilitate events like this and to have the chance to meet editors face-to-face.Annals of Global Health Publishes ‘Universal Health Coverage Through Integrated Care’Logo for the journal Annals of Global Health in blueThe journal Annals of Global Health has published a new special collection entitled ‘Universal Health Coverage through Integrated Care’ in collaboration with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM). The collection originates from the HSDM’s Initiative to Integrate Oral Health and Medicine.Achieving universal health care and coverage will require major systemic transformations globally. This special collection identifies barriers and opportunities for the integration of dental and behavioural health services, at community and national levels, as well as recent innovations and successes in the field.Read the collection.Perspectives on Medical Education Publishes ‘The Writer’s Craft Collection’Cover image for journal Perspectives on Medical EducationPerspectives on Medical Education (PME) has put together a new special collection entitled ‘The Writer’s Craft Collection: Resources to enhance your academic writing’, featuring the entire back catalogue of ‘Writer’s Craft’ articles since 2015.The collection features articles designed to support scholars in honing their academic writing skills, with recent articles such as ‘Metacommentary: Identifying and Mastering ‘Dear Reader’ Moments’, ‘The Art of Revising’, and the timely ‘Writing with ChatGPT: An illustration of its capacity, limitations & implications for academic writers’.Read the collection.“Yes we can!” ]u[ Ubiquity Proceedings Publishes EDEN Dublin AC 2023 Conference OutputText in orange reading Ubiquity ProceedingsWe are pleased to have partnered with the EDEN Dublin Annual Conference to publish the output of the 2023 conference, which explored the theme ‘“Yes we can!” — Digital Education for Better Futures’, in our proceedings journal Ubiquity Proceedings.Ubiquity Proceedings is a low-cost, open access proceedings journal. The journal provides a platform for conference organisers to easily and professionally publish and disseminate the content of their conferences. If you are interested in having your conference output published, get in touch with our editorial team.Read the proceedings.New ]u[ Ubiquity Press Book Out NowBook cover for Text- und Data-Mining in den digitalen GeisteswissenschaftenLast month saw the publication of Text- und Data-Mining in den digitalen Geisteswissenschaften, by Felicitas Lea Kleinkopf. The title is the first in the Stuttgart University Reports Series and contains a legal assessment of the copyright relevance of real use cases of research with text and data mining, from the field of digital humanities, as well as the analysis of the permission of the individual work steps.Read it now in open access.Spotlight on: International Journal of Educational and Life TransitionsCover image of International Journal of Educational and Life TransitionsThis month, our journal spotlight falls on the International Journal of Educational and Life Transitions (IJELT), which has published its second volume. After launching in 2022, the 2023 volume has built on the strong foundations that Editor-in-Chief, Professor Divya Jindal-Snape, and her team established in the first volume, with a total of 27 publications and over 11,000 page views to date.IJELT is an international, peer-reviewed journal, publishing articles and multimedia outputs of interest to researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in the field of educational and life transitions. It is interdisciplinary in approach, particularly welcoming research involving more than one discipline, sector, or nation, and publishes research studies, policy reviews, literature reviews, and multi-media and creative outputs.The journal publishes research focused on educational, social, cultural, and psychological adaptation across multiple contexts such as home, school, workplace, and community, for example, transitions of international families, from hospital to community, or of LGBTQ+ young adults to and through employment.We are pleased to see IJELT grow and continue to publish interesting and impactful research. The journal is now looking for contributions to the 2024 volume, for either the open submissions or to one of their collections.Find out more.Logo for International Journal of Educational and Life TransitionsBook Reviews Wanted: Journal of Interactive Media in EducationLogo for Journal of Interactive Media in Education on a blue backgroundThe Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) is seeking reviews of some of the latest books released on the topics of educational technology, and the role of multimedia technologies in higher education.Reviews will be commissioned on a first-come, first-served basis for qualified reviewers and are due on 31st March 2024, with the final collection of reviews to be published in July 2024. Those who are interested should contact Foster Gondwe (Book Reviews Editor) with an expression of interest.Find out more.Call for Papers:Journal of Interactive Media in EducationJIME is seeking papers for an upcoming special collection entitled ‘Open learning and learning at scale: The legacy of MOOCs’. The collection will celebrate 10 years of the FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN)’s research and scholarship, and refocus the network’s attention and activities. The deadline for full submissions is 31st January 2024.Find out more.Jobs and Opportunities: Join the ]u[ Ubiquity Press Team!Editorial Account Manager/Senior Editorial Account ManagerAre you an open access book enthusiast, with strong project management and communication skills? We are looking for a proactive and passionate individual with publishing experience to join our team as either an Editorial Account Manager or Senior Editorial Account Manager, depending on experience.The Editorial Account Manager plays a critical role in managing and supporting all publishing activity on the ]u[ Ubiquity platform. This involves the management of ]u[ Ubiquity Press publications, alongside helping to manage a portfolio of ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Presses. The role will have a strong book focus, with responsibilities including the management of book workflows and hands-on editorial processing. Find out more about the role and how to apply via our website.Find out more.That’s all from us for this month. We’ll be back in December, with a special end-of-year edition of the ]u[ Ubiquity Press newsletter. Until then!-The ]u[ Ubiquity Press Team]u[ Ubiquity Press October Newsletter was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Be a Leader, Not a Follower: The Reality of Open Access University Press Publishing]u[ Ubiquity was founded out of a desire to empower and support the scholarly community in publishing under their own terms, as well as furthering the drive towards open research. Founder and CEO Brian Hole developed the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Press service, and the subsequent ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network (UPN) in 2014, in order to provide universities and institutions with the infrastructure to sustain their own successful Open Access publishing programmes, and empower them to run their own open access university presses without technological constraints, costs, nor editorial restrictions.There remain many misconceptions about university presses and the value they bring to the scholarly community and society as a whole. In honour of University Press Week, and this year’s theme #SpeakUP, we want to address some of these misconceptions and highlight what we believe to be some of the unique, invaluable benefits that university presses offer to the scholarly landscape.Misconception one: ‘University Press’ is just an honorary title for bigger, corporate publishers.Reality: University presses are research-first entities, upholding the integrity of research publications.A university press in name is not necessarily a university press in nature. Institution- and library-based university presses may operate under a multitude of publishing models; however, they share the same commitment to quality over quantity.One must dissociate the few university presses which over time have become large corporations, and have consequently grown dependent on following market trends and mass appeal to continuously increase their earnings; with the majority of university presses that are mission-led and purposefully prioritise the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The latter, which are the ones referred to in this post, often recognise important fresh perspectives in scholarship by publishing work in emerging, often interdisciplinary areas that have not yet gained wide attention. Freed from this commercial pressure, they can also prioritise academic integrity, and uphold stringent standards of research practice.Misconception two: University presses only publish the work of established academics at their parent institution.Reality: University presses are fully community-centric publishing endeavours, supporting not just the interests of a few eminent academics, but the wider community at their institution and beyond.One of the benefits of university presses is that they can extend the mission, influence, and brand of their parent institution, making their commitment to knowledge and ideas evident.However, this is not merely a self-serving exercise: university presses can demonstrate their parent institutions’ support of research in essential academic fields, particularly in the Humanities and Social Sciences, that are rarely supported by funding. Through publishing in open access, they are also contributing to the wider open science and open research movements.It is also a myth that university presses only publish the work of their own faculty and staff. Though university presses offer all-important support to their own academic community, for example by supporting early-career scholars with best practice advice and practical authorial support, they also publish research of high quality from around the world.Misconception three: University presses only publish low quality journals and books, not ‘top level science’.Reality: It is important not to confuse a high volume of publishing with high quality; just because larger, legacy publishers are able to publish large quantities of research does not mean that what they publish is necessarily of higher quality than smaller university presses.This is especially true when we consider the current ‘publish or perish’ culture, or issues such as research paper mills. Due to university presses not being focused on commercial markets, and instead centred around an academic institution and its faculty, they are able to focus solely on publishing high quality work, both in terms of academic integrity and production value.Moreover, there are plenty of examples of top journals that choose to publish with university presses. For just some examples of the high-quality and diverse research that university presses are producing, you can take a look at AUP UP Week website.Misconception four: University presses only publish esoteric work that has no relevance to the general public.Reality: University presses, particularly those prioritising Open Access, actively engage in bridging the gap between academia and the rest of society.By publishing in Open Access, university presses strive to make scholarly works accessible to a wider audience, by opening to the broader public the full range and value of research generated by university faculty. Their locality often means they support the publication of research based on local cultures and regions, and often champion research exploring a wide range of historical and sociological cultures, giving a voice to underrepresented individuals and groups.At a time of increasing consolidation in the commercial publishing industry, university presses contribute to the abundance and variety of cultural expression; and critically, by publishing in Open Access, they recognize that the public has the right to access the results of research paid for by their taxes.In the ever-evolving landscape of academic publishing, where large commercial entities are becoming increasingly powerful, institutionally-led university presses provide an opportunity for the scholarly community to take back the reins of research publishing and dissemination. Open Access university presses are the leaders of the next phase of scholarly publishing, committed to making real change both within academia and the wider world.Be a Leader, not a Follower: The Reality of Open Access University Press Publishing was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network is made up of a diverse range of presses united under a common goal; to publish fully in open access.A large proportion of our partner presses are university presses, based at institutions all over the world. They publish research from across all academic disciplines and in a range of different formats, such as journals, monographs, data sets, and so on.As the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network continues to grow, we are always delighted to watch our presses flourish, and continue to publish high-quality, impactful research. In honour of this year’s University Press Week theme, #SpeakUP, we want to spotlight just a small selection of the recent research output from some of our university-based partner presses, in order to demonstrate the strength of the university press model. In today’s post, we spoke to Matleena Sopanen, Communications and Publications Coordinator from Helsinki University Press, about just a handful of the press’ book publications.Matleena: Helsinki University Press (HUP) is a fully open access university press, which launched its first books in 2020. It was established with the aim to further the transition to open research, and publish research literature with as global a reach as possible. The press is particularly conscious of being accessible to researchers and readers in the Majority World, where paywalls are a major challenge, as well as to audiences outside of academia. We believe that the absence of paywalls increases the societal impact of research. By making all of our publications freely available, we seek to contribute to a more equitable publishing landscape.We aspire not only to provide accessible publications with as wide a reach as possible, but to produce publications of the highest quality. The press publishes high-quality literature across a wide range of academic fields and disciplines, with a particular focus on the humanities and social sciences. We are committed to upholding rigorous standards of peer review and the highest levels of academic integrity, and we offer researchers a number of services to ensure a smooth and professional experience publishing their works in open access.Since its launch, HUP has published a wide range of publications, including journals, monographs, and multidisciplinary edited volumes. The press’ book publications cover a range of timely and fascinating topics; the titles highlighted in this post represent the diversity of HUP’s book output.Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648: Aspects of Institutional Change and Decline by Olli Bäckström, (2023)In Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648: Aspects of Institutional Change and Decline, Olli Bäckström provides an interdisciplinary reinterpretation of early modern warfare. The book examines the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) in the context of the Military Revolution theory, which links military changes to the formation of early modern states.The author’s approach to military history is fresh and innovative, shifting the focus away from technology and tactics to explore change and decline within military institutions. The book offers a new way of understanding military history, attempting a historical application of contemporary sociology.Finnishness, Whiteness and Coloniality by Josephine Hoegaerts, Tuire Liimatainen, Laura Hekanaho, Elizabeth Peterson (eds.), (2022)Finnishness, Whiteness and Coloniality is a multidisciplinary volume, edited by Josephine Hoegaerts, Tuire Liimatainen, Laura Hekanaho, and Elizabeth Peterson. The authors are scholars from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, history, sociology, linguistics, and genetics, and bring together a collection of case studies that explore the shifting experiences and framings of Finnishness and its relation to race and coloniality.Instead of imposing a singular definition of what it means to be Finnish, Finnishness, Whiteness and Coloniality creates space for diverse understandings and analyses of whiteness and Finnish identity. The book reveals that the imagined homogeneous whiteness of Finland has always been (and remains) a myth.The Kobane Generation: Kurdish Diaspora Mobilising in France by Mari Toivanen, (2021)The Kobane Generation analyses how Kurdish diaspora communities mobilised in France after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and political unrest in Turkey and Iraq in the 2010s, focusing on the second generation of Kurdish migrants.The book provides valuable insights into the generational dynamics of political mobilizations and their significance in understanding diaspora contributions; it goes beyond the diaspora context and examines the migrants’ descendant’s political activism and its relation to global transformations in political subjectivities. The book also focuses on the potential role the second generation can play in peace promotion. It has been hugely impactful in its field and received the 2022 Alixa Naff Book Prize in Migration Studies.Modern Folk Devils: Contemporary Constructions of Evil by Martin Demant Frederiksen, Ida Harboe Knudsen (eds.), (2021)Modern Folk Devils: Contemporary Constructions of Evil investigates and analyses the construction of the concept of ‘evil’, drawing upon Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics. The case studies presented in the book span across Europe, Asia, and Oceania, examining various manifestations of the devilish, and how the concept of folk devils continues to shape ideas of otherness and evil on a global scale. The authors show how the concept can encompass potential threats, individuals, phenomena, or visible groups such as refugees, technocrats, LGBTQ+ groups, and right-wing politicians.The volume features works from a wide range of authors, who are scholars from various disciplines including anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology. Each contribution demonstrates how the concept of ‘evil’ can encompass potential threats, individuals, phenomena, or visible groups such as refugees, technocrats, LGBT groups, and right-wing politicians.As HUP continues to go from strength to strength, ]u[ Ubiquity is delighted to be able to support the press and to be involved with producing such an interesting and important range of publications. HUP demonstrates just how successful open access, university publishing can be in offering a scholar-led alternative to traditional publishing models.We are proud to support a major resurgence of University Press publishing, to be able to help new presses become established, and to provide them with the capability to grow and flourish. We believe this trend will only accelerate, so please speak with us if your institution would like to join the movement.#SpeakUP: Helsinki University Press was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network is made up of a diverse range of presses united under a common goal; to publish fully in open access.A large proportion of our Partner Presses are university presses, based at institutions all around the world. They publish research from across all academic disciplines and in a range of different formats, such as journals, monographs, data sets, and so on.As the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network continues to grow, we are always delighted to watch our partner presses flourish, and continue to publish high-quality, impactful research. In honour of this year’s University Press Week theme, #SpeakUP, we want to spotlight just a small selection of the recent research output from some of our university-based Partner Presses, in order to demonstrate the strength of the university press model. In this post, we spoke to Kate Petherbridge, Press Manager of White Rose University Press, about some of the press’ recent publications.White Rose University Press (WRUP) is a non-profit, open access publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books, publishing across a wide range of academic disciplines. The press was founded in 2016, and is run jointly by three of the UK’s leading universities; the University of Leeds, the University of Sheffield, and the University of York.All three universities have a strong research presence both within the UK and globally and came together to establish WRUP due to their shared values, with three overarching objectives. First and foremost, the press would support and further the transition to open access and open research, by providing open access, easily disseminated research that is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Secondly, the press would provide ‘service-led’ publishing, by providing open access, barrier-free publishing, as well as providing support and expertise to scholars publishing in open access for the first time or looking to experiment with different forms of publishing.Lastly, WRUP was established in order to fulfill these first two objectives, without compromising on quality. The WRUP editorial board is comprised of eminent and respected academics from across the White Rose Universities, all of whom bring to the press a great amount of expertise in research and publishing. As such, the press upholds rigorous standards of peer review and produces high-quality publications both in terms of academic and production quality.Over the last few years, WRUP has focused in particular on its book and monograph publications, producing a number of impactful and incredibly high-quality books across a wide range of disciplines. Hidden Depths: The Origins of Human Connection, and Children’s Culture and Citizenship in Argentina: A History of Billiken Magazine typify the type of volumes that WRUP looks to publish; both volumes offer academically rigorous explorations of their subject area, whilst also being engaging and accessible to a wider reading audience, alongside being valuable to academics in their specific fields. In this way, they also mirror the value of open access publishing as a model as they are, in their content, also accessible to the widest possible audience.Children’s Culture and Citizenship in Argentina: A History of Billiken Magazine by Lauren Rea, (2023)Argentina’s Billiken was the world’s longest-running children’s magazine, publishing 5144 issues over one hundred years. It educated and entertained generations of schoolchildren, and came to occupy a central role in Argentine cultural life. This volume offers the first academic history of the whole lifespan of Billiken as a print magazine, through to its transition into a digital brand. It explores how Billiken magazine not only reflected society, but shaped it through its influence on childhoods, children’s culture, and education, and provides an alternative window onto the history and politics of a tumultuous hundred years for Argentina.Published just last week, this volume is part of Lauren Rea’s wider work on and with Billiken, focusing on children’s culture in Argentina, and the importance and legacy of the Billiken magazine. She was appointed MBE for services to Education in Latin America and the UK in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours list.Hidden Depths: The Origins of Human Connection by Penny Spikins, (2022)In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikens explores how humanity’s emotional connections have shaped our ancestry. She explains how the emotional sensitivities of our earliest ancestors drove them to care for vulnerable members of their group, and how new connections based on generosity, trust, and inclusion made early groups of humans resilient to ecological changes. These deep-seated emotional capacities then provided the basis to allow later human ancestors to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies.This new narrative moves away from one in which our evolutionary journey is simply one of progression towards our eventual final form, and instead demonstrates different evolutionary pathways and key transitions that bring us nearer to, rather than away from, other animals. Our close cousins, the Neanderthals, are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, and who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today.Published in 2022, Hidden Depths has been hugely academically important in its field. It is also deeply engaging and accessible, providing a persuasive account of how the development of positive human connections is supported by physical evidence from the fossil record, and how these connections are important to the way we live our lives now.Professor Spikins has also written articles on this and related areas for The Conversation.As a university press, WRUP balances a commitment to academic quality with its focus on barrier-free dissemination. The press is also very active in the wider OA community; WRUP has been instrumental in establishing OIPA (the Open Institutional Publishing Association) and is honoured that WRUP Press Manager Kate Petherbridge is the Association’s inaugural Chair. We are delighted to see how influential and successful WRUP has become in the open access sphere and are proud to be involved with helping support the press in producing high-quality research output.We are proud to support a major resurgence of University Press publishing, to be able to help new presses become established, and to provide them with the capability to grow and flourish. We believe this trend will only accelerate, so please speak with us if your institution would like to join the movement!#SpeakUP: White Rose University Press was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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]u[ Ubiquity Partner Presses was established in 2014, to provide infrastructure and expertise that would enable university and society presses to commit to open access publishing. Today, our ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network is comprised of over 30 presses, over half of which are university presses. We are proud to support such a diverse group of university presses, and are strong proponents of the invaluable role that university presses play in scholarly communications.In honour of University Press Week 2023, we will be posting a series of blog posts focused around and celebrating university presses. In this post, we spoke to ]u[ Ubiquity founder and CEO, Brian Hole, about the origin story behind the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network, the current university press publishing landscape, and the unique benefits of an institution setting up their own open access, university press.Why did you decide to create the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Press platform?Brian: We first started ]u[ Ubiquity Press as an independent scholarly publisher, with a 100% dedication to Open Access. In order to be fully optimized for OA, we really had to both extend the OJS software we were running journals on, and build our own press website to make books properly open as well. That we managed to do this very quickly caught the eye of others in the scholarly community, who noted that other publishers and in particular university presses, really lacked this kind of capability. When we took their advice and investigated this further, we found a significant amount of interest, not only in platform hosting for OA, but in all of the supporting services around publishing. Our Partner Press platform was thus established with the launch of Westminster University Press in 2014 and has been growing ever since.How has the university press publishing landscape changed in the last 10 years; are there any major trends you have noticed, or indeed are there any opportunities (or barriers) for university presses, or institutions looking to start a press, that didn’t exist a decade ago?Brian: We have seen a critical revival of university presses in the UK and Europe, which is mirrored in how many of the presses on our platform are newly launched. Libraries have also been increasingly seeking to evolve their roles within their institutions, looking to increase the ways they support both open access and academic publishing in general.In the United States, things are a little different, with a much larger community of University Presses already in place. Here what is interesting is that these presses have been slower to take up Open Access, partly because they have strongly entrenched publishing models focused on traditional book sales. We believe this is going to start changing quite quickly as these presses come under more pressure from authors for OA. An example of this will be the University Press Library Open portal, which we will begin hosting in early 2024 for the eBound foundation. This will be a strong catalyst for the expansion of OA with many leading US university presses.What do you believe are the unique benefits of a university setting up its own press, as opposed to publishing through other means?Brian: Every university press is unique, each being set up to benefit their institution and academics in different ways. Sometimes this is to support existing publishing activity on campus, or a particularly strong disciplinary focus at the institution. In some cases, the universities and their libraries are focused on making more Open Access options available, especially as they see the large publishers as reluctant to do so at anything other than an exorbitant cost.The one common factor that all university presses do share is that they are reputation-enhancing for their institutions. By playing a prominent role in scholarly publishing, aligned with academic values through Open Access, these institutions raise their profiles as research institutions and are thereby better able to attract students and staff in a very competitive international market.What does ]u[ Ubiquity uniquely offer that can support universities looking to set up and maintain their own university press?Since each university press is unique, we offer a fully custom solution for each one. This goes from advice on establishing and running a press (we have our own and have helped to develop over 30 others), to hosting the book and journal content online, to all professional services associated with a press such as typesetting and indexing. Publishing is a people business, and we provide dedicated support to each press, and work together as partners to make them successful. Essentially we de-risk the setting up of a press.An analogy is that starting a press with us is like buying a shiny new car. You get in, turn the key and take it where you want to. We provide the engine and mechanics to ensure that all the back-end publishing work happens seamlessly while you enjoy the drive. An important thing to look for in any partnership is shared values, and our commitments to Open Access, Open Infrastructure and community involvement mean that we can be trusted as long-term partners. We also bring an entire network of presses with shared values with us through the Ubiquity Partner Network, believing we are all stronger if we support each other.What place do you see university presses occupying in the next 10 years and beyond in the publishing landscape, particularly within the OA space?I think that university presses will continue to be established and to expand, increasing the diversity of publishing. At the same time, the existing ones will expand their Open Access activity, which will especially benefit the Humanities and Social Sciences. Many in the scholarly community are quick to decry what they see as the consolidation of the publishing world, but they ignore and underestimate the importance of growth among university presses, which are critical hotbeds of diversity, creativity and openness. I believe that their resurgence will continue, and that they will continue to play an ever more critical role in scholarly communications.Is your society or institution interested in developing its OA 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.Why Start A University Press? A Conversation with ]u[ Ubiquity Founder Brian Hole was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Finding Community in the Commercial: The Fully OA Group to Collaborate the Charleston Conference 2023As International Open Access Week draws to a close, we have another exciting event to look forward to in the coming weeks: the Charleston Conference 2023!This year, alongside attending the full conference, ]u[ Ubiquity will be taking part in the vendor showcase on 7th November and we will not be alone: we will be sharing an exhibition booth with Frontiers, JMIR Publications, and MDPI, fellow members of the Fully OA Group. Together, the four of us will be representing the group, spreading the word about our mission, and hopefully initiating some important and exciting discussions around open research.What is the Fully OA Group?The Fully OA Group, as the name would suggest, is quite simply a ‘group of publishers who give full open access to their publications’. Born out of the OASPA Interest Group of Fully OA journal organisations, the group meets once a month to exchange ideas, discuss initiatives, and, where appropriate, promote collaboration amongst OA publishers.Membership of this group is based only on the organisation’s publishing model; publishers must publish 100% of their journal content open access, and can not be mixed model nor in any kind of ‘transitional’ stage towards open access. It is independent of the organisation’s specific business model, e.g. whether commercial or non-profit, using APCs, or otherwise, Gold, Green or Diamond OA.Who are the Fully OA Group?The Fully OA Group is not a monolith; the group is comprised of a range of publishers who each bring different approaches, opinions, and business models to the table. However, all members of the group are united under one common goal — fully open research. We come together to exchange ideas and discuss our opinions (even when they differ!) because though our paths may differ, our destination is the same.The Fully OA Group is an example of how even within the commercial publishing industry, there is space for collaboration and community, rather than competition. Within the open access, open science and open research communities, shared values, morals and beliefs underpin our missions; by bringing together and listening to a range of different perspectives and voices, we can all learn from each other.With that in mind, we are excited to be collaborating with Frontiers, JMIR Publications, and MDPI at Charleston, and looking forward to answering any questions about the group, about what we as individual publishers do, or about open access more generally in person. You will be able to find the Fully OA Group at booth number 97 on 7th November. See you there!Finding Community in the Commercial: The Fully OA Group to Collaborate the Charleston Conference… was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Finding Community in the Commercial: The Fully OA Group to Collaborate at the Charleston Conference 2023As International Open Access Week draws to a close, we have another exciting event to look forward to in the coming weeks: the Charleston Conference 2023!This year, alongside attending the full conference, ]u[ Ubiquity will be taking part in the vendor showcase on 7th November and we will not be alone: we will be sharing an exhibition booth with Frontiers, JMIR Publications, and MDPI, fellow members of the Fully OA Group. Together, the four of us will be representing the group, spreading the word about our mission, and hopefully initiating some important and exciting discussions around open research.What is the Fully OA Group?The Fully OA Group, as the name would suggest, is quite simply a ‘group of publishers who give full open access to their publications’. Born out of the OASPA Interest Group of Fully OA journal organisations, the group meets once a month to exchange ideas, discuss initiatives, and, where appropriate, promote collaboration amongst OA publishers.Membership of this group is based only on the organisation’s publishing model; publishers must publish 100% of their journal content open access, and can not be mixed model nor in any kind of ‘transitional’ stage towards open access. It is independent of the organisation’s specific business model, e.g. whether commercial or non-profit, using APCs, or otherwise, Gold, Green or Diamond OA.Who are the Fully OA Group?The Fully OA Group is not a monolith; the group is comprised of a range of publishers who each bring different approaches, opinions, and business models to the table. However, all members of the group are united under one common goal — fully open research. We come together to exchange ideas and discuss our opinions (even when they differ!) because though our paths may differ, our destination is the same.The Fully OA Group is an example of how even within the commercial publishing industry, there is space for collaboration and community, rather than competition. Within the open access, open science and open research communities, shared values, morals and beliefs underpin our missions; by bringing together and listening to a range of different perspectives and voices, we can all learn from each other.With that in mind, we are excited to be collaborating with Frontiers, JMIR Publications, and MDPI at Charleston, and looking forward to answering any questions about the group, about what we as individual publishers do, or about open access more generally in person. You will be able to find the Fully OA Group at booth number 97 on 7th November. See you there!Finding Community in the Commercial: The Fully OA Group to Collaborate at the Charleston Conference… was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Code, Collaboration, and Commitment: An Insight into ]u[ Ubiquity’s Role in the Open Source CommunityAs an organisation, we are dedicated to open access and openness in everything we do. This includes open data, open research, open science — and open source infrastructures.Open source means that the original source code for a platform is freely available, and may be redistributed and modified. The Open Source initiative lays out further guidelines for the distribution of open source software, many of which are based on values of openness, equity, and non-discriminatory practice.Not only do we run our software on fully open source infrastructures, but we are also active members of various open source communities, regularly contributing to the development and maintenance of open source platforms that underpin our core services. We currently contribute to the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), on which our journal systems are run, Samvera Hyku, OPERAS Metrics and Traefik, as well as ]u[ Ubiquity’s own book publishing management platform RUA.Today, we want to share a bit more about what being a member of the open source community means to us as a company, and why we take such an active role in the community, so spoke with Francesco, our Chief Technology Officer.Why contribute to open source? What is the history behind ]u[ Ubiquity’s involvement in the open source community?Francesco: Involvement in open source has been embedded in our company’s values since the very inception of ]u[ Ubiquity. We believe that academic publishing should be easily accessible and portable, and open source enables researchers and institutions to easily migrate to and from different hosting solutions, without too much sacrifice (“an import without an export is a lie”).Open source software encourages experimentation and fits very well with the needs of the community we serve. We see open source as a way to maximise our positive impact in the research community, as it exemplifies everything we stand for; collaboration, social responsibility and innovation.We are seeing a slow but steady shift of focus from open source software to open source infrastructure, where this definition includes software, but also protocols, hosting requirements, security standards (e.g. ISO and data policies), etc. Along with open source software, some projects we contribute to are specifically designed to encourage the adoption of open infrastructures and standards (OPERAS Metrics).What does it mean for an organisation to ‘contribute’ to an open source project?Francesco: Different companies and organisations will have different approaches to their contributions to open source projects. For example, some organisations sponsor community events, whilst others sponsor developers to achieve specific objectives in their open source contributions.Open source is embedded in everything that ]u[ Ubiquity does, so we have developed our own internal framework for our involvement in open source projects:Funding and resources: ]u[ Ubiquity allocates financial resources and technical expertise to contribute to open source projects. This could involve paying developers, designers, and other contributors to work on open source software. 80% of the software development time of the ]u[ Ubiquity Tech Team is spent on developing open source code that gets released with open source licences. The rest of the team’s time is spent on essential infrastructure work to keep our services running, cloud upgrades, and tasks such as reporting and planning future projects.Project selection: We carefully choose the open source projects to support based on various factors, such as community impact, alignment with our business goals, and the potential for long-term sustainability.Contributions: We actively contribute to open source projects by developing new features, fixing bugs and improving documentation. We are an active contributor to the PKP and Samvera Hyku communities, to name just two. We are also contributors to the OPERAS Metrics project, and a part of the OPERAS community. We have also developed our own open source platform Rua, which we use for book and monograph publishing. Rua handles all elements of the book publishing workflow, from proposal and submission through to peer review, production, and publication.Community engagement: Building and nurturing relationships with the open source community is essential. This involves transparent communication, collaboration, and respect for the governance structures of the projects we contribute to.Balancing company priorities and community: Balancing the profitability of an organisation with the interests of the open source community is a crucial challenge. We make sure that our contributions remain in line with the principles of open source software; by using ]u[ Ubiquity services, our customers are effectively sponsoring open source development.What unique challenges does working with open source, as opposed to proprietary, software/infrastructure present?Francesco: One challenge is that open source projects often lack formal customer support, so users may need to rely on community forums, documentation, or paid support services for assistance with issues. The quality and documentation of open source software can vary widely, and quality assurance may also be a concern — this is where ]u[ Ubiquity steps in and fills in the gap! Beyond code, we also contribute by improving documentation, providing support on forums or chat channels, and creating tutorials. Good documentation makes it easier for others to use and contribute to the project.There are also challenges surrounding integration, compatibility and dependency management. In most companies, the management of day-to-day work happens through external applications; integrating open source software into an existing tech stack or ensuring compatibility with proprietary software can be challenging, and in the majority of cases there are no out-of-the-box solutions. Moreover, open source projects often rely on other open source libraries and frameworks, so managing dependencies and ensuring compatibility can be complex, especially in larger projects.Collaborating within open source communities can sometimes be challenging due to diverse opinions, differing priorities, and communication barriers, especially when contributors are geographically dispersed.What does it mean to be a good citizen of an open source community, and how do we ensure that we are one?Francesco: Being a good citizen of the open source community involves following certain principles and practices that promote collaboration, respect, and the growth of open source projects. Though different communities might have different rules, some of the major principles we adhere to include:Making active contributions: The most direct way to participate is by contributing to open source projects. This can involve writing code, fixing bugs, creating documentation, or assisting with design. Making regular contributions demonstrates a commitment to the community.Following licensing and copyright rules: We respect the licensing and copyright terms of open source projects, and we align any new code we introduce with those terms.Providing accurate documentation and support: Beyond code, we also contribute by improving documentation, providing support on forums or chat channels, or creating tutorials. Good documentation makes it easier for others to use and contribute to the project.Contributing financially: We donate development time and funding to open source projects that we support. Many projects rely on donations to cover hosting costs, development, and maintenance, or to organise community events.Reporting bugs and issues: If we come across bugs or issues in open source software, we report them to the project’s issue tracker. Detailed bug reports can be invaluable to developers trying to improve the software.Respecting project governance: We understand and respect the governance structure of each project. Different projects have different decision-making processes, and it’s important to follow their guidelines.Engaging respectfully: We interact with other community members in a polite and respectful manner. This involves using constructive criticism when providing feedback and being open to feedback from others.Encouraging inclusivity and diversity: We promote inclusivity and diversity in the open source community, creating an environment where everyone feels welcome and valued.Sharing knowledge: We share with the community the knowledge and expertise that we gathered by running ]u[ Ubiquity services; when contributing, we describe our use cases very clearly, and we provide data and statistics on service usage to optimise the code and give the community better data to understand the problem.By being a good citizen of the open-source community, we hope to model a standard for responsible engagement, fostering growth, and ensuring that open source software and infrastructures continue to thrive.For further information about ]u[ Ubiquity’s specific open source contributions, you can visit GitHub.Code, Collaboration, and Commitment: An Insight into ]u[ Ubiquity’s Role in the Open Source… was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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In our previous blog posts this week, we have discussed the need to serve both local and global communities when it comes to open access publishing. Today, we are exploring how this is achieved through the five Journals Online (JOLs) hosted by ]u[ Ubiquity, each of which is part of the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network: Bangladesh Journals Online (BanglaJOL), Central American Journals Online (LAMJOL), Mongolian Journals Online (MongoliaJOL), Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL), and Sri Lanka Journals Online (SLJOL).The Journals Online (JOL) project was started by the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) in 1998, with the aim of increasing the visibility, accessibility, and quality of peer-reviewed journals published in low- and-middle-income countries (LMICs). When the project began, many of the participating journals were only available in print within a single institution, so their reach was very limited. The project worked with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) to find a way to host many journals on a single site so that the research output of a whole country could be hosted centrally and be made accessible to a wider audience.]u[ Ubiquity became involved with the JOLs in 2018, when founder and CEO Brian Hole decided to support the JOLs when INASP’s funding ended for this project. The ]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals service provided infrastructure without the expense of additional editorial and production services. Though ]u[ Ubiquity typically operates as a for-profit publisher, no financial profit is made from hosting the JOLs; Brian and the team saw supporting the JOLs as an investment in the wider open access movement, and as a way for the company to do their part in ensuring truly equitable open access.As the JOLs continue to go from strength to strength, with readership, citations and submissions all continuing to rapidly increase, the research they publish is enriching the global research ecosystem. Moreover, the JOLs are playing key roles in their local research communities.Career developmentSince the project’s inception at INASP in 1998, each JOL platform has been deeply rooted in its contributing region and its academic institutions. From the very beginning, the project has given researchers, particularly post-graduates, an opportunity to produce academic writing for publication, and has provided a local outlet for career development. In the past, this had involved providing training in publishing best practices, and various other supporting services to the editors of participating JOLs, as well as workshops for early-career researchers and authors.Prior to the JOLs’ existence, opportunities for publishing research that would reach a global audience were limited to large, international journals. The expense of submitting to these journals, not to mention the inequalities that researchers from LMICs continue to face in terms of prejudice surrounding research quality, means that researchers from these regions face high barriers to having their research published accessibly. Through the JOLs, researchers can now publish for free and their work can be widely disseminated, reused and cited, enhancing their profile as authors and furthering their academic careers.Local management and diversity of researchSince their transfer to local management, the number and diversity of individual journals on the JOLs have increased greatly (see fig. 1). When the project started, the majority of the JOLs were STEM-focused and based at institutions in capital cities from each region. By contrast, they now cover a wide range of academic disciplines, such as the social sciences and humanities, accounting, management, and education, and are based at institutions from all across each region, including more rural areas. This means a far greater breadth of research is now available, both locally and internationally.The JOLs have been increasingly publishing more research in national languages; CAMJOL, for instance, is entirely in Spanish, and there are many articles now being published in Nepali on the NepJOL site. The research output is consequently becoming even more accessible to local communities, even outside of academia, contributing more than ever to local governments, inhabitants, farmers, engineers and doctors in their everyday life decisions with sound academic local information and data.Fig. 1 Journals added to NepJOL 2006–2022Moreover, being hosted by ]u[ Ubiquity but locally managed ensures that the individual editorial teams can remain in control of their journal. ]u[ Ubiquity Hosted Journals provide full functionality support, with the assurance that journals can retain ownership of themselves and full editorial authority.Pioneering research with real-world impactThe JOLs have provided an outlet for proprietary research that was previously lacking. Having research from LMIC easily available is not only of benefit to the global academic community in diversifying the research ecosystem, but directly serves the local community. Much of the research published, being concentrated on a specific geographical location, has a real impact on local policy and agriculture, and has therefore had a direct impact on the local community beyond the confines of academia.As the global readership of the JOLs continues to grow, we shouldn’t lose sight of the role of local communities in informing open access. In removing barriers to publishing, and giving back control of research output and dissemination to institutions, local communities (both the academic and wider society) should be the first to benefit; only then can the global follow.Local Impact, Global Reach: How the Journals Online Project Fosters Community-Centric Research was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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What Does ‘Community’ Mean to the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network? Conversations with Three ]u[ Ubiquity Partner PressesThe ]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.What Does ‘Community’ Mean to the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network? was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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The fundamental point of the Open Access movement is the drive to make academic research as widely available as possible. This accessibility is for the benefit of multiple communities — for the academic research community, for policy makers and national governments, for the general public, and for those in the developing world. Open Access thus means not only access, but also broadening the community who can benefit from research.When it comes to the academic community, we often talk about a ‘research ecosystem’, and the desire to make this ecosystem ‘global’: through open access, ]u[ Ubiquity strives to make publishing and disseminating research as equitable as possible to researchers from all four corners of the world.Having a diverse research ecosystem benefits the global community, hence building a larger network of research and scholars is hugely important. However, when it comes to publishing itself, we mustn’t only think of this global picture: there must be a way to unite the global challenges of open access with the local challenges of establishing sustainable publishing programmes and systems that are led by, and for, the researchers, academics, librarians and students that run them.The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network in many ways encapsulates this: borne out of a desire to allow institutions to take back control of their publishing efforts and to serve their immediate institutional community, ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Presses are able to contribute to the wider OA movement by producing high-quality, fully open access research — whilst being a part of an ever-growing, global network of university and library presses.How did the UPN get started?The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network came into being in 2014, with the establishment of the first Partner Press. Brian Hole, ]u[ Ubiquity founder and CEO, had officially begun the company two years prior in 2012, with the aim of providing affordable, high-quality open access publishing to the humanities through ]u[ Ubiquity Press. Institutions began to reach out to request the expertise and infrastructure provided by ]u[ Ubiquity, in order to run their own publishing programmes; thus, the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Press service was created, and with it the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network.Among some of the first presses to join were Stockholm University Press, University of Westminster Press, Sri Lankan Journals Online (part of the JOLs), and the book publishing arm of the University of California Press, Luminos. Today the network has grown to include over 30 presses from all over the world.What does being a partner press involve?The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Press service allows institutions to manage and run their own open access publishing operations, without having to handle the technical demands. Each press has its own fully branded, easily customised web portal in any language, where books, journals, trending content, news,announcements and social media feeds can all be found in one place. Meanwhile, our team maintains the technical infrastructure, as well as providing knowledge, support and expertise with a dedicated Editorial Account Manager.All partner presses are immediately a member of the ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network, a network of like-minded institutions focused on the goal of open access. They are also able to play a role in the governance of Ubiquity overall through representation on our Partner Advisory Board.Why join the UPN?We believe that the future of Open Access, and of academic publishing as a whole, relies on institutions being able to take back control of publishing. As we continue to see news about extortionate APCs, large corporate publishers exploiting researchers, editors and journal boards, it is clear that the current system is broken.We want to be able to be a part of the solution to this problem, and provide a service that can support academic institutions; by handling the back-office technical requirements of running an online press, we can free up the press team’s time and resources to focus on the sustaining and growing press itself.Many of our presses clearly demonstrate that first and foremost, they serve the local community:In our recent case study with Virginia Tech Publishing, former press manager Peter Potter discussed how library-led publishing ‘is a natural extension of the library’s mission to meet the needs of the institution’s faculty, students, and the community as a whole.’Houghton St Press, the student imprint of LSE Press, publishes the work of students at LSE, supporting students of the institution in producing their work as high-quality digital publications that are open to a global audience.The University of Westminster Press publishes research in areas that reflect and reinforce the strengths of the university across a range of disciplines, with ]u[ Ubiquity assisting with book publishing.All members of the UPN are a part of multiple communities; first and foremost, their own institutional community, whether that is making their faculties’ and students’ work more accessible from a particular geographical area, or based around a particular field or value by the founding institution. They are also, in their own part, contributing to the global OA community, by producing, supporting, and opening up academic research to everyone.]u[ Ubiquity is proud to support a major resurgence of University Press publishing, helping new presses to become established, and providing them with the capability to grow and flourish. We believe this trend will only accelerate, so please speak with us if your institution would like to join the movement!Community-Centric Publishing: The ]u[ Ubiquity Partner Network was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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“With courage and determination”: Honorary Doctor of Radboud University Katalin Karikó receives Nobel PrizeWe were delighted to hear the news that Katalin Karikó, Honorary Doctor of the Faculty of Science at Radboud University, has received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her revolutionary work alongside Drew Weissman on mRNA vaccines. It is thanks to Karikó and Weissman’s fundamental research that BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna were able to develop the current mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.Karikó, who is the 13th woman to win the prize, has dedicated many years to researching medical applications of mRNA, first in her native Hungary and later at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She strongly believed there was potential to develop synthetic mRNA that could be used to cure cancer, strokes, and influenza. When Karikó began her research, enthusiasm for developing mRNA technology for clinical purposes was limited, as it was considered unstable. Where traditional vaccines use weakened or dead microbes, or pieces of them, to stimulate immunity, mRNA vaccines do not contain any viruses or microbes; instead, they contain a genetic material that prompts the body to make a protein, which in turn stimulates an immune response through which the body is taught to protect itself from a specific virus.Karikó faced no shortage of obstacles in her work over the years, including repeated criticism and rejection from colleagues and employers. Despite this, she persevered; she met Weissman, an immunologist in the late nineties, and together they were eventually able to demonstrate it is possible to trigger an immune response in the body with mRNA without the body turning against the mRNA itself. This groundbreaking discovery paved the way for the rapid development of the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which altered the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and has saved millions of lives globally.On October 20th, 2022, on the 99th anniversary of Radboud University, Karikó was awarded an honorary doctorate from the university’s Faculty of Science. Her Honorary supervisor Floris Rutjes, Professor in Organic Synthesis, stated that “With courage and determination, she pursued her scientific vision for a very long time, and by doing so, she has ultimately made a significant contribution to the fight against viral diseases.” Karikó’s story is a fascinating and inspiring one that speaks to the power of resilience, determination, and resolve in scientific innovation.To find out more about her journey, you can download her honorary doctorate for free, published in open access by Radboud University Press. Read it now.“With courage and determination”: Honorary Doctor of Radboud University Katalin Karikó receives… was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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A discussion from the ]u[ Ubiquity team on how we can incentivise and support good peer review in open access scholarly publishingPeer review is a crucial facet of upholding research integrity across all disciplines of scholarly publishing. Sustainable and consistent peer review that is of a high standard is particularly important when it comes to open access. Moreover, peer review presents very specific challenges within the open access model, including difficulties identifying and incentivising peer reviewers.To explore these challenges, why they come about, and how we can overcome them, ]u[ Ubiquity’s Marketing Manager, Becca Watson, sat down with Dr Kira Hopkins (Senior Editorial Account Manager) and Tim Colebrook (Editorial Account Manager), to discuss the future of open access peer review, and ways in which we can change the system for the better.https://medium.com/media/3ff30c548aa89aeae879cd62ff5de57f/hrefWe know that we haven’t covered everything, and we’d love to hear your thoughts, responses or questions on the topic. Find us on X, Linkedin and Mastodon.The Future of Peer Review in Open Access was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Welcome to the September edition of the ]u[ Ubiquity Press newsletter!This month we are seeking your thoughts on social media platforms, as well as highlighting lots of recently published work, including a brand new ]u[ Ubiquity Press book and some journal special collections. We’re also celebrating a journal hitting an exciting milestone, and plenty of exciting calls for papers. Read on to find out more…In this month’s newsletter…Have your say on the future of academic social mediaPublic access to published science is under threat in the US — Fully OA group respondHot off the press! Text- und Data-Mining in den digitalen GeisteswissenschaftenCitizen Science publishes a new special collectionFuture Cities and Environment award best paper at SET2023Journal of Open Psychology Data accepted into ScopusJournal spotlight: Anglo SaxonicaCall for papersHave your say on the future of academic social mediaWe’re sure that you’ve noticed the landscape of social media rapidly changing over the past month or so. We want to ensure that we are continuing to use social media platforms to support our authors, editors and journals as best we can, and to engage with the wider open access and scholarly communications communities — and we’d really value your feedback on how best we can do this.Take part in our short survey to let us know how you use social media, the most useful ways we can use it, and what you think the future landscape of academic social media might, and should, look like, before 14th September.Take part in the survey.Public access to published science is under threat in the US — Fully OA group respondThe Fully OA group, of which we are a member, has released a response to the House Appropriations Committee, objecting to the draft language used in the Subcommittee’s FY24 Appropriations bill. The letter is co-signed by eight group members, including ]u[ Ubiquity Press.If enacted, the bill would block implementation of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) August 2022 guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay. We, along with the rest of the group, believe that this would be hugely detrimental to the open science movement, the scientific research community, and US society as a whole, and that ‘Science for the few who can access it — as opposed to the many who pay for it — is inefficient as scientific or democratic governmental policy’.It’s been encouraging to see our response getting attention from research and publishing media outlets, but we believe there is still noise to be made. If you agree that science should be open, we encourage you to share the Fully OA group’s response, and help spread awareness of the danger this bill could pose.Hot off the press! Text- und Data-Mining in den digitalen GeisteswissenschaftenWe’re pleased to announce the publication of Text- und Data-Mining in den digitalen Geisteswissenschaften, by Felicitas Lea Kleinkopf. The title is the first in the Stuttgart University Reports Series, and contains a legal assessment of the copyright relevance of real use cases of research with text and data mining, from the field of digital humanities, as well as the analysis of the permission of the individual work steps.Read in full open access now.Text- und Data-Mining in den digitalen GeisteswissenschaftenCitizen Science publishes a new special collectionCitizen Science has published a new special collection, ‘The Contributions of Citizen Science to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Other International Agreements and Frameworks’. The collection offers insights into the contributions of citizen science to the monitoring, implementation, and achievement of the SDGs as well as other international agreements and frameworks, reflecting on how this field of research has evolved over the past few years, and how it might continue to drive future research and action.Read the special collection.Future Cities and Environment award best paper at SET2023The journal Future Cities and Environment recently presented the award for best paper to ‘Design, Modelling and Performance Evaluation of a Positive Energy District in a Danish Island’, by Barbara Kristin Holmsund Jepsen, Tom Walther Haut, Muhyiddine Jradi, at their society conference SET2023. The paper was published in February last year, and examines the possibility of establishing part of the island of Ærø as the first Danish positive energy district (PED), using an open-source urban scale modelling tool.Read the full paper.Journal of Open Psychology Data accepted into ScopusWe are pleased to announce that the Journal of Open Psychology Data (JOPD) has been accepted into Scopus. Existing content is to be added into Scopus, as well as all future articles appearing there after publication.This marks a major milestone for JOPD, and is a well-earned mark of recognition for the journal’s dedication to publishing high quality research that is relevant to an international academic audience. In making this decision, Scopus also acknowledged the unique contribution that JOPD makes to the field of psychology, and that the journal addresses a subject area not properly covered by any existing journal. We’re looking forward to seeing the journal continue to grow and thrive.Read JOPD now.Journal spotlight: Anglo SaxonicaThis month, our journal spotlight falls on Anglo Saxonica.Anglo Saxonica publishes original and innovative research on the languages, literatures and cultures of the English-speaking world, seeking to prompt and promote dialogue between different English-speaking geocultural areas. It is based at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies.The journal is open to a wide range of formats, such as original research articles, reviews, interviews and selections of creative writing. Previous special collections include ‘Victorians Like Us’, featuring essays that explore the links and infinite possibilities for dialogue between our time and the Victoria age, and ‘Civil Resistance | In Accord with Nature — On the Bicentennial of H. D. Thoreau’, essays covering the thoughts and works of Henry David Thoreau on the occasion of his bicentennial in 2017.The journal is published online biannually, organised in a miscellaneous issue and a special issue. Articles are made available as immediately as possible upon publication, in order to allow for the quickest dissemination of research possible. For more information about submitting to Anglo Saxonica, visit the journal’s website.Read the latest issue of Anglo SaxonicaCall for papers:Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME)JIME has extended the deadline for submissions for its special collection, ‘Social Media in Higher Education: What’s happening?’ to 18th September. This is a timely collection, with a projected publication date of January 2024. Find out more.Journal of Open Psychology Data (JOPD)JOPD is seeking submissions for its 2023 volume. The journal publishes data papers and verification reports, from any field of psychology and with data in any form, including qualitative, quantitative, replication and/or meta psychology research. Find out more.Citizen Science: Theory and Practice Citizen Science: Theory and Practice is seeking abstracts for a new special collection, entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Citizen Science’. The journal welcomes proposals from a broad range of topics relevant to the use of AI in citizen science, and in particular welcomes contributions from researchers and practitioners in the global South. The deadline for abstracts is 8th September 2023, with the full papers expected by 1st February 2024.Find out more.Bulletin of the History of Archaeology (BHA)BHA is accepting submissions for publication in 2023. The journal publishes interdisciplinary research on the histories of archaeology and how they intersect with related histories like those of collecting, colonialism, heritage and museums. Find out more.That’s all for now! We’ll be back in two months time with the latest press updates. In the meantime, you can always keep up to date with what’s going on in real time via our social media; you can connect with ]u[ Ubiquity on Mastodon, and find ]u[ Ubiquity Press on X.The best place for immediate ]u[ Ubiquity Press updates and announcements is ]u[ Community. If you’re not yet a community member, and you think you should be, get in touch. Until then!- The ]u[ Ubiquity Press team]u[ Ubiquity Press September Newsletter was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Share your thoughts on the future of academic social media — the latest from ]u[ UbiquityWelcome to the latest ]u[ Ubiquity newsletter!We’ve been kept nice and busy over the last few months, with four new ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories launching, some important platform updates and developments, and plenty of book publications, alongside lots of news to keep up with in the wider OA community.Meanwhile, the landscape of social media has been changing rapidly. We’re counting on your feedback to shape the future of our social media presence; take part in our survey to let us know how you use social media, and the most useful way for us to use social media to engage with and support the scholarly community.Give your feedback on the future of academic social media.Read on to find out more about what’s been going on at ]u[ Ubiquity, and in the wider OA world…In this newsletter…Fully OA group respond to the House Appropriations CommitteeRefresh, Renew and Realign; case study on LIRA@BCLaw’s migration to ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories out now]u[ Ubiquity makes the switch from Google Analytics to PlausibleOpen book publishing partnership with University of Westminster PressFour ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories launch]u[ Ubiquity release public plugin for OJSNews bulletinNew partner press booksFully OA group respond to the House Appropriations CommitteeThe Fully OA group has released a response to the House Appropriations Committee, objecting to the draft language used in the Subcommittee’s FY24 Appropriations bill. The letter is co-signed by eight group members, including our publishing imprint, ]u[ Ubiquity Press.If enacted, the bill would block implementation of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) August 2022 guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay. The group believes that this would be hugely detrimental to the open science movement, the scientific research community, and US society as a whole.Read the full response.Refresh, Renew and Realign; case study on LIRA@BCLaw’s migration to ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories out nowOur latest case study is now available to read and download.We spoke to Avi Bauer and Seunghwan Leo Kim from LIRA@BCLaw, the Legal Institutional Repository and Archives at Boston College Law School, about the repository’s transfer from the Digital Commons platform to ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories, and the simultaneous transfer of the journal Boston College Law Review (BCLR) to the ]u[ Ubiquity platform as a hosted journal.The case study explores how the migration presented the team with an opportunity to refresh LIRA, and to realign it with Boston College Law’s own values and commitment to contributing to open scholarship. We hope that it will provide insight into the value that an open source repository can bring to an institution, and that it will prove valuable to any institution with an existing repository that may be considering migrating platforms.Read the full case study.]u[ Ubiquity makes the switch from Google Analytics to Plausible]u[ Ubiquity will no longer support Google Analytics (GA) to monitor site usage for its journal, book, and repository platforms, due to concerns around GA’s GDPR non-compliance and data privacy issues. The open-source provider Plausible will be used to monitor site usage for its journal, book, and repository platforms.The replacement of Google’s legacy Universal Analytics service with its new Google Analytics (GA) 4 prompted ]u[ Ubiquity to evaluate whether the Google service was suitable for its customers and aligned with ]u[ Ubiquity’s core values. After rigorous exploration of alternative providers, Plausible was selected. You can find the full details behind the switch, as well as a FAQ for existing customers, in our previous blog post.Open book publishing partnership with University of Westminster PressWe were thrilled to be mentioned in the newest Publisher Spotlight post on the Open Access Book Network’s blog! In the post, Andrew Lockett, previous press manager of University of Westminster Press, discusses how ]u[ Ubiquity supports book publishing at the press, and how a commercial publishing provider can be a good match for a university press.Check out the blog post.Four ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories launchFour new repositories have launched on the ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories platform; The Paul Smith’s College Library’s Institutional Repository, Hobart and William Smith Repository for Institutional Scholarship Exploration (RISE), The Nazareth University Repository, and Le Moyne College’s Research Repository.The repositories have been set up as part of a deal with the Empire State Library Network (ESLN), wherein members of ESLN have the chance to set up a next-generation, cloud-hosted institutional repository on ]u[ Ubiquity’s open source repository platform at a highly affordable price. We’re excited to welcome these institutions to the ]u[ Ubiquity platform, and to see their repositories continue to grow and showcase their intellectual outputs.Read the press release.]u[ Ubiquity release public plugin for OJSThe ]u[ Ubiquity Tech Development team has developed and released a public plugin for OJS that allows an external metrics dashboard to be embedded within the Editor and Journal Manager interface.Playing an active role in the PKP community is a priority for us, so we are always pleased when we are able to share our improvements and developments with the community. More details, and how to install the plugin, can be found via the PKP forum.News bulletinJISC launch review of Open Access and Transitional AgreementsJISC has announced a critical review of open access and transitional agreements. Commissioned and governed by JISC’s strategic groups with input from Delta Think, the review will seek to assess the current OA landscape, in order to identify actions needed to accelerate the OA movement. The findings will be published in early 2024.We welcome this review, and think it is important to stay proactive in working towards a fully open publishing landscape. We hope this review is fruitful in identifying areas for improvement, and in bringing about substantial, tangible changes.OPERAS 2022 report releasedThe 2022 OPERAS Research Infrastructure report is now available.OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure dedicated to open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. ]u[ Ubiquity is proud to be a member of OPERAS, and to be involved in developing improved metrics through the OPERAS metrics service. Download the full report.Upcoming eventsIt feels like we’ve been here, there and everywhere in the past few months! Most recently, members of our sales team headed to Budapest, Hungary for the 2023 LIBER conference, where we had an exhibition stand.We’ve still got plenty more conferences on the horizon; we will be attending IFLA WLIC 2023 in Rotterdam this week, the ALPSP Conference and Awards in Manchester from 13th-15th September, and we’ll be representing ]u[ Ubiquity Press on a shared stand with the Fully OA group at the Charleston Conference in November. If you’re also attending any of these events and would like to meet up, do get in touch.News partner press booksCheck out this selection of recently published, open access books from some of our partner presses, including Stockholm University Press, University of California Press, and KIT Scientific Publishing To find out more about any title, simply click on the title in the caption below.Populating the Future//Proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Beryllium Technology//Lake LadogaKansanperinne 2.0//When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven//Barndomar i antropocenObservant Reforms and Cultural Production in Europe//Analytic Induction for Social Research//Adam Ferguson and the Politics of VirtuePracticing Asylum//Performing the Eighteenth Century//Versorgungs-ReportThat’s all for now! We’ll see you in a few months for the next ]u[ Ubiquity update.As the social media landscape continues to evolve and change, we are focusing on growing our community on Mastodon. Give us a follow to keep up to date with what’s going on at ]u[ Ubiquity in real time.You can also still find us on X and Linkedin. If you’re a member of the Community Portal, you can always keep up to date with us there. Not a member, but think you should be? Get in touch to request membership.Best wishes,The ]u[ Ubiquity teamShare your thoughts on the future of academic social media — the latest from ]u[ Ubiquity was originally published in Ubiquity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.