New University Presses

Motivations, Challenges and Innovations

Lisa Walton

Published in

Veruscript Blog

12 min readNov 8, 2017

This is a summary of a recent talk I gave at Internet Library International, the slides of which are here.

This post looks at New University Presses (NUPs) and Librarian-led publishing that is on the rise, with a focus on the UK and developments here. I’ll be looking at why institutions are launching their own presses, what challenges they are facing and the innovative publishing that is being developed by them. This is based on various conversations we have had with librarians who are considering or are in the process of launching presses, and managers of current NUPs, as well as the comprehensive report by Graham Stone that was published by JISC earlier this year, and other papers on the subject. Some references are at the end if you would like some further reading (and who doesn’t love further reading!).

Below are some common features of old and new university presses. These are not clear definitions, but are more trends that presses are likely to follow:

Old presses range massively in size from quasi-commercial presses like Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press, to smaller outfits such as Manchester University Press and Liverpool University Press. As a factor of their age, they are print-born and often publish under a mixed model, publishing some open access, but with their main revenue from subscriptions and purchases. Old university presses are also often seen by their institutions as revenue generating— and whilst that might not always be the case, even if they are not currently returning revenue, they are aiming to do so (for example MUP). This is also the reason why there was a spate of closures of university presses in the 90s, when they were no longer seen as viable revenue generators by their host institutions. Old university presses are also often fairly separate from the libraries at their institutions, they are managed and costed separately and there is often surprisingly little contact between the respective staff. Where older university presses are publishing open access, more often than not, they are levying APCs at market rates, matching hybrid and gold open access norms. They usually offer a full range of services to authors and editors — proofing, image permissions, printing, online sales platforms, physical copies available in shops, and conference booths to increase sales.

In contrast to this NUPs tend to be born digital — which makes them digital- rather than print-led. This means that their primary focus is the online product, workflows are built around this, with a secondary consideration for print if it is available. This means that workflows for online production have not been built around print requirements, or slowly built up over years as publishing has moved more online. The majority of NUPs are open access in all their outputs — from journals to monographs. This model works as their parent institutions do not see the presses as a revenue generator, but as a cost centre. The main focus of NUPs is on serving the researchers, their outputs are far more driven by researchers at the institution, whereas old university presses are fairly agnostic about where their authors and editors are from. UCL, for example has a pot of money to cover book publishing charges, the majority of which is earmarked for researchers from the university. This focus on service for researchers rather than revenue generation means that the majority of NUPs have no Article Processing Charges (APCs), and those that do, charge lower than market rates. NUPs often have a far closer links to the institutions library, often their launch has been driven by librarians, and librarians are more likely to be responsible for running the press. As they are a cost centre, and not revenue generating, NUPs tend to offer a smaller range of services — they are less likely to have physical copies available in stores, or at all, and less likely to go to conferences or do big print runs.

Motivations

Now we have the common features of NUPs I’m going to look at why people are launching them as these motivations strongly influence the features of NUPs and feed into the directions that presses take when launched. I’ve grouped these motivations into three broad themes.

Visibility and Impact

The first is visibility and impact. Launching a university press helps the dissemination of the research produced at the institution. Often work published by NUPs is research that would not necessarily find an outlet in other places — this includes more practice-based areas, student journals, and niche subjects. These are often works that would not break-even if published in a traditional manner, and that would not actually reach that many people if they were published in that way, often because the published work would be low down on the list for subscription priorities, or have target audiences that do not have large budgets for research materials. This means that the traditional route of publication would not actually get the material to the people who would use it. By publishing research from the institution that would not be published by traditional publishers, NUPs give more visibility to authors, the research that they are conducting, and the institution itself. The University of Huddersfield is one example of a press where there is a definite feeling that having the press itself has given the institution an increase in visibility and impact, and as a result of publishing research that would otherwise not be published, they have received funding grants to further support the university. This publication of research that would otherwise not be published includes student journals. These benefit the institution in several ways; they serve to give students experience of publishing and processes, they allow students to see their research being accessed and used, and they can be used to help build the pipeline for moving students into further degrees.

Reaction to the Environment

This broadly fall into two camps; positive opportunities in the environment that weren’t previously there, and an attempt to solve some issues in the scholarly communications landscape.

I’ve focused on the positives first. Open access is now mainstream, so these presses have a much stronger chance of being both accepted by the community and successful in building lists and being sustainable. The move to online has made the initial outlay and setting up of workflows much simpler. The advent of Print on Demand and continuous publication mean that presses can be more flexible on timings, and don’t have to spend as many resources on setup and stock.

The technology and service providers are now available to make launching a press very cost effective. Whilst an NUP is a cost centre, it does not have to be a massive one. Setups range from building on existing repositories to using third parties to provide the required infrastructure. Depending on the requirements, presses can be set up and run for very low cost.

The increasing mandates and requirements for open access also make having a low cost open access venue available to an institutions researchers one way to give researchers an OA outlet in which to publish. As part of the increase in mandates and OA requirements, librarians have been increasingly moving into scholarly communication roles, taking on a lot of communication regarding publications and licences, that was previously dealt with by publishers. This gradual pivot into active scholarly communications roles, makes the transition into running presses much easier and more appealing to librarians. University presses can be seen as part of the changing role of libraries and librarians from custodians of the literature to active contributors.

And part of the reason they would like to move into publishing their own material is because in some respects the traditional publishers have been failing researchers. Whilst publishers seem very willing to work together to work out the processes around open access (setting up pre-payment accounts, working out more efficient systems for paying APCs etc), many librarians feel that publishers are not as willing to make changes along more fundamental issues. Where hybrid was envisioned by many to be a pathway to flipping journals to open access, it seems to have been more frequently used as a method of generating additional revenue for journals. It feels to many that publishers have embraced open access only as a means to create another revenue stream, rather than as a way to change the system. This discontent includes unhappiness with high APCS, especially for hybrid journals, and the lack of movement on the open access books front. To many this is fairly unsurprising but it has also left them asking what they can do to change the system without relying on the traditional publishers, which has paved the way for new university presses.

Despite this reaction to publishers, publishing from NUPs is usually seen as additive rather than directly competitive. They often see themselves as focussing on things that are overlooked or ignored by traditional publishers in order to put more balance into the scholarly communications ecosystem.

Support

Many librarians see establishing an NUP as another way that the library can support their institution and researchers. The establishment of a press can directly serve a university’s mission of disseminating research, and making sure that research is published open access ensures it is disseminated as widely as possible. Having a press can help support and train students and researchers in existing publishing BAs and MAs. They help build the expertise and experience of early career researchers and students in a somewhat safe space. Presses can be used to centralise the support for existing faculty journals which are sometimes published on a piecemeal and not too discoverable basis. A press can help the publishing of departments like business and management studies that have traditionally focussed on teaching, but are increasingly moving into conducting and publishing more research. Presses provide an opportunity to help support and develop this research. There is also a drive to increase and develop open access publishing in general and university presses are one method to do this.

Challenges

The benefits of presses are numerous, and motivations of librarians are clear — so what is stopping every institution from launching their own press? And what challenges are people facing in the set up and running of presses?

Time and money are obvious considerations when launching a press, where budgets are already tight it can be difficult to ask for additional funds to support an activity that isn’t currently under the institutions remit. This ties into getting buy in from higher up, especially as a university press is a new cost centre. There can be the feeling that a press will cost with no financial return. For a press to be run, it needs a dedicated resource, even if this is just part of someone’s role. On average UK NUPs have 1 FTE. This means it can be a little isolating and getting support and information can be more of a challenge than in traditional UPs. Various efforts have been made to address this: a JISC listserv has been set up, a university press redux conference is being run, and the community makes every effort to support each other. Information can be found on places like our blog, on twitter and JISC sites. These resources are being built up as more institutions move into the publishing sphere.

Once the resource has been allocated, implementation has its own challenges. Depending on the resources available, implementation can range from a full tender for services to an adaption of the current university repository systems. They each present their own challenges in terms costs and benefits. There are decisions to be made on whether to outsource systems, and there is an increasing market to serve the community here, and decisions to be made about whether you have the capacity to tailor and maintain an open source option, whether cloud-based systems are more suitable, and what is the most you can get for the money being spent. Hosting is a crucial consideration, because being accessible is not just about being free, publications also need to be discoverable.

Ensuring that books and journals are feeding their metadata through to the correct places can take times in terms of setup, and in terms of application and acceptance into indexing services. Information and training on how best to become indexed and which elements of scholarly publishing infrastructure are required can also be a bit of a challenge. If the press is not well integrated into systems such as Crossref, Google Scholar and DOAJ, to name just a few, it can be difficult for researchers to find published items. Again this can be solved in a variety of ways; from getting advice from an outsourced company, to researching and implementing systems in-house.

Another challenge is marketing and profile raising, which can be difficult with fewer resources, especially as it is often down to the one FTE who is usually more focused and trained on the editorial side. However, social media and digital promotion can be done fairly easily, especially if the press can be successful in really getting their authors on board to act as promoters on their behalf.

The JISC study conducted by Graham Stone did highlight some areas that are not being dealt with particularly well at the moment by NUPs, and these include things like preservation, where the use of CLOCKSS or Portico type services should really be implemented. There are also some worries about data protection and data security that can often be overlooked as they are not really considered in the day to day working of a press, but they are crucial. These are by no means insurmountable problems, but they are ones that need close consideration and planning to ensure proper procedures are followed.

Results

So, once they have overcome these challenges to establish themselves, how have the NUPs been performing?

In the UK there has been a spate of NUPs launching. There are now around 19 NUPs in Britain. There is still a lot of interest in launching new presses, and JISC is looking at creating some resources to help institutions investigate this further. Twelve institutions are actively considering launching new presses, and eight of these are looking at doing this within the next five years. As processes, resources and services develop around NUPs, the challenges and barriers to entry should lower even further, which may encourage more universities to follow suit. There is a spate of innovation around publishing services to support the launching of presses and the publication of journals and books, which is creating better pricing models that make publishing an increasingly viable option. There are also more open source options being developed.

The majority of NUPs publish both journals and monographs, and a few have a broader range of publications including textbooks (like the BOOC from UCL), music, and data. Formats available range from press to press, but pretty much all of them have PDFs available, and the majority also publish in HTML. Formats like XML, ePUB, MOBI and Print are less likely to be on the menu, but they are supported by a few presses. Some, especially in the case of books, offer some formats (like PDF and HTML) open access, and then charge for other formats like print, ePUB or MOBI. This is one way to ensure that research is accessible, but also that the press has a revenue stream that is not just funding from the university. UCL Press has found sales of books available free online to be surprisingly strong. Most commonly available licences are CC BY, with some presses also publishing under NC and ND licences.

Research is disseminated (depending on its format) through routes like the DOAJ, institutional repositories, DOAB, OAPEN, and for print and priced formats, venues such as Amazon are also used.

I’ve listed a few presses that are doing interesting things, although they are all interesting in their own way!

UCL is the largest (and first) NUP. It publishes a range of formats, including journals, books and textbooks. This includes their BOOC (Book as Open Online Content) which was a result of two years of research from UCL and KCL academics, and will grow as more content is created, allowing different ways to explore and share the ideas and discussions

White Rose Press is a coalition press created by Leeds, Sheffield and York. It publishes books and journals, and has a focus on ensuring high quality content. It has a student journal that publishes research from any institution, but students must have received a certain grade for their final project, and this can then be adapted for a journal article.

The University of Huddersfield Press was one of the first NUPs and built its own publishing systems on top of ePrints. It publishes books and journals, as well as student journals and even music.

Goldsmiths Press is another interesting press, publishing not just monographs, but also other non-standard outputs including apps and video archives.

NUPs are still quite a small part of the publishing landscape, their output is nowhere near the traditional publishers; but they do represent an interesting way that librarians are taking more control in the scholarly publishing landscape and could be a really interesting and valuable dissemination model for research. They could be especially valuable in providing outlets for research that would not be considered commercially viable by the traditional publishers and for trying out new and interesting formats.