‘Liblishers and Pubrarians’: UCL Press joins The Library Publishing Coalition

UCL Press is delighted to announce that it has joined the US-based Library Publishing Coalition, and is the first UK publisher to join. UCL Press is the publisher for University College London and is the first fully open access university press in the UK. It is based within UCL Library Services.

The LPC was founded in 2014 and is an independent, community-led membership association. The purpose of the LPC is to support an evolving, distributed range of library publishing practices and to further the interests of libraries involved in publishing activities on their campuses. Based on core library values, and building on the traditional skills of librarians, library publishing is generally distinguished from other publishing fields by a preference for Open Access dissemination as well as a willingness to embrace informal and experimental forms of scholarly communication and to challenge the status quo. Library publishing has a greater presence in the US than in the UK, but that is changing with the newly established UCL Press, Westminster University Press, Cardiff University Press and White Rose University Press (a consortium of Leeds, Sheffield and York universities), all of which were initiated by, or are based within, their university libraries.

Library publishing services play a critical role in scholarly communications. The LPC believes that, to flourish, library publishing as a community of practice needs organized leadership to address articulated needs, such as targeted training and education, better and increased communication and collaboration, new research, and shared documentation. The LPC recognizes that library and other non-profit publishers have common interests and concerns and that a coalition that facilitates sustained dialogue among university and college libraries, university presses, scholarly societies, and other mission-related publishers enables the community to respond to changes in the scholarly communication ecosystem more quickly and efficiently and in innovative ways.

The LPC has around 70 members, mostly based in the US. As part of its provision of central resources for library publishers, it offers regular webinars, meet-ups, professional development guides, a jobs board and an annual conference.

With an active and ever-increasing number of UK institutional libraries offering publishing services, it will be interesting to see more UK members joining and benefiting from the great community already established by the LPC!

Posted on behalf of Lara Speicher, Publishing Manager, UCL Press.