The Rise of the New University Press: the current landscape and future directions

Today’s publishing environment is evolving. New University Presses (NUPs) and scholarly publishing in the library are increasingly playing an important role in the shift of scholarly communications. The US-based Library Publishing Coalition defines these new library-led presses as a ‘…set of activities led by college and university libraries to support the creation, dissemination, and curation of scholarly, creative, and/or educational works’.
They typically embrace open access, digital first, new business models, enable universities to meet strategic goals including outreach and impact, and facilitate researchers in publishing research outputs.
In 2016, Jisc and the Northern Collaboration, a group of 25 higher education libraries in the north of England embarked on a research study to identify, evaluate and benchmark NUPs and library-led initiatives. Informed by a desk top review of current library publishing ventures in the US, Europe and Australia, the study will provide an overview of Universities’ existing and future plans and directions regarding NUPs or library publishing ventures in the UK. The data gathered will:
• Identify and classify existing and future NUPs / library led ventures in the UK
• Learn of the motivations behind their establishment and their missions, visions and goals
• Determine the types of output being published, e.g. monographs, journals, grey literature etc. and the service level, e.g. hosting, full publishing services
• Gather information on governance and policies, such as peer review processes, contracts and licensing
• Identify the publishing platforms being utilised – such as OJS/OMS, repositories, or commercial solutions
• Ascertain what business models and distribution methods are being applied to formats, such as open access, print on demand, freemium etc.
• Review the marketing and metadata workflows adopted to support end user discovery – such as DOAJ, DOAB, and library web scale discovery systems
• Identify workarounds, gaps and frustrations in the workflows
A number of follow up interviews will enrich the data gathered in order to gain a snapshot of library publishing trends in the UK in 2016.
The research has been designed with a number of goals in mind; taking forward recommendations from the Jisc and AHRC OAPEN-UK final report on open access monographs that pushes for collaboration and best practice through sharing, and providing an evidence base to feed into the development of Jisc’s work on a shared publishing platform. It is also envisaged that this research will facilitate libraries and their institutions working together at a European level by establishing common goals and encouraging best practice and shared services across library publishers in Europe.
The study runs from February to June 2016. The presentation at LIBER 2016 will be the first opportunity to present and discuss the findings of this research.This study forms part of a larger Jisc research project focused on institutional publishing initiatives which includes academic led publishing ventures.