University of London Press selected for second year of Jisc Open Access funding

Following the success of the project last year, in which the Press secured its funding target enabling it to publish an additional 9 books in its popular New Historical Perspectives series, the University of London Press has been accepted in the scheme again. Its new submission focuses on sourcing funding to support the publication of 9 additional open access books on human rights and social justice over a 3-year period and enhanced marketing capacity to ensure that these books reach both an academic readership and non-academic audiences able to use the research in their work. 

The new submission from the Press primarily focuses on two book series: the Human Rights Consortium series, an ongoing open access series published in association with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, and Reimagining Law and Justice, a new open access series published in association with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, which launched in January 2023.

The other successful OACF participants for 2023 are White Rose University Press and the University of Westminster Press. All three presses participated in the pilot scheme in 2022 and presented their successful 2023 submissions in a recent Jisc webinar.

Initiatives like the OACF help to support a diverse publishing ecosystem that includes small university, library-led, and non-commercial publishers. The inclusion of the University of London Press in the new OACF scheme also helps to highlight the value of humanities approaches and research to contemporary challenges around human rights and social justice, including important topics such as refugee and migration law, ecological genocide and colonial histories. 

Paula Kennedy, Head of Publishing at the University of London Press, said:

As a non-profit university press, we are delighted to be part of the OACF scheme again this year. Funding schemes like this are crucial in showing how libraries and small publishers can work collaboratively together in new ways to publish open access books, and we hope that we will receive the funding needed to support the growth of our programme in this important and vital area.

The funding would also help us to market a dedicated cluster of books in this area both within and outside academia. We’ve already had some success with reaching non-academic audiences for our existing books in this area, including NGOs and charities working with refugee populations. Funding through the OACF would help us to build on this with additional outreach activity to regions, organisations, and individuals who could tangibly benefit from and use these open access publications in their work.

For more information about the project, please visit the Jisc website (Supporting community-based open research initiatives: Open Access Community Framework 2023 - Research (jiscinvolve.org)).