The Ubiquity Press model

Our open access publishing model is fundamentally different to that of traditional publishers. Instead of taking over the rights to research and then selling access to it for profit, we only take payment for the service of publication. All electronic content is then made freely available, to the widest possible audience. The costs of printed material are paid only by those who require it. The following sections provide an overview of how Ubiquity Press sustains its operations.

Open access policy

All electronic journals and books published by Ubiquity Press may be freely accessed by anyone, anywhere. Authors agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant Ubiquity Press the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication with Ubiquity Press.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in the Ubiquity Press publication.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as well as following publication.

Article Processing Charges

This payment for the service of publication takes the form of an Article Processing Charge (APC), and is payable for every article accepted for publishing. Payment of APCs is made in several ways including institutional memberships, directly by institutions and funders, and by authors themselves.

Journal	APC
Ancient Asia	£100
Archaeology International	£100
The Bulletin of the History of Archaeology	£100
The Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies	£100
The Journal of Open Archaeology Data	£25
Opticon1826	£100
Papers from the Institute of Archaeology	£100
Present Pasts	£100

Institutional membership

Ubiquity Press does not sell access to its content back to the institutions that produced it in the first place. Instead we provide access to the content for free, but ask them to help to support their authors in the publishing process. Based on the number of papers published by researchers at an institution with Ubiquity Press during the previous year, the institution is charged an annual membership fee based on the sum of APCs for those papers.

Membership comes in two forms: with Open Scholar Supporter (Gold), the institution pays the entire APC and their authors are never asked directly to pay. With Open Scholar Supporter (Silver) the institution pays 50% of the APC, and the author is asked to contribute only 50%. This model is a significantly more efficient and cost-effective way for libraries to pay for journal content, while at the same time promoting open scholarship within their institutions.

Institution or funder pays

Many institutions also have an open access publishing fund, and are willing to pay the APCs for their researchers when asked. Similarly many funders are willing to provide a portion of funds specifically for open access publishing within a grant.

Author pays

Should an author not be able to source funds for the APC from the above sources, we believe that our fees are still low enough to be affordable. We work with a group of Researcher Champions in order to make sure that these charges are kept at a reasonable and affordable level for each area we publish in. Generally speaking our APCs are set at around 20-30% the level of those typical in open access publishing. When an author has real difficulty paying a fee, we will discount or waive it entirely.

Print on Demand

While all Ubiquity Press electronic content is provided free of charge, printing does have a cost. Instead of mixing the cost of printing with that of electronic publishing, we believe that only the person who chooses to order a printed version should pay for it. We therefore offer a comprehensive print on demand service, whereby readers can order whole journals or books, but also individual articles and chapters, depending on their requirements. This is not only more efficient for us, but also much more cost effective for the reader. Because we don’t hold a large stock of printed items, we are able to keep our prices significantly below the industry average for hard copy content.

Funded research

As a researcher-led company with a commitment to improving the technology behind open scholarship, Ubiquity Press is also involved in paid research projects. One example of this is the JISC-funded REWARD project that we are working on with UCL Library Services.