UCL Press
The story so far
June 2015 – December 2016
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
[email protected]
ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press
@uclpress
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Contents
Message from the UCL Vice-Provost
(Research), Prof David Price 2
Preface by UCL Press CEO, Paul Ayris 3
Introduction 4
Open access 6
Publishing activity year 1
8
Published books and journals 2015-16 8
Books and journals publishing 2016-17 10
Digital innovation 12
Subject areas 14
Author stories 16
Impact 20
Review coverage 22
Distribution 24
Conference presentations by UCL Press 25
Social media and marketing 26
Global engagement 28
Countries where UCL Press books have been downloaded 28
Worldreader 29
Projects that address global challenges 30
Translations – How the World Changed Social Media 31
Student engagement 32
Student journals 32
Student editor stories 32
UCL Press textbooks 34
Future plans 36
Who we are and what we do 38
Governance40
Finances 2015-1643
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Message from the UCL Vice-Provost (Research),
Professor David Price
Scholarly outputs – the products of academic inquiry
and analysis – are typically subjected to a publications
process that, in effect, prevents or limits their more
widespread dissemination.
These publications are frequently hidden away from
the majority of people who cannot pay to access them;
indeed, they are made inaccessible to many of those
who are in a position to act upon and apply the insights
they contain.
UCL is committed to being a force for good and enlightenment in the world.
This includes ensuring that the products of its research are made as widely
available as possible. This is why our university has been a leader in its
engagement with Open Access, and our flagship initiative in this area is
UCL Press, the UK’s first fully Open Access university press. The quality and
diversity of its publications are exhilarating, and it is deeply gratifying to know
that its outputs are being enthusiastically devoured across the world.
I congratulate the UCL Press team and their authors for their success in
developing such rich and compelling content, and for their effectiveness in
bringing it to new readers. UCL Press serves our institutional mission and,
through it, humanity. We look forward to even greater and more innovative
achievements from it in the future.
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Preface by UCL Press CEO, Paul Ayris
UCL Press is the UK’s first fully Open Access university
press and its sits in one of the great universities of the
world. In the fifteenth century, the invention of moveable
type printing in the West revolutionised the way that ideas
were disseminated. The Reformation, for example, would
not have been possible without the invention of printing
presses. The Protestants, in particular, took advantage of
the printing press to spread their learning across Europe.
The Bible in the vernacular was a particular hallmark
of Protestant thinking and, in England, Tyndale’s New
Testament in English was smuggled into the country, but seized and physically
destroyed as heretical. So powerful was the opposition to new ideas and new
ways of disseminating them.
In the 21st century, the importance of the Internet and ideas like Open
Access have the power to transform the way that concepts are recorded and
transmitted. Open Access is a revolution because it enables anyone anywhere
in the world to access publications, without their ability to pay or not to pay
being a barrier to access. Open Access also means that universities can
re-assert their role in the scholarly publishing cycle, enabling universities such
as UCL to create their own publishing imprints. The numbers of downloads
received by UCL Press publications show that there is an appetite for
UCL’s research outputs and textbooks. As with the invention of moveable
type printing in the West by Gutenberg, so Open Access has the power to
transform the way people disseminate and access knowledge. UCL Press
shows that this university is well aware of the revolution that is happening in
scholarly publishing and wants to assert a leadership role in that regard.
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Introduction
UCL Press is the first UK university
press to launch with a completely open
access business model. This means that
all its books are made available freely
online for anyone to read, regardless of
their ability to pay or their institutional
affiliation. As long as readers have an
internet connection, they can read our
books online.
UCL Press launched its first publications on 4
June 2015. Its inaugural title was Temptation in
the Archives: Essays in Golden Age Dutch Culture
by eminent historian Lisa Jardine, who spoke
passionately at the UCL Press launch party about
her belief in open access publication for research.
The Press also published a beautifully illustrated
book showcasing UCL’s Special Collections of
manuscripts, incunabula and important archives,
Treasures from UCL, and a book about the Petrie
Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, published
to mark the 100th anniversary of the museum’s
opening, which has gone on to become UCL
Press’s best-selling book in print.
As the UK’s first university press to make all
of its publications open access, the launch
attracted media attention and much interest from
academics at UCL wishing to publish with the
press. It received around 100 book proposals
in the year following its first call for proposals,
demonstrating a strong interest at UCL in
publishing with its home institution, and publishing
in open access, and has gone on to receive over
200 book and journal proposals. This turns the
traditional university press model on its head both
in terms of immediate open access availability,
but also because most university presses publish
‘
few books by authors at their own institution. UCL
Press is proud to promote the research of its own
academics and to see their books being so widely
read. All UCL Press books are published as a free
PDF, a browser-based enhanced version (also free)
and affordably priced print editions.
Since its inception, UCL Press has expanded
from one member of staff to five, has published
16 books, and plans to increase to publishing
50 books and 8 journals by 2018. At the time of
writing (September 2016) its books and journals
have been downloaded nearly 75,000 times in
over 174 countries.
UCL Press is proud to
promote the research
of UCL’s academics
and to see their books
being so widely read
Left to right: Paul Ayris (UCL Press CEO), David Price (Vice Provost, Research), Lisa Jardine
(Author, Temptation in the Archives), Michael Arthur (UCL Provost and President)
Key facts about UCL Press
>UCL Press is the UK’s first fully
open access university press
>Launched in June 2015
>All books made available freely online,
to download, and sold in print
>UCL Press has published 25 books and
6 journals since launch*
>By 2018, UCL Press plans to publish
50 books a year
UCL Press Launch Party
>Number of downloads: over 100,000
since launch
>Global reach: books downloaded
in over 190 countries
>UCL Press publishes scholarly
monographs, textbooks, journals, and
hosts student journals
>The most downloaded book to date is
How the World Changed Social Media:
over 38,000 downloads since March 2016
Gillian Furlong (Editor, Treasures from UCL)
UCL Press, 1st birthday party cupcakes
* figures correct at December 2016
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Open access
UCL Press is the first UK university press
to make all its outputs available in open
access form from the outset.
UCL took this decision because it believes that
making research available to all – free of charge
– can help address some of the world’s greatest
challenges. Increasingly, funders are introducing
policies that require open access book and
article outputs from funded research projects.
For the Research Excellence Framework (REF)
2020, it is a requirement that journal articles and
conference proceedings are made available in an
open access repository within three months of
acceptance (but initially publication), in order to be
eligible for the REF. There is no mandate for open
access monographs at present. However, many
academics at UCL are already keen to publish
their books in open access because they want
their work to be read as widely as possible.
‘
Free online
publication
means that
my work and
ideas will be
available to
as many people
as possible.
Dr Nicholas Piercey, author
of Four Histories about
Early Dutch Football
Australian Open Access Support Group: Benefits of Open Access by Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown
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Publishing activity year 1
Published books
and journals 2015-16
November
March
2015
August
2016
2016
October
2015
UCL Press has published books on a wide range
of subjects, reflecting the diversity of subjects
taught at UCL, including anthropology, urban
studies, Dutch studies, art history, Egyptology,
geology, science and poetry in translation.
They have been downloaded many times
since first publication.
1308
2706
Downloads
3879
Downloads
3317
Downloads
Downloads
June
October
2015
Journals
2015
March
June
2016
2015
March
2016
2920
3298
7896
Downloads
Downloads
Downloads
38054
2105
Downloads
Downloads
June
2015
March
June
2016
2016
September
2015
November
2015
5124
Downloads
3091
Downloads
5473
Downloads
7899
2213
Downloads
Downloads
* Figures correct at December 2016
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7
h 201
September 2016 | 2176 downloads
September 2016 | 883 downloads
ads
ownlo
Books and journals publishing 2016-17
October 2016 | 694 downloads
Marc
ber
Octo
d
| 962
2016
7
h 201
Marc
ads
6
r 201
mbe
Dece
ownlo
ber
016
December 2016
October 2016 | 1174 downloads
January 2017
er 2
vemb
s
nload
Octo
d
| 478
2016
ow
d
| 124
No
uary
Febr
uary
Febr
2017
2017
Journals
*Figures correct at December 2016
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Digital innovation
UCL Press’s
browser-based
platform provides
innovative ways
to publish and
reading research
Enhanced
digital editions
For highly illustrated
multimedia books
Features:
>Slideshows
>Deep zoom
>3D
>Audio
>Video
>Dual navigation –
thematic and
chronological
Scholarly
monographs
For monographs
and textbooks
Features:
>Highlighting
>Note-taking
>Save personalised copies
>Share extracts,
annotations
>Citation
>Bookmarking
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BOOC (Books as
Open Online Content)
For ongoing books
featuring a range of
article types
Features:
>‘Living’ book, added
to over time
>Short and long articles
>Blogs
>Videos
>Multiple navigation
feature, by genre
and theme
>Comment function
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Subject areas
UCL Press is open to publishing in
all subject areas taught at UCL.
So far, the main subject areas
the Press has embraced are
anthropology, archaeology, urban
studies, Dutch studies and history.
However, the number of proposals
for science books – monographs,
textbooks, history of science and
popular science – is growing. These
are the schools, departments and
institutes the Press has worked
with so far.
INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
THE SLADE SCHOOL OF ART
LAWS
HISTORY
INSTITUTE OF THE AMERICAS
THE BARTLETT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
CENTRE FOR EDITING LIVES AND LETTERS
SCHOOL OF EUROPEAN LANGUAGES, CULTURE AND SOCIETY
PETRIE MUSEUM OF EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY
INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION
ART HISTORY
GRAND CHALLENGES
INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL PROSPERITY
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CLASSICS
PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
CENTRE FOR ADVANCED LEARNING AND TEACHING
SCHOOL OF SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
SCHOOL OF PHARMACY
CENTRE FOR PUBLISHING
ENGLISH
ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
INSTITUTE OF RISK AND DISASTER REDUCTION
EAR INSTITUTE
MULLARD SPACE SCIENCE LABORATORY
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Author stories
Professor Daniel Miller
‘
Author of Social Media in an English Village
and co-author of How the World Changed
Social Media in the Why We
Post series
We needed a Press
with vision and ambition.
Professor Daniel Miller
‘For our particular project, Why We Post, the
creation of UCL Press was simply the perfect
answer to a key question. We had already
committed to open access. This is something
I am personally very committed to, and had
previously published a paper advocating open
access in an anthropology journal. I was very
disappointed with the current models of Green
and Gold and wanted what I think of as genuine
open access, which inevitably means publication
being taken back into the university system
and thereby saving huge sums for libraries.
I feel this strongly as an anthropologist since we
need to make our findings accessible to lowincome people in low-income countries which
are the populations that we typically study…
I have published 37 books and was particularly
impressed by the fast turnaround [by UCL Press]
from submission of final manuscripts. We are
happy that there are also relatively inexpensive
offline paperbacks for those who prefer physical
books. But if I was to pick out one particular
achievement which matters to an anthropologist
it is that our books are being read in 145
countries with thousands of downloads recorded
for countries as diverse as Turkey, Russia,
Poland, Japan and Mexico.’
‘
Professor Laura Vaughan
Author of Suburban Urbanities
Dr Nicholas Piercey
Author of Four Histories about Early Dutch
Football, 1910 – 1920
The UCL Press team
understands and values
the deeply personal
nature of their authors’
contributions.
‘I was particularly keen to work with UCL Press
because of their commitment to open access
publication, which I see as a revolutionary
development in academic publishing. Free online
publication means that my work and ideas will
be available to as many people as possible,
without the barriers often in place in traditional
academic publishing models. I’m pleased to be
taking part at an early stage in this change in
academic publishing. In addition, open access
publishing has given me the opportunity to
provide additional data and content online which
will encourage other individuals to create their
own histories about the past – which is a central
theme of my work. As a young academic, and
first time author, I have loved the encouragement
given by everyone at UCL Press in this project,
from the initial proposal to the final stages of
publication. At every stage the team has always
been ready to listen to suggestions and to guide
me through the difficulties and surprises involved
in bringing my ideas to a wider audience.
While the staff at UCL Press are ambitious in
developing an ever increasing number of titles, I
have always felt that the team has taken a hands
on approach to the process and both understand
and value the deeply personal nature of their
authors’ contributions.’
‘As an early adopter of open access through
UCL’s repository, UCL Press seemed like an
ideal choice for Suburban Urbanities, given that
it is a university press dedicated to full open
access. A surprising bonus has been the fast
turnaround, from submission in April 2015 to
publication in November 2015. At the same time
the visual and material quality of both online and
print version is excellent – indeed, one of the
book’s reviewers commented that it is ‘a book
that looks and feels beautiful’. Most important
for me has been the immediate impact of the
book. Alongside its thousands of downloads
(more than 4,000 at last count) in 88 countries,
it has had impact in all sorts of unexpected
places: featuring in The Atlantic in its CityLab
blog and an activist in New Zealand has been
tweeting excerpts of the book at his local
planning authority to raise various policy issues.
My hope is that it will continue to resonate far
and wide as we continue to battle with the
complexity of suburban urbanity in future years.’
Dr Nicholas Piercey
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Author stories
Lily lives with her parents, younger brother and
sister in two small single rooms and shares a
toilet with two other rural migrant families. One
day after work Lily was ‘working with’ her QQ via
a smartphone, a Huawei smartphone which she
had bought for 1,850 RMB (US$ 308). She was
captivated by the ‘online world’, as if she had
completely forgotten where she was. After a while
she looked up to see me suffering a lot from the
heat and attack from mosquitos.
‘Life outside the mobile phone is unbearable,
huh?’ Lily observed.
Xinyuan Wang
Author of Social Media in Industrial China
‘In the past decades China has witnessed the
largest ever migration in human history. In 2015
the number of Chinese peasants who had left
their villages to work in factories and cities had
risen to 277 million. If Chinese migrant workers
were the population of a country, it would be
the fourth largest in the world, and they are the
human faces behind ‘Made-in-China’. While
‘Made-in-China’ products have become so
pervasive in our daily life, people who produce
them remain largely unknown to us and readers
will be surprised by the sophisticated use of social
media among Chinese factory workers.‘Home
village is a place you always miss, but not really
a place you want to return to,’ as Hua said. Like
Hua, many rural migrants see their home village
more as a spiritual comfort, rather than a practical
option. On social media, all the bad memories
and negative associations of village life and
homeland seemed to be expunged, leaving only
the ideal, purified images to give people comfort.
Rather than physically coming back to their
homeland, floating rural migrants transplanted
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their homeland to social media so that wherever
they go their homeland follows along. But
homeland is not the only place which is rebuilt on
social media. To many, social media is also where
they actually live, as I argue in my book.
Lily’s question forced me to think about the
question, ‘where do people live?’ In this small
factory town, I met many young rural migrants
who have moved all the way from their villages
to live geographically closer to a modern China,
but it seems that it is only online that they actually
arrive there. For many migrant workers, social
media has become the place where they can
at least visualise and achieve their aspiration
towards modernity. In fact, in addition to the
rural-urban migration, my study witnessed a
parallel migration from off-line to on-line.
‘Life outside the smartphone is unbearable’
Lily, a 19-year-old factory girl, spends almost
every single waking minute on her social media
QQ when she is working on the factory assembly
line. Lily’s QQ profile is a stylish space with a lot
of beautiful photos and pop music she collects
from the internet. Online Lily is surrounded by
a group of admirers and she talks as if she
was a princess who is waiting for true love:
‘In my life I have always dreamt about my true
love. He will treat me very well, protect me
from all uncertainty, displacement, sadness,
and loneliness. However, I always know that
that person will never turn up’. This is a typical
posting on Lily’s QQ. However, Lily never talks
in this manner offline. In this small factory town,
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Impact
Since launching in June 2015, UCL
Press’s books and journals have
been downloaded over 100,000
times. As can be seen from the
individual download figures on
page 8, the range is between 1,000
downloads and 38,000 for individual
titles. In an era when scholarly
monographs are selling in ever lower
quantities, with typical sales reported
by publishers in the region of 300
copies globally in their lifetime, open
access can clearly be seen to reach
readers, and indeed provides a new
way of publishing scholarly research.
‘
We need to make our
findings accessible to
low-income people in
low-income countries
which are the populations
we typically study.’
Professor Daniel Miller
*Figures correct at December 2016
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Review coverage
Treasures from UCL
by Gillian Furlong
‘The layout and lavish illustration show that [UCL Press] is well able
to compete with the doyens of treasures book publishing.’
Library & Information History
The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
by Alice Stevenson et al
In summary, The Petrie Museum: Characters and Collections is a must-read for any
person interested in the ethical treatment, display, and publication of a collection
of objects from a foreign country. Stevenson and her contributors masterfully
demonstrate the vivid history, colourful characters, astounding objects, and the main
objectives of the Petrie Museum within 120 short pages.
Birminghamegyptology.co.uk
Herman Gorter: Poems of 1890 –
A Selection, translated by Paul Vincent
‘A free e-book of Herman Gorter’s Poems of 1890: A Selection (UCL Press) is a
rare gift to the English-reading world. Translating highly lyrical poetry is probably the
most challenging thing for a translator, but time and again Paul Vincent succeeds in
suggesting something of the genius of the most important Dutch lyrical poet.’
Social Media in an English Village
by Danny Miller (Why We Post series)
‘Quotes and other bits of evidence make the book easy to
comprehend and very relatable. This thought-provoking publication
will appeal to both the curious layperson and media scholars, no
doubt igniting introspection about our own use of social media.’
LSE Review of Books
Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the
Life of the High Street edited by Laura Vaughan
‘UCL Press should be commended for producing a book
that looks and feels beautiful: it is a physical item that any scholar
interested in the urban should want on their shelf.’
LSE Review of Books
‘Suburban Urbanities is a hugely important contribution to
understanding our suburban world.’ban world.’
Thinking Cities
Temptation in the Archives: Essays in
Golden Age Dutch Culture by Lisa Jardine
‘Temptation in the Archives feels refreshingly personal, accessible yet
rigorous. Jardine never resorts to a tone of certainty or rigid conviction.
Instead she invites her reader to join in her game, to engage in her
light-hearted yet serious play, her serio ludere in the archives.’ves.’
Times Higher Education
Times Higher Education
Participatory Planning for Climate Compatible Development
in Maputo, Mozambique
This English/Portuguese book is an example of how participatory planning, which
puts citizens at the heart of community improvement, can facilitate local responses
to climate change challenges. Focusing on the partnerships between governments
and communities in Maputo, Mozambique, this bilingual compilation highlights
key lessons of climate compatible development for urban managers, practitioners,
academics, policy makers, citizens and activists.’
Burning Bright: Essays in Honour of David Bindman
edited by Diana Dethloff, Tessa Murdoch and Kim
Sloan with Caroline Elam
‘Burning Bright is a delightful tribute to Bindman’s wide-ranging
interests and influence.’
The Art Newspaper
Environmentandurbanization.org
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PROJECT MUSE
INGENTA
JSTOR
Distribution
WORLDREADER
UNGLUE.IT
All UCL Press books are made available
as free PDFs via its own website, via
OAPEN (the main European platform for
hosting open access books) and other
sites such as unglue.it and Worldreader.
JSTOR launched its open access
monograph platform in autumn 2016
and UCL Press was one of the first
publishers to join.
The books are also made available in an
enhanced browser-based format, featuring
multiple navigation routes, slideshows, deep
zoom, highlighting, note-taking, sharing,
saving personalized copies, audio, video and
comment functions (see Digital Innovation
section, page 12). All books are also sold in
print and ebook form via online and traditional
retailers at affordable prices.
OAPEN
UCL Discovery
FREE
PDFS
UCL
PRESS
BOOKS
ENHANCED
BROWSERBASED
FORMAT
BOOKS
SOLD IN
PRINT
EBOOKS
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Conference presentations
by UCL Press
London Info International,
Dec 2016
OA Publishing Models, Cambridge
University Union 2016
Summit of the Book,
Limerick, Nov 2016
Gregynog Colloquium,
Gregynog 2016
Academic Book of the Future
showcase, British Library 2016
CPD25: OA and Repositories,
London 2016
AV in Scholarly Publishing, British
Library 2016
OAI9, Geneva 2015
British Canadian Society conference,
British Library 2016
The University Press Redux conference,
Liverpool University 2016
Futurebook: Academic Book of
the Future, London 2015
Society of Young Publishers conference,
Oxford Brookes University 2015
ElPub, Gottingen 2016
OA Week, Publishers panel,
QMUL 2015
RLUK conference,
British Library 2016
Open Access Conference;
Open Access Week, UCL 2015
London Book Fair,
OA panel 2016
Digifest: Institution as E-textbook
publisher (Jisc) 2015
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Social media and marketing
UCL Press has an active social media presence,
with more than 3,000 followers on Twitter.
Each book and journal benefits from a bespoke
marketing plan including launch events, mailings
and much more.
26
Societies UCL Press is a member of:
> ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishing)
> IPG (Independent Publishers Guild)
> LPC (Library Publishing Coalition)
> PA (Publishers Association)
> AEUP (Association of European University Presses)
> UKSG
Authors Tom McDonald, Xinyuan Wang and Daniel Miller
Website
Twitter
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Professor Laura Vaughan at the launch of Suburban Urbanities.
Photo © Dr Tasos Varoudis.
Instagram
27
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‘
Global engagement
Worldreader
UCL Press titles have been downloaded
in over 190 countries around the world,
demonstrating the wide reach that can be
achieved via open access. Free PDFs of UCL
Press books can be downloaded anywhere in
the world on any device, as long as you have
an internet connection. This is a major benefit
for people in countries where print copies
are difficult to buy, either because physical
distribution is limited, or because books
would be unaffordable.
This partnership
demonstrates
UCL’s commitment
to removing the
barriers to quality
scholarly content.
Dr Paul Ayris, CEO of UCL Press and
Director of UCL Library Services
In spring 2016, UCL Press joined
Worldreader, a non-profit organization
whose mission is to bring digital books to
every child and their family, so that they
can improve their lives. All UCL Press
titles are made available on Worldreader’s
platform, which delivers free ebooks and
free ereaders to the Global South, in
partnership with leading publishers.
Countries where UCL Press
books have been downloaded
Rest of the World
Australia
Japan
Italy
‘This partnership demonstrates not only UCL’s
commitment to removing the barriers to quality
scholarly content, but also to addressing the
grand challenges of the Global South. We
are delighted to announce this partnership.’
Paul Ayris,
CEO of UCL Press, and Director
of UCL Library Services
‘This initiative fits neatly with UCL’s new
Global Engagement Strategy, which expresses our commitment to maximising
impact from research through open
access. Making scholarship more easily –
and cheaply – available to a wider range
of countries speaks in particular to one
of our strategic drivers: increasing global
independent research capability. And it
is in tune with the spirit of a generous
partner, and the concept of ‘partnerships
of equivalence’. So I am delighted that
UCL is teaming up with Worldreader
to offer this.’
Dame Nicola Brewer,
Vice-Provost (International)
Spain
China
India
Brazil
Canada
Germany
Netherlands
United States
France
United Kingdom
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Translations – How
the World Changed
Social Media
Projects that address
global challenges
In 2017, UCL Press will publish translations of
How the World Changed Social Media in all the
languages of the field sites: Spanish, Portuguese,
Chinese, Italian, Tamil, Hindi and Turkish, all in open
access. This will help to disseminate the book
globally on an even greater scale.
Amps
ARCHITECTURE_MEDIA_POLITICS_SOCIETY
Graham Cairns, Director, AMPS
(Architecture, Media, Politics, Society)
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In September 2016, the project lead,
Daniel Miller, and the authors of Social
Media in Industrial China (Xinyuan
Wang) and Social Media in Rural China
(Tom McDonald) will be undertaking
a tour of Hong Kong, Guangzhou,
Beijing, and Shanghai and giving talks
at universities and research institutes
to promote the books in China.
Hindi
Turkish
Spanish
Italian
Chinese
‘The Housing: Critical Futures research
programme confronts a critical issue at a
critical time. In London, a leading capital of
global finance, there is a chronic shortage
of affordable housing for those who service
‘the service’ sector. The crisis is at levels not
seen since World War II. In Beijing, capital of
the 21st century’s political powerhouse, the
displacement of long-standing communities
is a daily occurrence. In Mumbai, the biggest
health risk faced by the city today has been
identified as overcrowded housing, while in
São Paulo, football’s 2014 World Cup took
place against a backdrop of community unrest
and the chronic living conditions of the poor.’
UCL Press is publishing all 11
monographs in the Why We Post series,
the outcomes of a European Research
Council research project which studied
social media usage around the world.
Nine anthropologists each spent 15
months studying social media usage
in eight different countries. UCL Press
is publishing a monograph about each
country, a volume that compares all
nine field sites, and a highly visual book
about Facebook posts in England and
Trinidad. How the World Changed
Social Media has been UCL Press’s
most downloaded book to date, with
more than 38,000 copies downloaded
in 140 countries to date.
Tamil
In 2017, UCL Press will launch the first book
in the Housing: Critical Futures series. This
research project brings together architects,
policy makers, activists, government, charities
and academics, to address the major global
housing challenge. The first book in the series
will be From Conflict to Inclusion in Housing,
and the series reflects a series of global
conferences.
Portuguese
Housing: Critical Futures
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Student
engagement
UCL Press provides an open access
journal publishing platform, that allows
students to produce and publish their
own journals.
We currently support seven student journals, several
of which have now been established for some time.
Students gain immense experience from the process
of producing a journal: commissioning and evaluating
articles, managing the peer review process, copyediting, picture research and copyright clearance,
digital publication and marketing. Many of the
journals publish work by both students and by
academics. UCL Press provides the platform
hosting, maintenance and development, training,
technical support, DOI registration and marketing
support for the journals. This is an area of growing
interest to HEIs, many of which will meet at a
conference in December to discuss support for
student publishing.
Student journals
Think Pieces
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Student editor stories
UCL Journal of Law and
Jurisprudence
Object: Graduate
Art History Journal
Ira Ryk-Lakhman, Managing Editor,
UCL JLJ 2015/16
Sena Lee, Co-Editor, Object 17
The UCL Journal of Law and
Jurisprudence is a law journal edited
and published by graduate (Masters
and PhD) students of UCL Laws, now
in its 4th year. The Journal publishes
scholarly contributions from academics,
researchers and practitioners, as well
as showcasing outstanding research
of postgraduate students at UCL.
The Journal’s primary aim is to make
a high-quality contribution to current
debates on local and global issues of
law and jurisprudence. We seek to add
to the vibrant intellectual life of UCL’s
world leading law school, a place where
originality and innovation are highly prized,
and where the shared pursuit of ideas
remains fundamental to the Faculty’s
continuing success. Importantly, the
Journal was one of the first law journals
in the UK to fully implement an open
access policy and offer all its issues
and contributions freely available online
since its very first issue in 2012.
Object is a journal produced entirely by
graduate students in the History of Art
Department at UCL, which has been
produced in print form for the last 16 years.
The contents of each edition represent the
diversity of issues and methodologies with
which graduate students in the department
are currently engaged. Drawing upon
object and theory-based analyses, the
studies within Object indicate a continual
questioning and renegotiation of meaning
in the visual arts. The seventeenth edition
of Object was published in open access
form online for the first time this year, with
the intention – while maintaining the journal’s
core values – of wider distribution, increased
readership and public engagement via
the department’s growing digital platform.
Having now published our journal on
UCL Press’s OJS platform, the impact
of our articles and reviews has become
more visible.
We all worked hard to produce Object
online for the first time and had a wonderful
departmental celebration during which
we could share all the challenges we
encountered over several glasses of wine.
Although it feels like an important turning
point to be launching online, I am fully aware
that this is just the beginning of a journey.
The new digital platform offers a glimpse
of the potential yet to be explored. Fellow
students liked the interface. And perhaps
due to its enhanced visibility, the proposals
for submission have increased this year so
we now have two editors and three deputy
editors working on the new edition.
On the website, our contributors and
readers can check the most up to date
information on where their journal has been
downloaded internationally. It is wonderful
to see that Object is attracting readers from
all over the world, which made us more
passionate about our research activities. It
was extremely rewarding because I could
attain a more comprehensive perspective
on the practical workings of the academic
world. I came to see how my studies can be
positioned in a larger academic context and
how I can grow as an academic.
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UCL Press textbooks
In July 2016, UCL Press launched the first of
its open access textbooks, Textbook of Plastic
and Reconstructive Surgery, written and
edited by experts at UCL and the Royal Free
Hospital. It was supported by a grant from JISC
to participate in its ‘Institution as E-textbook
Publisher’ project, in which four HEIs and their
university presses are producing two textbooks
each, in order to assess the viability and the
challenges of institutions taking on their own
textbook publishing. The project will run until all
the books are published and have reported on a
year of distribution activity in 2018.
Like all UCL Press books, the Textbook of Plastic
and Reconstructive Surgery is available as a
free PDF and an affordably priced print copy.
In addition, it is available as an interactive app,
with scholarly functionality and animations. UCL
Press’s second textbook, Key Concepts in Public
Archaeology, will be published in early 2017,
and the Press is actively seeking to increase its
textbook publishing programme.
34
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Growth
Future plans
Growth in published outputs
North American distribution
UCL Press will increase the number of titles it is
publishing from around 20 in 2016 to around 35 in
2017. It plans to expand to 50 titles in 2018. The
number of journals it publishes will increase to 8 in
2017 and to 10 by 2018.
In 2017, UCL Press will appoint a North American
distribution partner, to help promote its books in
North America, as part of its plans to increase
its global visibility.
European open access
consortium
In August 2016, UCL Press joined OPERAS, a
European collective of publishers whose main
goal is to introduce the principle of Open Access
into European scholarly communication and to
ensure effective dissemination and global access
to research results.
Student publishing
UCL Press will participate in a national conference
of HEIs in 2017 to review the growing interest in
supporting student journal publishing, as part
of the increasing move to incorporate research
into student teaching. At UCL, this is reflected in
the Connected Curriculum initiative, led by the
Centre for Advanced Learning and Teaching.
UCL will be publishing a book about the subject:
A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education
by Dilly Fung in 2017.
University Press Redux
In Spring 2018, UCL Press will host the second
university press conference ever held in the UK.
The first was hosted by Liverpool University
Press in March 2016, and was attended by over
150 delegates from the UK, US and Europe,
who gathered to discuss the challenges and
opportunities of university press publishing.
36
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20
5
Books
Journals
in 2016
in 2016
35
7
Open access platforms
UCL Press will be publishing its journals on Project
MUSE from Spring 2017, and its books have
recently been made available on JSTOR, all in
open access. In autumn 2016, Ingenta launched
Ingenta Open, a new platform dedicated to open
access books and journals. These are all wellestablished scholarly publishing platforms, and
UCL Press hopes to increase the visibility of its
output by joining them.
Books
Journals
50
10
in 2017
in 2017
Publishing services
In 2017, UCL Press will roll out a publishing
services model for other institutions to set up
their own open access publishing imprints. The
institution would publish books in its own name,
and UCL Press will provide set-up and ongoing
editorial and production services, to help facilitate
the publishing process via its existing in-house
production department.
Books
in 2018
Journals
in 2018
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Who we are
and what we do
Senior Management,
UCL Library Services
UCL Press team
CEO, UCL Press
Paul Ayris
Publishing Manager
Lara Speicher
Dr Ayris has been Director of UCL Library
Services since 1997 and became ProVice Provost in November 2016. He is
also the UCL Copyright Officer.
Dr Ayris was the President of LIBER
(Association of European Research
Libraries) 2010-14; he is now Advisor to
the LIBER Board. He is Co-Chair of the
LERU (League of European Research
Universities) Community of Chief Information Officers. He
chairs the OAI Organizing Committee for the Cern Workshops
on Innovations in Scholarly Communication. He is the Chair of
JISC Collections Content Strategy Group. On 1 August 2013,
Dr Ayris also became Chief Executive of UCL Press. He is a
member of the Provost and President’s Senior Management
Team in UCL.
He has a PhD in Ecclesiastical History and publishes
on English Reformation Studies.
Lara joined UCL
in 2013 and set
the Press up from
scratch with CEO
Paul Ayris (Director
of UCL Library
Services) and Martin
Moyle (Assistant
Director [Support
Services], UCL Library Services), with
support from the UCL Press Board. Lara
previously held roles at British Library
Publishing, BBC Books and Thames
and Hudson, and has experience of all
aspects of publishing including editorial
and production, sales, marketing,
distribution, foreign rights and illustrated
book publishing. Her role in the Press is
to oversee the overall operation including
business development and planning,
operations, strategy and budget.
Assistant Director (Support Services)
Martin Moyle
As Assistant Director (Support Services),
UCL Library Services, Martin’s remit
includes responsibility for all of UCL’s
open access services, including UCL
Press. Martin was directly involved in
establishing UCL Press and sits on UCL
Press’s main Board and on its Executive
Group, advising and steering the Press.
He works closely with the Publishing
Manager to develop the Press’s business model and digital
presence, and advocates for the Press nationally and
internationally in his wider role in the HEI library sector.
38
Commissioning Editor
Chris Penfold
UCL PRESS THE STORY SO FAR JUNE 2015 – DECEMBER 2016
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Chris joined the Press in
August 2015 from Palgrave
Macmillan where he worked
on Film, Media and Cultural
Studies lists for three years,
in various editorial capacities.
His PhD in Soviet film history
was very useful to him in
this role. By the time he left
Palgrave, he was commissioning 90 books a year
from a wide range of academics. His role at UCL
is to acquire new books from authors at UCL
and beyond. His role involves meeting authors,
assessing book proposals, presenting proposals
at UCL Press’s Editorial Board, managing the
peer review process and assessing the delivered
manuscripts.
Managing Editor
Jaimee Biggins
Jaimee joined the Press in August 2014 from
OUP, where she had been
a Production Editor and
then Team Leader in OUP’s
academic division. As well as
working in the Head Office
in Oxford, Jaimee spent four
years working at OUP in New
York. Jaimee’s role starts when
the author has delivered their
final manuscript. She oversees the editorial and
production processes, working with freelance
suppliers and the author, checking their work at all
stages of the copy-editing and proofing process.
She also manages the distribution of final files to
printers and online platforms.
Marketing and Distribution Manager
Alison Major
Admin Assistant
Elli Sullivan
Alison joined the Press in
July 2015 from Wolters
Kluwer (previously
Lippincott, Williams and
Wilkins), a leading global
medical, nursing and health
professions publisher,
where she held a variety
of positions in the
international marketing department, including
Africa, Middle East and Brazil, where she worked
on improving the company’s footprint in a rapidly
developing market. At UCL Press Alison manages
both the marketing and the sales and distribution
of UCL Press books and journals using social
media, newsletters, website, competitions, review
copies, adverts and launches. On the sales side,
she manages the Press’s UK distribution and
sales reps, and is currently actively seeking a
US distribution partner.
Elli has been with UCL
Press since December 2015
and joined us from Perth,
Australia, where she was an
Administration Officer for a
charity that optimised the lives
of people living with disabilities.
She had always wanted to
travel, so she planned to come
to England to work, travel and experience a different
lifestyle. In her role with UCL Press, she looks after
the Press’s finance administration, collates download
statistics from various platforms, manages electronic
file uploads and distribution, prepares Powerpoint
presentations for the many conferences UCL Press
staff present at, undertakes mailings, manages
meetings and travel arrangements, and helps
organise events and book launches.
39
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Governance
UCL Press Board
The UCL Press Board meets once a term and its
role is to review the overall development, strategy,
policies and finances of the Press. It consists
of senior academics from UCL, as well as UCL
Library Services and UCL Press staff.
Chair: Professor David Price,
Vice-Provost (Research)
Dr Paul Ayris,
Director of UCL Library Services and
CEO of UCL Press
Professor Becky Francis,
Director of the UCL Institute of Education
Professor Susanne Kuechler,
Professor of Material Culture, and Head of
Department, Anthropology
Professor Peter John,
Professor of Political Science and Public Policy,
and Vice-Dean (Research), Faculty of Social and
Historical Sciences
Professor Timothy Mathews,
Emeritus Professor of French and Comparative
Criticism
Professor Nicola Miller,
Professor of Latin American History
Martin Moyle,
Assistant Director (Support Services),
UCL Library Services
Professor John Mullan,
Professor of English Literature and Dean of the
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Dr Samantha Rayner,
Director of the UCL Centre for Publishing
Lara Speicher,
Publishing Manager, UCL Press
Nicholas Tyndale,
Director of Research Strategy and Impact
40
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The UCL Press Board typically receives reports on,
and monitors, the following activities of the Press:
Budget
The Board reviews the UCL Press annual
budget as well as longer-term business plans
for its expenditure and activities. This provides
reassurance that the institution’s investment in the
Press is providing value for money, and that it is
delivering the desired impact.
Download and print sales statistics
How many times UCL Press books are
downloaded or sold around the world is the main
gauge of its success, and statistics for open
access downloads and print sales are carefully
collected and reviewed on a monthly basis at the
Executive Board, and at the termly UCL Press
Board meetings. These statistics are benchmarked
against other open access presses and traditional
university presses for the Board’s understanding
of UCL Press’s position in the market. In addition,
the statistics help UCL Press to monitor the
effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
New policy development
Policies for key governance principles such as
peer review, book pricing, charging non-UCL
authors and global distribution are reviewed by
the Board on a regular basis to ensure the Press’s
policies remain timely, are fit for purpose, and are
comparable to other similar publishing operations.
Marketing plans
As well as generic marketing plans to promote
UCL Press and its publications, each book
benefits from a tailored marketing plan to promote
individual titles to the relevant audience. The Board
reviews these plans to ensure that UCL Press’s
titles benefit from the widest possible visibility and
that they reach their target audience.
Proposals for new areas of activity
From time to time, UCL Press develops new
areas of activity such as providing consultancy
and publishing services to other universities.
Such developments are presented as detailed
proposals with business plans to the Board for
their consideration and approval.
Conferences at which UCL is presenting
It is important for UCL Press to maintain a high
profile in the scholarly communications and
publishing sector and a key way of doing this is
to present at relevant conferences about the work
of the Press and the impact it is having around
the world.
Book reviews
External validation of UCL Press books is an
important measure of its success. Book reviews in
national newspapers and specialist journals is one
way of monitoring this, and all book reviews are
gathered and presented to Board members
for their information.
Publishing programme development
UCL Press commissions books two-three years
ahead, and presents its pipelines of forthcoming
titles to the Board. This allows the Board to oversee
the development of the publishing programme and
to contribute to future strategic directions.
41
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Finances 2015-16
UCL Press Executive Group
The Executive Group meets on a monthly basis
to review new book proposals, to oversee
the peer review process, to review the UCL
Press budget, and to develop new policies for
presentation to the UCL Press Board.
Chair: Dr Paul Ayris,
Pro-Vice Provost Director of UCL Library
Services and CEO of UCL Press
Operational £187,690
Professor Joe Cain,
Professor of History and Philosophy of
Biology, and Head of Department, Science
and Technology Studies
Book and journal
production
£70,715.52
Peer review, copy-editing,
typesetting, printing
Professor Timothy Mathews,
Emeritus Professor of French and
Comparative Criticism
Marketing and
distribution
£45,671.37
Website, events, trade fairs, catalogue, mailings,
printing, advertising, author promotion systems
Martin Moyle,
Assistant Director
(Support Services), UCL Library Services
Digital development
and systems
£56,933.42
Online enhanced platform, digital hosting,
management system
Dr Chris Penfold,
Commissioning Editor,
UCL Press
Training and
conferences
£11,653.95
Conference attendance,
travel, training
UCL Press aims to add value to the reader
experience by disseminating UCL’s research
and teaching/learning outputs to a global
community. This supports UCL’s strategy for
global engagement by ensuring materials are
available to all, irrespective of their ability to pay.
Misc
£2,715.96
Miscellaneous
TOTAL
£187,690.22
It recognises the costs involved and the fact
that those costs are not readily recouped via
print sales in an open access model. In its
first full year of publishing, it has focussed
on establishing its reputation as a scholarly
publisher, and its primary focus will always
be on quality and dissemination.
Staff £216,883
Lara Speicher,
Publishing Manager, UCL Press
Finances
This covers five
FTE members of staff:
> Publishing Manager
> Commissioning Editor
> Managing Editor
> Marketing and Distribution Manager
> Administrative Assistant
Revenue £10,532
42
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UCL Press
The story so far
June 2015 – December 2016
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
[email protected]
ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press
@uclpress
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