Stop press! Taking a moment to reflect on 2025…
We are celebrating several milestones and successes from 2025! From landmark publications and series launches to providing a platform for thought‑provoking author conversations and contributing to wider publishing discussions, here’s a look back at what made this year memorable for us.
2️⃣5️⃣ 1. Publishing anniversaries: A landmark in the New Historical Perspectives series and two new series launched
In November, the Press proudly marked the publication of the 25th title in its acclaimed New Historical Perspectives (NHP) series: Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society: The Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow by Rachael Harkes. This title, like all NHP volumes, is fully open access, with the PDF available to download for free, alongside the ‘read online’ version, accessible via the Press’s instance of Manifold, as well as being available in print editions. Through mentorship, author workshops, and rigorous peer review, Rachael’s book reflects the exemplary early‑career support that defines the NHP series.
In February 2025, we launched Humanities Futures, an open access series spotlighting the value of humanities research in tackling urgent societal challenges – including climate change, social justice, policy, and technology. The series welcomes proposals for single-authored, multi-authored, and edited volumes that bridge disciplines and influence real-world events – please do get in touch if you have a project you think might be of interest!
April 2025 saw the debut of our Digital Cultural Heritage series, introduced at the Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory conference held at Senate House. Edited by Dr Eirini Goudarouli, Dr Anna‑Maria Sichani, and Professor Jane Winters, this series invites short-form open-access books (20,000–30,000 words), including multimedia-rich and experimental editions. The focus is on digitised and born-digital cultural heritage, explored through themes like access, value, ephemerality, and use.
📚 2. International Open Access Week: Deep dives and discussions
In October, during International Open Access Week (20th to 26th October), we published a series of new blog posts on the theme ‘Who Owns Our Knowledge?‘
- We spoke to Laura Carter and Freddy Foks, editors of Democratising History, about collaborative publishing and inclusive historical narratives.
- Dr Nicholas Maple shared his perspective on equitable research practices in Refugee Reception in Southern Africa, urging ongoing reflection on access and influence in academic work.
- Contributions from Dr Karen Attar and Professor Devyani Prabhat spotlighted the importance of open access publishing to research culture in their disciplines.
🤝 3. OIPA (Open Institutional Publishing Association) Symposium: Championing university-based open access publishing
In October, we co‑hosted the OIPA Symposium 2025, bringing together experts to share insights on experimental publishing, funding models, and governance. Highlights included a keynote by Dr Samuel A. Moore (University of Cambridge) and closing reflections from Andrew Barker (Library Director, Lancaster University). The event’s recordings and slides have been made available online.
We also took part in a webinar on ‘Good metadata practice for open access books’ with OIPA and the OABN, and our Head of Publishing, Paula Kennedy, also took part in the UKSG podcast.
Paula also contributed a piece to the OIPA blog, ‘5 minutes with University of London Press’, which gives a great overview of everything we have been working on and towards.
📝 4. Contributing to industry knowledge
In October, our Publisher Emma Gallon and former Production Manager Jamie Bowman co‑authored a case study in Learned Publishing titled ‘Reimagining the Humanities Book: Bringing Living with Machines to Life Through Experimental Publishing Workflows and Open Research Practices‘. This reflective piece explores innovative approaches to humanities monograph production, specifically with reference to our forthcoming title, Living with Machines.
Members of the Press team also shared our work on accessibility and experimental publishing and open access funding models at a variety of publishing and academic conferences, including the Digital Publishing Summit in June, the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association conference and the UKSG conference in April.
🏅 5. ASPIRE Award for Accessibility
In June 2025, the Press achieved a significant milestone by earning a gold-rated, 100% ASPIRE score for the quality and transparency of its accessibility statement – an independent validation from the ASPIRE verification service, unusual for a first-attempt evaluation. This accolade reflects our commitment to ensuring our content is not only open access but also fully accessible – with born-accessible EPUBs, alt text, remediated backlist editions, clear metadata, and dedicated user support.
This recognition positions University of London Press among the top accessibility champions in publishing, and reflects the integral importance of accessibility to our mission of opening up humanities research to diverse audiences.
🎓 6. Training support for humanities researchers
May 2025 saw the launch of our new free, online training course (‘Open Access in the Humanities’) as part of the School of Advanced Study’s RESHAPED training platform. Developed by our Publisher Emma Gallon, the course offers an introduction to open access publishing for students, researchers of all career stages, research support staff and librarians. Our annual series of free online training sessions saw its highest attendee levels so far, a trend that is already continuing into 2026.
In the summer of 2025, we expanded our Training Hub, offering practical guidance for researchers preparing book proposals and exploring open access publishing opportunities. In 2026 we’re doing even more work on the Training Hub to make our materials more accessible and easier to find and navigate. Watch this space!
✨ Looking ahead
2025 has been a year of growth and deeper engagement with the open access community and the disciplinary communities we work with.
‘The UoLP team is setting the standard for me for present and future academic publishing: quality-focused, human-driven, and open.’ — Anna-Maria Sichani, editor of Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship
2026 will build further on this, with a host of new books and series launching, including Understanding Languages, Cultures and Societies, and new titles in our Reimagining Law and Justice series. We are proud to play a role in shaping the humanities publishing landscape and, as we step into 2026, we look forward to championing new voices and pioneering sustainable open access models. Thank you to all our authors, collaborators, and readers and happy new year!