UCL Press and Academic Book of the Future are delighted to invite you to an event at the British Library to celebrate the publication of the Academic Book of the Future BOOC during Academic Book week. To register, please visit: http://bit.ly/2jFfLvm

UCL Press launched in June 2015, and it makes all its scholarly books and journals available freely online in open access form, as well as in print. Since it launched, it has published 30 books and 5 journals and its books and journals have reached more than 180,000 readers in over 190 countries around the world. As well as traditional monographs, UCL Press publishes innovative digital research on a browser-based platform, featuring articles and chapters of different lengths, different formats (blog, video, audio), and which are added over time – and so the BOOC was born (Books as Open Online Content). The first book in this format features the research outputs from the Academic Book of the Future project, an AHRC/British Library funded project led by researchers at UCL and Kings College London.

The UCL Press team will be available to:

• Demonstrate BOOC live:

• Answer questions about its open access model – or anything else about its publishing activity

• Show its books

• Present its new publishing services model for other institutions who wish to set up their own

• Presentation

A presentation about UCL Press will take place at 11 – 11.15, followed by a Q&A session.

To register, please visit: http://bit.ly/2jFfLvm

Last week I attended the 5th International Summit of the Book, held this year in Limerick. The Summit of the Book conference was initiated in 2012 by the Library of Congress, Washington, as an ‘annual global meeting to discuss and promote the book as a crucial format for conveying societies’ scholarship and culture’.

Speakers came from HEI and national libraries all over the world and included the Director of the Library of Alexandria, the Chief of Library Services at the UN office in Geneva, the Director of Scholarly and Educational Programs at the Library of Congress, the President of the African Library and Information Association, the Director of the National Library of Ireland, the President of LIBER, the Head of the European Library, and the Chair of IFLA’s Freedom of Access to Information Committee.

Along with many short presentations of case studies of practices and initiatives at libraries around the world, including the use of special collections for teaching, common reader programmes, the possibilities of digitization, and managing university libraries in different languages and cultures, the conference offered a global insight into the changes and challenges for libraries everywhere, some common to all and others particular to a country or circumstance.

I gave a presentation on the open access publishing model adopted by UCL Press, and the growing trend for libraries to set up their own open access publishing service. I described the global reach achieved by the Press’s books and journals since launching in June 2015 (getting on for 80,000 now) and the benefits that can accrue to an institution through making its research freely available to all. I hope that our experience might serve as an inspiration to other institutions of the transformative potential of having an open access press.

The UCL Open Access Team and UCL Press would like to invite all UCL staff to a drop-in session to find out more about open access options and support available at UCL.

Find out more and register your interest at uclopenaccess2016.eventbrite.co.uk

15:00-16.45 Drop-in Session

Drop in to meet the Open Access Team and UCL Press to learn more about the HEFCE mandate for REF2020 and publishing with UCL Press, the UK’s first fully open access university press.

Staff from UCL Open Access and UCL Press will be on hand to show you:

• How to upload your paper to RPS for REF open access
• The process of applying to have gold APCs paid for by the UCL OA funding
• How to promote your book/journal via social media
• The submissions process to publish a book with UCL Press
• Display of UCL Press books published so far

16.45-17:00

Presentation for the 10 millionth download from UCL Discovery to Professor Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology).

17:00-18.30 Speakers and book launch / drinks reception

Speakers

• Andrew Morris, Honorary Fellow at UCL IOE, and author of Why Icebergs Float: Explaining Science in Everyday Life.
• Nicholas Gold, Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science

Find out more about the impact of open access publishing on the careers of guest speakers, and about UCL’s leadership in the open access arena.

Join UCL Press for the launch of Why Icebergs Float: Explaining Science in Everyday Life, a brand new open access book that explains how science can solve life’s mysteries. 

In a semi-regular blog series, we’ll introduce you to the people behind the press.  Today we’re introducing you to Elli Sullivan, our Admin Assistant.

What is your role and what does it involve?

My role within UCL Press is Administration Assistant.  My role involves supporting all of the UCL Press team members.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

I’ve been at UCL Press since December 2015. Before landing the job at UCL Press,  I was an Administration Officer for a charity back home in Perth, Australia. Our mission was to optimise the lives of people living with disabilities.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

The working achievement I’m most proud of is getting a great job in the UK. After all the stories I’ve heard from friends/family it seemed that it would be a long and hard journey. But I did it, and within a short time frame of arriving, I’m very proud of my persistence and motivation.

Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of you to-do list?

The top of my to do list at the moment is making sure that everything is in place for our new title management system.

What is your favourite album, film and novel?

Album – Watch the Throne (Jay-Z and Kanye West)

Film – this is a huge tie between the Shawshank Redemption and the Wedding Singer

Novel – The Messenger (Markus Zusak)

What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?

What’s green and has wheels? The grass, I lied about the wheels.

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

Elvis Presley

My parents (Mum & Dad cook a great BBQ!)

Kim Kardashian

Kanye West

Karl Lagerfeld

Jennifer Lawrence

Marc Jacobs

RuPaul

J.K Rowling

What advice would you give your younger self?

Don’t let negativity get you down, and don’t let other people’s opinion stop you.

What would it surprise people to know about you?

I was a West Australian State Ice Hockey player. I’m also pianist.

What is your favourite place?

That’s a tie between New York and Coogee Beach back home in Perth.

In a semi-regular blog series, we’ll introduce you to the people behind the press.  Today we’re shining the spotlight on Jaimee Biggins, who is our Managing Editor.

What is your role and what does it involve?

In my role as Managing Editor at UCL Press, I’m responsible for guiding books and journals through production from manuscript to publication.

I coordinate all production activities including briefing suppliers and freelancers, managing schedules and budgets, quality checking content throughout the process and leading author communication.

On a day-to-day level, I’m tracking progress of my titles, monitoring key dates and problem-solving as issues arise. I ensure that UCL Press content is ready for print and online publication.

As well as producing print copies of all our books, we also do epub/Kindle versions and enhanced digital versions of some of our books, so my role is increasingly digitally focused and involves making sure that the final file is ready for all the various outputs.

As an Open Access publisher, we also upload a downloadable PDF of all our books on UCL Discovery and disseminate the PDF to various Open Access platforms – so the process doesn’t just end at final file stage.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

I joined UCL Press two years ago. My previous role was Team Leader at Oxford University Press. I supervised a team of production editors working on academic and trade books.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

In my previous job, I spent five weeks in India as a short-term project manager. I visited several of our core suppliers as we rolled out important production initiatives.

It was great to be on the ground, shadowing my counterparts and learning about workflows at our suppliers. It was also a fantastic experience to be immersed in a different culture too.

Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of you to-do list?

At the moment, I’m focusing on our autumn books and journals. We have a varied list and I’m busy making sure we achieve our planned publication dates.

What is your favourite album, film and novel?

Album: Madonna: Greatest Hits

Film: It’s a Wonderful Life

Novel: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?

I’m afraid I’m terrible with jokes!

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

Emily Dickinson

W. B. Yeats

Joan Didion

Sheryl Sandberg

Iris Murdoch

What advice would you give your younger self?

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

What would it surprise people to know about you?

I lived in New York for five years.

What is your favourite place?

Galway in the west coast of Ireland – I love the rugged coastline and the wild beauty of the landscape. As well as the stunning scenery, the people are friendly and welcoming and there are plenty of cosy pubs to hide in and escape the rain!

– See more at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/staff/staff-news/0216/10022016-spotlight-on-jaimee-biggins#sthash.MBnGjDQ3.dpuf

In a semi-regular blog series, we’ll introduce you to the people behind the press.  First up is Alison Major, who is the Marketing and Distribution Manager for UCL Press.

What is your role and what does it involve?

I’m Marketing and Distribution Manager for UCL Press, UCL’s university press. This means that I look after everything that happens after a book or journal has published.

I don’t really have a typical day- I can be meeting authors, negotiating with distributors, knee deep in catalogues/websites/emails, managing our social media presence (see our twitter account @uclpress, Instagram coming soon), talking to socities attending conferences and a whole host of other things.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

I’ve been at UCL since July 2015. It’s something of a homecoming, as I studied here as an undergraduate. Previously, I worked for Lippincott Williams and Wilkins (part of Wolters Kluwer) looking after various aspects of their international marketing. My last role there focused on Middle East and global south, and involved a lot of travel to some wonderful countries I might never have visited otherwise, like Oman.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

I am incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved at UCL Press- it’s been a very fun, exciting journey so far, and we’re extremely proud of the excellent authors that we’ve worked with. In our first year, we have published 12 books than have been downloaded 35,000 times in more than 160 countries worldwide. There are even more exciting titles to come in Autumn!

Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of you to-do list?

UCL Press’ first birthday. We are extremely proud of what we’ve achieved in the first year, so it’s great to be able to celebrate with those who have played a part in making it the success that it’s become.

What is your favourite album, film and novel?

This is a really, really hard question!

Album: Blue Afternoon by Tim Buckley or Pink Moon by Nick Drake

Film: Probably one of the Dogme films: either Festen (“The Celebration”) or Idioterne (“The Idiots”)

Novel: Master and Margerita by Mikhail Bulgakov every time. It’s just a book that keeps on giving.

What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?

I don’t really have a favourite joke that would work well when written, but my three year old niece is obsessed by this one:

What do you call a dinosaur with no eyes?

Doyathinkysaurus!

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

Nelson Mandela, William S. Burroughs, Jón Gnarr, Bill Hicks, Mata Hari, Aung San Suu Kyi, Kathleen Hanna, Pablo Escobar, Mo Mowlam, Dolly Parton, Jeff Buckley, and finally, my Fiance!

What advice would you give your younger self?

The same advice I always give to interns and students: there is no such thing as a stupid question. That, and to always ask yourself “Who died?” when something goes wrong. Inevitably, the answer is no one.

What would it surprise people to know about you?

I have been glacier hiking and didn’t scream once. Or that I can’t drive, and have never even had a single lesson.

What is your favourite place?

Another hard one! It’s so difficult to nail it down. If I really *have* to choose, it’d either be at Roskilde festival, listening to music whilst sharing a few drinks with my very best friends and watching the sun going down…or…on the wonderful island of Lokrum looking out to the Adriatic as the sun goes down, surrounded by peacocks.

When UCL Press launched in June 2015 as the UK’s first fully open access university press, we did not have a sense of the level of readership we might attract. We were confident that via open access we would reach a wide readership and we knew from other open access publishers the kind of figures they were achieving. We also knew that downloads of articles and PhD theses on UCL Discovery, where UCL Press’s titles are stored, were very encouraging.

Now, just over eight months since UCL Press’s first titles were published, it is a good moment to reflect on what has been achieved in that time. The total download figures for eight books in eight months has now reached nearly 16,000 copies in over 150 countries. That number might not mean much out of context, so it is interesting to look at the figures for the individual books and the length of time they have been published:

Total Downloads @ 8 Feb 2016	Pub. date	Downloads
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections by Alice Stevenson et al	04-Jun-15	4005
Temptation in the Archives: Essays in Golden Age Dutch Culture by Lisa Jardine	04-Jun-15	3629
Treasures from UCL by Gillian Furlong	04-Jun-15	1208
Burning Bright: Essays in Honour of David Bindman by Diana Dethloff et al	11-Sep-15	1224
Poems of 1890: Herman Gorter translated by Paul Vincent	02-Oct-15	747
Biostratigraphic and Geological Significance of Planktonic Foraminifera by Marcelle K. BouDagher Fadel	22-Oct-15	1396
Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street by Laura Vaughan et al	12-Nov-15	2603
Participatory Planning for Climate Compatible Development in Maputo, Mozambique by Vanesa Castan Broto et al	13-Nov-15	1170
	Total	15982

With typical print sales for scholarly monographs now often estimated at around 200-500 copies worldwide, and the difficulties of access to print books in some parts of the world, open access can clearly be seen to deliver on readership. The reasons for the variance in download figures between the individual books are numerous and can not always be easily pinned down, but can include: the size of the potential market, the promotion undertaken, associated events and anniversaries that help promote the book, and the author’s involvement in promotion.

John Byron, executive director of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, cautioned that ‘a failure to disseminate research will be read as a failure of quality’. The goal of UCL Press and other open access publishers is to disseminate research widely and these figures show encouraging results after just a few months.

This post previously appeared as UCL Press news. 

The six months since the launch of UCL Press have been extremely busy. During this time, UCL Press has managed to launch eight open access books, two journals and managed an extremely successful Open Access conference with over 120 delegates (with assistance from UCL Open Access and UCL Discovery). The UCL Press team have also spoken at a number of events- Society for Young Publishers conference, Academic Book of the Future projects showcase evening at the British Library and the Futurebook conference, to name but a few- and contributed articles about the press to UKSG enews andInsights.

Lisa Jardine

We were also deeply saddened to hear of the death of Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, and author of UCL Press’ inaugural title, Temptation in the Archives. Professor Jardine was a distinguished scholar, and we are honoured to have published her final work.

Books

The eight UCL Press books have managed to achieve in excess of 9500 open access downloads from over 100 countries. Titles published so far are varied and include:

• Temptation in the Archives by Lisa Jardine (June 2015)
• Treasures from UCL edited by Gillian Furlong (June 2015)
• The Petrie Museum of Egyptology: Characters and Collections by Alice Stevenson (June 2015)
• Burning Bright: A Tribute to David Bindman edited by Diana Dethlof et al (September 2015)
• Herman Gorter- Poems of 1890: A Selection translated by Paul Vincent (October 2015)
• Biostratigraphic and Geological Significance of Planktonic Foraminifera, 2e byMarcelle K. BouDagher-Fadel (October 2015)
• Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street edited by Laura Vaughan (November 2015)
• Participatory Planning for Climate Compatible Development in Maputo, Mozambique by Vanesa Castán Broto et al (November 2015)

We’re delighted to announce that our Spring list will include a number of titles from the Why We Post project, an ground breaking ethnographic study of social media in 8 countries worldwide. The series will contain 11 books, but Spring 2015 include How the World Changed Social Media, Social Media in an English Village, and Social Media in Southeast Turkey. The project’s output will also include UCL’s first MOOC (via Futurelearn), and a website focusing on the project’s findings. To keep up-to-date on UCL Press activities, visit our website or follow us on Twitter @uclpress

Journals

Journals currently published by UCL Press include Architecture_MPS(Architecture Media Politics Society) which addresses the growing interest in the social and political interpretation of the built environment from a multi-disciplinary perspective and London Journal of Canadian Studies, an interdisciplinary journal specialising in Canadian history, politics and society. From early 2016, our rapidly growing journals programme will also include Jewish Historical Studies: Transitions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, which has been published since 1831.

Call for proposals

Spotlights series

Proposals for short monographs are invited from UCL authors wishing to make new or defining elements of their work accessible to a wide audience. The series will provide a responsive forum for researchers to share key developments in their discipline and reach across disciplinary boundaries. The series also aims to support a diverse range of approaches to undertaking research and writing it. We welcome proposals for books of 35,000 to 45,000 words from all disciplines that share any of these aims. The books will be published free in a digital Open Access form, and will also be available to buy in print at an affordable price.

Contact: Chris Penfold, Commissioning Editor, UCL Press

BOOC

The Men’s Union Reading Room

The AHRC/British Library Academic Book of the Future Project invites submissions for its BOOC (Book as Open Online Content), which will capture and publish outputs of the research project. The content will be published as a ‘live’ book on an innovative, online and open platform hosted by UCL Press.

Authors are welcome to discuss any aspect of academic publishing and its future; for example, peer review, the role of the editor, the academic bookshop of the future, copyright, libraries, open access, digital publishing and technology. Suitable content will undergo peer review before being published.

Formats may include, but are not limited to, videos, blogs, podcasts, short monographs and articles, and authors are invited from all areas of the academic publishing and bookselling communities. The BOOC will be launched in Spring 2016 and new content will be added throughout the year.

Contact: Sam Rayner, Principal Investigator of the Academic Book of the Future Project with abstracts of proposed content (500 word max.).