Six reasons why open institutional publishing matters

University press publishing has been in the UK for centuries, with the first presses founded in 1534 and 1586 at Cambridge and Oxford universities respectively. But the sector in the UK has had a chequered history. While the mid-sized five – Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh and Wales – are exemplary, thriving examples, the idea of university-based publishing has gone in and out of fashion over the decades (despite much internal discussion, as this blog on the history of publishing at LSE shows). This is in marked contrast to the US, where there are over 100 university presses, and publishing is seen as part of the core activities of their home institutions – as essential as a library or a lecture theatre.

But over the past 10 years, things have started to change. With the coming of digital publishing and new technologies, the rise of open research and increasing demand for open access, and with growing criticism of commercial publishing, institutionally based publishing is making a long-overdue comeback.

• Open research is a tough nut to crack. Here’s how we can get started
• Anatomy of an academic book proposal
• Why does open access make publishing more complicated?

A new wave of institutional publishers focused on open access publishing – including LSE Press, Open Press at the University of Sussex and UCL Press, among many others – are leading the way in offering alternative publishing venues to authors and driving change in scholarly communications.

In fact, this sector is growing at such a pace that, in 2023, a group of these presses came together to form the Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA) to help represent and promote these presses to a broader audience and create an important new publishing network.

This group includes publishers who are “born” open access – ie, only publish in this way – as well as those transitioning to, or striving for, a fully open access model, and those with a hybrid model who publish non-open access work too. It also includes a range of different types of publisher – from a traditional university press set-up to library publishers and open journals service providers – and different open access business models, or combination of models from diamond, to gold, to green. 

What unites this new breed of publishers? What can open institutional publishing offer, how is it making a difference and why does it matter? Here are six reasons why these presses are ones to watch:

1. Non-profit, community-led and mission-driven: Open institutional publishers are non-profit enterprises and place the highest value on intellectual quality and the scholarly endeavour over commercial opportunity. Anthony Cond, the CEO of Liverpool University Press, identified the way a university-based press differs from a commercial publisher as “the fact that it takes nothing out of its community: there is but one shareholder, one which exists to serve knowledge and one which, by having a press, does just that”.
2. Bibliodiversity: In recent years, the academic publishing landscape has narrowed as the largest publishing companies have acquired smaller presses in a process of consolidation. Worldwide revenue of academic publishers stands at over $19 billion per year and 50 per cent of that is attributed to just five companies. But we need bibliodiversity to ensure intellectual freedom, reader and author choice, and innovation, and to create a vibrant, diverse and inclusive publishing ecosystem. The growth of smaller-scale institutional publishing contributes to this. 
3. Prestige and recognition: Open institutional presses can help to shift institutional culture around publishing and redefine problematic views of prestige. Bringing publishing expertise back into the institutional fold provides authors with a trusted brand (ie, their university), alongside on-site guidance and advice. This, along with a thorough peer review process that aligns with best practice in the wider university press sector, editorial boards that provide oversight of publishing activities, and prestigious awards, prize shortlists and rave journal reviews (see, for example, here, here and here), provides assurance that this is not an institutional form of self-publishing.
4. Author care: We want to restore notions of author care within academic publishing by providing a thorough, constructive peer review process, ensuring a high-quality production and design service, and seeing publishing as a collaboration and a partnership. We are better placed to be able to understand our authors’ needs and concerns and can help them demystify the publishing process – particularly for PhD students and early career researchers (see in particular the work of University of London Press here). Authors can often feel dissatisfied with promotion of their publications, yet presses like LSE Press are now reclaiming this and winning praise from authors for it.
5. The benefits of open access: Our publications benefit from the many advantages that open access publishing brings. These are well rehearsed, but include greater usage, increased citations, more online sharing and better Altmetric scores. Open publications have a greater geographical diversity of usage, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. They also receive more diverse citations, suggesting improved cross-disciplinary reach. Research shows open content is being increasingly accessed and used by groups outside academia. Open access is viewed as crucial as a means of countering misinformation and fake news. Further, for open institutional publishers, open access isn’t just an add-on to our usual activities, it is core to our identity and part of our DNA, making us experts in the field. 
6. Part of a movement: Open institutional publishers stand alongside scholar-led publishers in seeking to bring about a change in academic publishing and offer alternatives to what some have described as a broken system. In championing principles and ethics in publishing over revenue generation and profits – in putting values above value – we look to build a fair, equitable, accessible, inclusive and diverse publishing ecosystem, one that is known for high-quality publications, author care and for playing our part in democratising knowledge. 

If you would like to know more about OIPA, including how to join, please contact us at oipa.contact@gmail.com

Philippa Grand is head of publishing at LSE Press and Suzanne Tatham is deputy director of library and learning services at the University of Southampton.

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