Open Access
As a predominantly open access publisher, we are committed to realising the benefits of open research for humanities disciplines and researchers.
The University of London Press is an integral part of the School of Advanced Study (SAS) and the special funding it receives from Research England to promote and facilitate humanities research. This funding means that we have a unique responsibility to both develop understanding amongst researchers about open access publishing but also to offer a new space for innovation and experimentation with open access humanities publishing which we hope others can build upon, particularly for books.
Across all our activity – publishing, training and our collaborations with other publishers – we aim to offer support for open access publishing more generally and ensure that the specific needs and requirements of humanities disciplines in discussions about open scholarship are represented.
Open access books
The funding that we receive through SAS allows us to cover the costs of publishing a number of open access books in our ‘core’ book series. This means that the majority of our books programme is free to access for readers immediately on publication and with no charges to authors.
Please see our Open access policy for full details on our open access publishing model, processes and options for authors.
Our commitment to responsible open research is underscored by our transparent and rigorous policies. All new open access books published by the Press go through a robust peer review process (see Peer review and publication ethics) and the same high-quality copyediting, typesetting and production processes as our non-open access publications. You can also read about the experiences of some of our authors who have published open access books with us.
Partnerships and innovation
The academic publishing landscape is changing at a rapid pace. We are keen to take a pro-active approach in experimenting with new funding models and sustainable ways of publishing open access books without author fees. Our participation in these experiments and pilot projects plays an important role in ensuring that humanities disciplines and researchers are represented in wider discussions about open access publishing and mandates.
We currently collaborate with a number of partners on our open access publishing, including Jisc, JSTOR, OAPEN, other university presses and libraries. Read more about our this on our Projects and initiatives page.
Our support through SAS and our mission to ‘open up humanities research’ means that we offer an important forum for experimentation and innovation with open access books. Our new Manifold instance is key to this, and we will increasingly be using this platform to experiment with open peer review, iterative publishing and enhanced electronic books featuring a wealth of ancillary materials. We work closely and creatively with authors on selected projects which showcase new publishing models and the benefits of open access publishing for humanities research across different disciplines. We plan to openly share insights from the publishing process for enhanced books and will invite authors to do the same, so that other researchers and publishers can benefit from these learnings. Learn more about our enhanced editions.
Open access training and resources
Our Training hub contains a wide range of resources, videos and links to other sources of guidance to support researchers with understanding open access and other aspects of academic publishing.