Part of
08
WRUP is really excited to announce the publication of its latest monograph, Hidden Depths: The Origins of Human Connection. In this new volume, Professor Penny Spikins (University of York) explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry, and how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes.
Prof Penny Spikins explains “this new narrative places our own evolutionary history alongside similar processes seen in other mammals. Traditional accounts portray human evolution as exceptional or a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Here we discuss how emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, are key to our evolutionary journey, and that changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are differing pathways, each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. This explains many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today, and is very relevant in understanding how we respond to the challenges we face in our modern lives”.
Starting from our earliest origins, Hidden Depths explores how the movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including caring for vulnerable members of the group, and so to new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion. Prof Spikins then explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities, where changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to care about distant allies beyond their local group, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. These connections grew alongside new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging, leading to the increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, familiar to us today. In its final part, this volume contrasts the emotional dispositions of ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals, who are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today.
Prof Tom Stoneham, Chair of the White Rose University Press Editorial Board, said “This is a fabulous example of the type of volume that WRUP was created to support. The significant, new contribution to the academic discussion it makes, enhanced by the obvious passion of the author for their subject, makes this an exciting volume for us to have worked with Prof Spikins on”.
Funded by the Templeton Foundation, like all WRUP publications, Hidden Depths is an Open Access (OA) work, free to read online or download from the WRUP website. This makes it accessible across the academic community - and beyond - without any paywall barrier. The new perspectives given in the volume can therefore reach the widest possible audience.
Kate Petherbridge, White Rose University Press Manager, added “It has been brilliant to work with Prof Spikins on Hidden Depths. This book will engage a range of audiences, bringing an important new perspective to the academic discussion while remaining accessible and engaging to readers without existing specialist knowledge of the area. Making it OA is fantastic, so it’s freely and immediately available to all those who want to know more about the impact of our emotional connections to each other and the world around us”.
Now published, this book is available to read online and download for free at Hidden Depths: The Origins of Human Connection, and print copies can be purchased from the same webpage.
25
This week is International Open Access week. This year, the theme is “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity”. The announcement of this theme, on the Open Access (OA) week website, links this to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Particularly significant is this passage, also quoted on the OA Week website:
Open Science should embrace a diversity of knowledge, practices, workflows, languages, research outputs and research topics that support the needs and epistemic pluralism of the scientific community as a whole, diverse research communities and scholars, as well as the wider public and knowledge holders beyond the traditional scientific community, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and social actors from different countries and regions, as appropriate.
(UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, Page 7)
This ties very closely to the motivations behind the formation and operation of White Rose University Press (WRUP). The drive to remove the traditional barriers to scholarship and make research outputs fully available to all is central to WRUP’s ethos. The fantastic work done by scholars deserves the widest possible audience. The open model gives their research the best opportunity to make a telling contribution to wider society, as well as within their academic discipline. Open licencing also allows the content to be shared, and built on, so the research can be of maximum value, and can also contribute to ongoing discussions, potentially in unforeseen ways.
This is important. It is important from an academic perspective so that parity of access to the scholarly conversation can be achieved, and this access no longer depends on the financial position of an academic’s institution. This seems a simple statement, but for those who have run up against these barriers in the course of their research, this parity is long overdue. It should also be important to the academics publishing their research. It feels like it should be a shared goal to ensure that the whole academic community has immediate access to your published findings. This means that others can add their informed voice to the conversation, and can then use their own work to further the debate more effectively because of your research. It’s definitely important for institutions who see open scholarship as a key part of their strategies to engage with communities beyond traditional academia, both at the local level and globally. It demonstrates their concrete relevance to those outside academia who have questioned the value of the HE sector. It’s also demonstrably important to funders, who are increasingly showing, via their policies, that they require the outputs of the research they fund to be made available via open routes.
Open access to scholarly research is also important for those communities who, traditionally, were excluded from accessing these outputs. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the value of access for all to current research. Publishers removed access barriers to medical research and data related to the pandemic (https://wellcome.org/press-release/publishers-make-coronavirus-covid-19-content-freely-available-and-reusable), meaning that practitioners, policy makers, and the wider public, had access to the most uptodate thinking so their decisions and actions could be informed by the best current sources, rather than by less recent material or third hand commentaries on, or interpretations of, relevant research. That publishers removed access barriers in these extreme circumstances is commendable, but does highlight the impact these barriers do have in more normal times, and why reinstating these barriers is a backwards move (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/09/24/covid-19-has-profoundly-changed-the-way-we-conduct-and-share-research-lets-not-return-to-business-as-usual-when-the-pandemic-is-over/). This same level of access would be helpful to inform the conversations around e.g. renewable energies, in areas of education, and around understanding and working to tackle inequalities and discrimination within our communities. Opening research outputs so they can contribute to all our key conversations, at all levels, would seem a positive step.
Given the current state of flux of academic publishing, as we are seeing more emphasis on open access, including for research monographs, it is understandable that there would be concerns from academics who are used to a different publishing model and for whom this move to open access seems to be rooted in compliance with policy. That open access is about compliance is, however, a misunderstanding. An understandable one, perhaps, given that policy and compliance are the tools that are being used to drive the transition to an open environment. Compliance, however, isn’t the goal. Rather, the end goal is an open research culture, where everyone has access to the incredibly valuable contributions that academic research can make to society, and where academia globally can benefit from parity of access to academic publications. This would seem to be worth the work to achieve.
23
We are delighted to share the first Call for Papers from Writing Chinese: A Journal of Contemporary Sinophone Literature (WCJ). This new journal, published by White Rose University Press, showcases the latest peer-reviewed academic research on contemporary Chinese-language literature and its translation and global reception, alongside features on practitioners. WCJ’s combination of academic articles and practice-based notes provides a platform for, and facilitates dialogue between, both primary and secondary actors in the field. A key objective of the journal is to engage directly with scholarship in East Asia and throughout the Sinosphere, and so one section in each issue will feature newly commissioned English translations of the latest Chinese-language research.
WCJ has an Editorial Team based in The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, with Dr Sarah Dodd and Dr Frances Weightman as Editors-in-Chief. They lead an international Editorial Board in supporting this new journal and shaping its growth. Dr Weightman said “there has never been a more important time to engage seriously with contemporary Chinese literature.” Dr Dodd added “We’re also looking forward to publishing newly translated works of Chinese scholarship, in order to really engage with current debates. We hope that the Journal will become a key platform for some of the exciting scholarship being carried out in this field.” Alongside submissions received in response to this Call for Papers, the inaugural issue of WCJ will also include keynotes from Professor Bonnie S. McDougall (Honorary Associate in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney and Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh) and renowned poet, academic, and translator Xi Chuan 西川 (Beijing University).
The journal is proud to be entirely Open Access, with no financial charges for authors who publish with WCJ. Kate Petherbridge, WRUP Press Manager, said “It’s great to see this journal put out its first Call for Papers. The articles published by WCJ will join the growing pool of high-quality scholarship available globally without financial barrier. It’s also fantastic to see that the journal charges no publication fees to authors, making it both free to publish with and free to read”.
The WCJ website gives more details on this Call for Papers, as well as information on Submissions and Author Guidelines. Expressions of interest should be addressed, in the first instance, to the Editors at writingchinese@leeds.ac.uk, as should any general enquiries about the journal.
12
The University of Leeds has today announced the winners of the first Leeds Early Career Publishing Prize, supported by White Rose University Press. The prize celebrates PhD research and supports authors to publish an open access monograph. We are thrilled that WRUP will have the opportunity to work with Olena Gundarina, Yuliya Kazanova and Andrea White, the three prize winners, and support them through our commissioning processes. We really hope this will result in the WRUP Editorial Board commissioning open access monographs based on the prize-winning proposals, and that we can help the authors share their exciting research.
Of the Prize, Luke Windsor (Dean of the Leeds Doctoral College) said “The prize highlights our excellent postgraduate research and provides a firm platform for catalysing the impact of individual postgraduate researchers. The winners will have the opportunity to develop their outstanding doctoral projects into impactful and publishable book proposals, and potentially to disseminate their work through White Rose University Press".
The prize winners have all described why publishing with an open access press is important to them. Yuliya Kazanova, whose PhD research offered a new look at the tragic irony in selected works by Graham Greene, said: "I am a strong supporter of open-access publishing because it makes research freely available to all those interested, irrespective of their academic and economic background. I did my MA in Ukraine, my native country, and remember how frustrating it was when many scholarly publications in English literature, which I needed for my thesis, were inaccessible because they were too expensive to buy for the university library and for me personally.”
Olena Gundarina studied Russian-speaking migrant children’s experiences in UK primary schools and said: “I am especially delighted that the open access nature of this publication will ensure my own additions can be accessed by as many seekers of knowledge as possible, wherever and whoever they are. I believe that open access publishing should lie at the core of all research dissemination.”
Andrea White’s research examined Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Action and she welcomed the opportunity to share her research with a wider audience: “I believe the output of academic research should be available to anyone who is interested to read it. Most research is conducted to advance knowledge or improve people’s lives, and it seems to me that the best way for research to achieve that purpose is for it to be accessible to all.”
Nick Plant added: “The University of Leeds is committed to Open Research, ensuring that our work can reach all those who can benefit from it. With my twin hats of Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation and Editorial Board member for White Rose University Press, I am delighted that we can both recognise the outstanding work from these talented early career researchers and support its open dissemination.”
The winning proposals that move successfully through peer review and are commissioned for publication will be available through the WRUP website once published.
02
The latest monograph from White Rose University Press, Capability Brown, Royal Gardener: the Business of Place-Making in Northern Europe, is now published.
Lancelot “Capability” Brown was the most influential landscape designer of the eighteenth-century, and his name became synonymous with what became known as the ‘English landscape garden’. The extent and nature of his influence are, however, still fiercely debated. This important new volume is the first publication since the tercentenary celebrations of his birth in 2016, and takes Brown’s neglected role as royal gardener for its starting point and explores Brown’s business methods, working method, contemporaries, collaborators, and European influence. Edited by Prof Jonathan Finch (University of York) and Dr Jan Woudstra (University of Sheffield), it brings together for the first time a number of perspectives from a varied range of engaging authors, with contributors drawn internationally from archaeology, art history, history and landscape architecture; from scholars and expert practitioners. It provides new insights into both Brown and his career, as well as shedding new light on his landscape practice, his way of working, in a national and international context.
Prof Jonathan Finch explains “In this book we explore Brown’s career, placing him within the world of nurserymen and landscape designers, and his practice of recruiting and retaining a well-paid circle of workmen, draughtsmen and designers, allowed him to manage a huge number of projects and a substantial financial turnover. A key component of his career and reputation was grounded in his position as royal gardener, something which has perhaps been neglected. The English landscape garden, with which he was so closely associated, continued to influence landscape aesthetics and design well into the nineteenth century across Northern Europe.”
This richly-illustrated volume results from a conference held at Hampton Court Palace, and organised in association with the universities of East Anglia, Sheffield and York, and Historic Royal Palaces which drew together academics from a variety of disciplines as well as practitioners working in historic gardens, who demonstrated new insight into Brown’s legacy and lasting impact in previously under-explored areas. Captured in this volume are some of the key perspectives, with the diversity of contributors speaking to the many different facets of Brown’s importance.
Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator, Historic Royal Palaces and BBC presenter said “This book eloquently demonstrates that Capability Brown was first and foremost a place-maker and business man, but that in order to get a full understanding of his importance we must consider his role as a royal gardener who had an impact both at home and in continental Europe. This volume brings together a group of international experts who have collaborated to paint one of the most vivid and fascinating accounts of his life, times and importance as a royal gardener in the eighteenth century”.
Capability Brown, Royal Gardener weaves together strands from across a broad range of disciplinary interests. It makes an important new contribution to the scholarly discussion of Brown’s work and legacy. Relevant to students and academics at all levels, as well as to practitioners and anyone interested in Capability Brown and his landscapes, this volume brings new perspectives on Capability Brown the man, and on his impact on the business of place-making, not just in Britain but across Northern Europe.
Dr Jan Woudstra adds “Brown is unusual as he was feted in his time and recognised by the Crown. However, his style was readily copied over his later life and, particularly, after his death. Arguably this ubiquity led to the denigration of his achievements and even his character, particularly by the agents of the Picturesque. He has been characterised as a destroyer of earlier landscapes, whilst the lack of any primary material from Brown himself has hindered attempts to provide a rounded and credible account of the man and his works. Here, by exploring his practices, associates, collaborators, and his role as Royal Gardener, new light can be thrown on the man, his landscapes and his landscape legacy”.
Importantly, the book is available as an Open Access (OA) work, free to read online or download from the White Rose University Press website, with print copies also available to buy through the print on demand ordering service. This is one of the first OA publications of this scale in this field, opening up the ground-breaking scholarship within and making it accessible to everyone- scholars and practitioners alike- without any financial barrier. In publishing the book in this way, Finch and Woudstra, and their contributors, are in the vanguard of the OA movement, contributing to a growing pool of high-quality open academic content.
Kate Petherbridge, White Rose University Press Manager, reflected “It is fantastic to see volumes like this published open access. Recent events have really brought home the importance of having quality scholarship like this available digitally without barrier, and Capability Brown, Royal Gardener shows just what authors who embrace this can achieve”.
Available from 2 Nov 2020, this book is published with the support of funding from the University Libraries of Sheffield and York. It is available to buy, or to read online and download for free, from https://doi.org/10.22599/CapabilityBrown.
07
It's with a great deal of pleasure we can announce the publication of Sheffield Castle: Archaeology, Archives, Regeneration, 1927-2018. Written by Professor John Moreland (University of Sheffield) Professor Dawn Hadley (now University of York), with Ashley Tuck and Mili Rajic from Wessex Archaeology, this volume brings to light the castle’s impressive history – largely unknown or ignored up until now – and places it right alongside some of Britain’s greatest castles.
This new, definitive account reveals that Sheffield Castle played a major role in local, national and international affairs in the medieval era, and shaped the development and topography of modern day Sheffield. For the first time, findings from all of the major excavations at the castle – conducted in the 1920s, 50s and 90s – are published in one place, with the results of the most recent excavations of Sheffield Castle led by Wessex Archaeology in 2018.
Importantly, the book is available as an Open Access monograph, free to read online or download. The archives on which the book is based will also be freely available via the Archaeology Data Service. The team behind the book believe this material belongs to the people of the city and they are now able to share it not only with the local community but globally, bringing new audiences to this historical place.
Professor John Moreland says: “Sheffield is seen by most people as the Steel City, but what our research makes clear is that the city has a deep history that dates right back to the Middle Ages. Unfortunately since the castle was largely destroyed following the English Civil War and multiple developments have been built on its site ever since, this rich medieval history of the city has largely been forgotten or ignored.
“While we should certainly celebrate the city’s rich industrial heritage, our studies have revealed Sheffield’s importance on the national and international stage, as a city with a deep history reaching back into the Middle Ages.
Professor Dawn Hadley adds: “Our analysis of the archives from the 20th-century excavations has enabled us to tell the story of the changing contexts in which urban excavation has been conducted over the course of almost a hundred years. We show how archaeological priorities and methods have changed, as have the regeneration agendas with which the archaeologists were engaged from the 1920s onwards.
“We have digitised the archives and made them freely available to all via the Archaeology Data Service, safeguarding their future for generations to come; we hope researchers and members of the public across the world will be inspired to find their own stories in the archives. We are also delighted to publish the book open access, free to read online and download, enabling university-led research to reach the widest possible readership.”
WRUP has been delighted to work with the authors on this project, bringing new light to the ongoing impact of Sheffield Castle on the city, and those who live there.
03
We are very pleased to announce the publication of Dickens After Dickens. Released to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Dickens’s death, this collection of engaging and varied research is edited by Dr Emily Bell, an alumna of University of York and now Research Associate in Digital Humanities at Loughborough University. This new book offers a creative and accessible discussion of Dickens’s continued and evolving influence, and the nature of his legacy across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. It shows the surprising resonances that Dickens continues to have, arguing that his impact can be seen in mainstream cultural phenomena such as HBO’s TV series The Wire and Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch, as well as in diverse areas such as Norwegian literature, video games and neo-Victorian fiction. It discusses Dickens as a biographical figure, an intertextual moment, and a medium through which to explore contemporary concerns around gender and representation. The new research in this book brings together a range of methodologies, approaches and sources, offering an accessible and engaging re-evaluation that will be of interest to scholars of Dickens, Victorian fiction, adaptation, and cultural history. It is also relevant to teachers, students, and general readers who are fascinated by how we continue to be influenced by Dickens’s work. “The broad appeal of this volume to the scholarly audience and beyond is a key reason why we are so excited to release it as an Open Access book” said Kate Petherbridge, WRUP Press Manager. “Making it freely accessible to as wide a readership as possible means that everyone can enjoy the scholarship within”. With a foreword by Professor Juliet John (Royal Holloway, University of London), author of Dickens and Mass Culture (OUP), and with contributions from an international group of authors, Dickens After Dickens shows that, 150 years after his death, Dickens is still a strong influence across cultural boundaries. It can be read and downloaded for free here:
doi.org/10.22599/DickensAfterDickens
Print copies are also available to buy from the same link.
20
We were very pleased to see a lovely review of our book Tristan Corbière: Oysters, nightingales and cooking pots, Selected Poetry and Prose in Translation in the Oxford University Press journal: French Studies, Volume 74, Issue 1 p.136-137.
It was particularly pleasing to see them describe it as a "delightful bilingual collection of poems in parallel" in which translator Christopher Pilling "takes up the challenge with brio and ingenuity for a second time... [and] has reproduced a poetic treasure trove for the anglophone reader".
You can download or read a copy for free here: Tristan Corbière: Oysters, nightingales and cooking pots, Selected Poetry and Prose in Translation. Look out for the embedded links to videos of some of the poems being read in French and English.
04
WRUP were very pleased this week to learn that the team at the Star Carr project were honoured with the Current Archaeology Research Project of the Year Award for 2020. Over a decade of research at Britain’s most important Mesolithic site was published by White Rose University Press in 2018 and you can read the books here: Volume 1 and Volume 2. Since publication in April 2018 the volumes have had over 20,000 combined views and downloads. Congratulations to Professor Nicky Milner, Dr Chantal Conneller, Dr Barry Taylor, and all the project team at Star Carr.
11
We are really excited to be working with the University of Leeds, supporting their Early Career publishing prize. The prize is open to University of Leeds PhD graduates from 2017, 2018 and 2019, who will enter by submitting a proposal explaining how they would turn their thesis into a monograph.
Prize-winners will receive a £250 cash prize each. All prize-winning proposals will be considered for publication as OA monographs by White Rose University Press, following the normal quality-driven commissioning process, including peer review. WRUP will support successful authors throughout the publication process, and all publication fees will be paid as part of the prize.
For more info, and contact details of who to talk to at the University of Leeds about this prize, visit: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/publishing-prize/
05
We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest WRUP monograph, edited by a team of academics from the University of Leeds: Clare Wright, Lou Harvey and James Simpson. This accessible, eclectic and forward-looking collection highlights current globalised perspectives on diversity in language use and communication across a variety of contexts. It will be of interest to established and emerging researchers, language professionals, practitioners, and policy makers.
Applied linguistics is the academic field which connects knowledge about language to decision-making in the real world. This collection of research was presented in Leeds at the conference marking the 50th anniversary of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL). BAAL has played a key role in the growth and development of applied linguistics as a discipline and this volume celebrates the diversification of the discipline over the past 50 years.
Kate Petherbridge, Press Manager said “It's really exciting to have worked with Dr Wright and her fellow editors on this collection. We are thrilled that our open access platform will make this engaging scholarship available globally".
This is the fourth book WRUP have published in the last 18 months and we hope to add to this growing title-list significantly in the next year.
It can be read and downloaded for free using the DOI https://doi.org/10.22599/BAAL1. Print copies can also be purchased via our website.
24
It's Open Access Week again and our Press Manager has written a blog post about one of our journals: the Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations. It's an interesting discussion of the genesis of a journal and on the benefits of publishing OA (and being able to read freely). Do take a read:
03
The Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations (UJPIR) saw great success with its first volume. The most popular article ‘Why was Iraq Invaded in 2003?’ has had more than 2500 views and downloads. In total, the articles in the first issue have been accessed 7372 times.
Edited by Dr. Simon Lightfoot (Pro Dean Student Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leeds), UJPIR offers undergraduates the chance to work their original research (often - but not always - from their UG thesis) into a fully fledged, peer reviewed journal article. This gives them experience of scholarly publishing that may help them take their first steps into an academic career. It also means that their relevant and high-quality research and its findings can be accessed by a global audience.
The second volume has made a strong start, with 4 articles published initially. These cover a range of topics from the paradoxes of the German extreme Right, to criminal justice policy in the US. In the first 2 weeks since this issue was released the 4 articles have been read a combined total of nearly 100 times. UJPIR welcomes submissions internationally, and their submission and editorial policies can be found on the journal website at www.ujpir-journal.com.
02
Penny Spikins (Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of York) is known for her research on cognitive and social evolution, having previously written on the evolution of compassion and self-control (amongst other areas of focus). In her latest book, Hidden Depths; the Palaeolithic origins of our most human emotions (WRUP, expected 2020), Dr Spikins explores the origins of our modern emotional minds, including concerns with reputation and emotional sensitivity, contending these lie in transformations taking place thousands and even millions of years ago.
This new book will complement Dr Spikins’ existing work in this area. It will discuss ecological and evolutionary processes, as well as the archaeological record, and consider how two key emotional transitions - an early transition to human compassion and a later transition to human tolerance - laid the basis for our modern social and emotional cognition.
As a recognised authority in this field, Dr Spikins has appeared in national press and media talking about evolutionary anthropology and human origins - recently contributing to a BBC Radio 3 programme “The Way We Used To Feel” which you can listen to here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07613jh.
WRUP are delighted to be working with Penny on her latest book.
04
White Rose University Press has a strong commitment to disseminating our books as widely as possible. We are therefore very pleased to announce that since the beginning of 2019 our monographs have been available via JSTOR.
JSTOR is one of the most widely-used platforms for academic content globally, so placing our books with them ensures they are easily findable by a huge audience. It is very often the starting-point for students and academics looking for quality scholarly outputs. It is free to search and our books are downloadable by chapter.
Since January 2019, the have seen a combined total of almost 1500 views and downloads through this portal alone.
26
We are used to the idea that many funders and universities want academics to publish articles Open Access (OA). However, dismay met the push to make monographs available OA as well. In 2016, HEFCE (as it then was) flagged the expected expansion of OA requirements to monographs in the third Research Excellence Framework (REF). When this was discussed during the University Press Redux in February 2018 there was great debate about whether this is realistic - or even desirable. So what are the concerns and are they valid? What would be the benefits of OA monographs?
What is Open Access?
The International Open Access Week website describes OA as “the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need”. In order to achieve the second aspect, content needs to be licensed to enable reuse. Commonly, this means that content is published under Creative Commons Licences, which allow authors to retain the rights to their work and to set the conditions around which others can copy, distribute, and reuse that work.
Why is it important?
OA is important for a number of reasons. The obvious ones include meeting REF requirements and funding conditions. OA content tends to be viewed more than content that needs to be paid for, and this often results in higher citation rates. The increased visibility helps build your academic reputation. OA brings research to new audiences, inside and outside academia, and this is likely to increase public engagement. Increasing the public’s perception of the relevance of HE is important in the current climate, and demonstrating this has been difficult when the research done is closed and inaccessibly to so many. It also brings the maximum value from research by allowing it to be reused as a building block in ongoing conversations and research.
When is Open Access not really Open Access?
To start with, let's look at OA models for article publishing. These are now widely accepted (though it’s worth remembering the concerns when this discussed began). The Green OA model seems most common. Academics deposit a pre-publication version of their accepted article manuscript in either an institutional or subject repository. They then publish their article, often in a traditional journal. After an embargo period, set by the publisher but (hopefully!) in line with the funder’s criteria, the repository version can be accessed for free. So while the published article may still sit within a subscription journal, a free version is available to everyone once the embargo period ends.
All good, right? Well, yes and no. The repository version is not the same as the published article (usually considered the “version of record”). Academics can find this frustrating. The arguably more accessible repository version (embargo period aside) sometimes lacks key formatting, may not look as professional, and will lack citation-relevant structure (page numbers etc.). Having multiple versions can also mean it’s harder to measure impact and combine metrics etc. Repository versions can also fall under publisher copyright, preventing them being shared and reused freely. This doesn’t really embrace the full spirit of OA (even if it does tick all the boxes from a funder perspective).
Hybrid journals publish some articles free-to-access while others remain behind subscription paywalls. Again, while this offers free access to the OA articles, the copyright remains with the publisher so limiting sharing and reuse. Many funders are now considering if hybrid journals really do meet their OA criteria.
Gold OA, where an article is published in a full OA journal, with no issues around different versions, paywalls or embargo periods, and where the content is published under a licence that allows sharing and reuse, delivers both the free access and reuse aspects of OA.
So... back to monographs
That was relevant. Really! Having a clear understanding of how OA monographs models could work in practice will save time if we hope to include monographs in the third REF.
A Green OA monograph model sees the book sold for a period before becoming free to access online. While being sold it would presumably be “rights reserved” but could flip to a more liberal licence once it becomes OA. This is almost equivalent to the article embargo period. Some publishers already use this model, or something very similar. It doesn’t replicate the version/formatting issues we see with Green OA article publishing, but does create other questions.
Is it fair to the book’s audience that one day they have to pay for something that becomes free the next? Publishers would need to declare the “becomes free” date to prevent backlash. This could change customer behaviour, with readers waiting till the book was free to access it. In the current context of ever-increasing pressure on library budgets, it’s hard to justify buying access to research that will become free for everyone after 12 months. This could then delay the impact of the research by a year, which would frustrate authors and funders keen to see research embraced by the academic community.
There is also question of sustainability. Green OA for articles doesn’t require funding of publishing charges. The publisher covers the costs out of profit made from journal subscriptions, as normal, while the author simply deposits e.g. a PDF of the pre-published manuscript in a repository. For monographs publication costs will apply. These are unlikely to be covered by e.g. a single year of sales. If OA publishing becomes widespread, how will publishers fund these monographs unless passing costs on to funders/institutions? If that happened, wouldn’t this be the Gold model with a delay?
Gold OA monographs
Gold OA for monographs would see instant free access to the full published version with maximum potential impact through widest possible dissemination from initial release. A recent White Rose University Press (WRUP) publication, Star Carr, reached nearly 1000 downloads in its first week of release and has now reached well over 4000 downloads after 6 months. Published under liberal licences, so the author retains ownership of their work and to enable sharing and reuse, this would seem to be the obvious solution. So what is the problem?
Who pays?
It’s a thorny issue. Gold OA is often called “author pays”- though in reality funding should come from funding bodies, institutions, societies rather from the author themselves. It might be more accurate to call it a “funding required” model. This is likely to be true of any sustainable OA monograph model if we are honest so it’s probably best to explore how to handle it. In Plan S, Science Europe’s cOAlition S addresses fees and funding (who should pay, potential capping). Institutions need to consider the reason for the research they support. Surely, releasing the knowledge gained can only help in engaging with the public, with outreach, with student recruitment etc. as we showcase what we do in HE and why this is so important. Shouldn’t that be part of a business model and so worth investment?
How can we ensure quality?
There is a suspicion, hopefully dwindling, that OA content is of a lesser quality. This may come from misunderstanding “author pays”- they pay and OA publishers will publish anything. This is not the case, and it should be noted that “vanity publishing” is neither new nor linked exclusively to OA. As with any publisher, academics should consider the publisher’s quality control process. How are works commissioned? Is there rigorous Peer Review? What will the quality of the published output be? Publishers, OA or not, should be able to answer such questions. WRUP, for example, details its Editorial Board, commissioning and peer review process on it’s website, and authors can explore for themselves (freely!) the quality of the digital publications.
What about third party content?
It’s assumed to be difficult to use third party content in OA publishing. (Which is ironic, as if everyone published content OA, there would be no barriers). This doesn’t have to be a problem. Most right holders don’t have policies in place for use of their content in OA publications, though a growing number do, and WRUP has found that most are very reasonable when the OA model is explained. Third party content can be licenced separately from the main volume e.g. in an image caption- very much as you might see in a traditional publication. Often the issue for a rights holder can be around the free to access digital version of their content. This is little different in terms of risk to putting the image on their website, if the same rights statement is applied. Working through this can put the rights holder’s concerns to rest. Authors can also search content licenced for reuse (a growing amount is), especially where something is illustrative only rather than a specific image being required.
Isn’t OA complicated? Who can help?
Like anything new, OA can seem complicated. There are lots of people around that can help. Most institutions have a Research Support Team in their Library: Open Access is just one of the many areas they can advise on. And you can always contact us on universitypress@whiterose.ac.uk for help and to answer any general questions about OA publishing, or to discuss potential proposals for journals or monographs.
Support is out there and the appetite for OA is growing, as is the pool of scholarly OA content. Engaging with the drive to include monographs in this would seem the next logical step.
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This week saw the release of of Oysters, nightingales and cooking pots: selected poetry and prose of Tristan Corbière translated by Christopher Pilling, and edited by Richard Hibbitt and Katherine Lunn-Rockliffe. It offers, for the first time in English, some unpublished poems, early versions of published poems, and a collection of prose pieces, all of which testify to Corbière’s sly humour, linguistic glee, and irony.
A bilingual edition, including the original French with English translations, this volume complements Pilling’s 1995 translation of Les Amours jaunes. Taken alongside that volume, it makes Corbière’s complete works available in English for the first time.
Born in Brittany in 1845, Corbière died at only 29, leaving a scattered assortment of texts. Playful and comic, his work is also experimental, subversive and moving. Combining descriptions of his native Brittany and the urban wilderness of Paris, with witty introspection he builds a kaleidoscopic view of the world. Although a contemporary of Rimbaud and Mallarmé, Corbière wrote very much in isolation, developing his own idiosyncratic style. Almost unnoticed in his own lifetime, his ironic wit was championed by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, and his influence in the English-speaking world has arguably been at least as important as in France.
Christopher Pilling is an award-winning poet, playwright and translator. He has translated a number of poets, mainly from French but also from Latin. His first major translation was also of Corbière’s work, published to great critical acclaim as These Jaundiced Loves (1995).
The editors said “This book will appeal both to general readers interested in poetry and to an academic
audience interested in nineteenth-century French literature or Corbière specifically. It will be of particular interest to those who want to find out more about a cult figure of the period, who is still little-known”.
“We are very excited about bringing the poetry and translations in this volume to as wide an audience as possible” said Kate Petherbridge, the Press Manager. “Christopher began his association with the University of Leeds as a student in the 1950s and it’s fantastic that this continues with the publication of this volume by White Rose University Press”.
This bilingual edition, with an introductory chapter and annotations, also features video readings of some of the poems in both French and English. It is the third book to be published by White Rose University Press, joining the successful Star Carr volumes, and the newly published Occupation diaries of Madeleine Blaess. Oysters, nightingales and cooking pots can be read and downloaded for free through the White Rose University Press website. Print copies are also available to buy online.
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We are proud to announce the release of 320 rue St Jacques: the Diary of Madeleine Blaess - a translation of the Occupation diaries of a Sheffield academic, by Dr Wendy Michallat. This is the second monograph published by White Rose University Press, and follows a two-volume work on Star Carr published in April this year. That work was incredibly well received and the volumes are approaching a combined download total of 3,500 after four months on release.
Translated from the French for the first time, this new book reveals the compelling testimony of a young, female academic who found herself trapped in Paris during the Occupation. French-born, but raised in York, Madeleine studied at the University of Leeds. In November 1939 she went to Paris to study for her doctorate at the Sorbonne. In June 1940, the German invasion cut off her escape route and prevented her return to Britain. She was forced to remain in France and began to write a diary. Barely missing an entry for almost four years, Madeleine provides an unprecedented day-by-day account of the struggle to manage material deprivation, physical hardship and mental exhaustion during the Occupation. The reader shares the detail of Madeleine’s experiences, where the loss of friends and acquaintances - either through death or imprisonment - becomes commonplace, and where the battle to stay warm and find enough food is in stark contrast to the drive of a young woman in Paris to further her academic career.
Madeleine survived the war and went on to lecture at the University of Sheffield for forty years. After her death, she donated her archive to the University of Sheffield, where it remains in the care of the University Library’s Special Collections Department. The diaries were almost lost, however, and were found under Madeleine’s bed rather than with the bulk of her papers.
Dr Michallat, Head of French Studies at the University of Sheffield, has been working on this translation since 2014. She said “I am thrilled to see Madeleine’s diaries published and made public at long last. Not only is this an important record of civilian life in Paris during the Second World War but it’s also a testament to Madeleine’s personal resilience and determination. She achieved her ambition of becoming a university academic at a time when there was little encouragement for women to prioritise education and career over marriage and motherhood - her diaries tell the story of a remarkable woman.”
“When Wendy first approached us about publishing this translation” said Kate Petherbridge, the Press Manager, “we knew immediately that this was a very exciting project. Madeleine lived in York, went to Leeds University and eventually became a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. She was an extraordinary woman, with a strong connection to Yorkshire that lasted throughout her life, and White Rose University Press is proud to publish her diary”.
Translated into English for the first time, with introductory chapters and annotations, the diary can be read and downloaded for free through our website. Print copies are also available to buy online.
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We are very pleased to announce that the second volume of the Journal of the European Second Language Association is now available on our platform!
The peer-reviewed published articles are selected from submissions based on the best papers from the EuroSLA annual conference - last year this was held in Reading, UK. The new volume is published in advance of this year's EuroSLA conference in Münster, Germany, Sept. 5th – Sept. 8th, 2018. The scope of the journal covers fundamental and applied issues in second language learning and the readership includes second language researchers from the fields of linguistics, psychology, sociology, education, as well as related sub-disciplines and interdisciplinary areas.
Each year a paper is awarded the prize of Best Article. This year's prize-winner is the article Foreign language learning in the third age: A pilot feasibility study on cognitive, socio-affective and linguistic drivers and benefits in relation to previous bilingualism of the learner by Simone E. Pfenninger and Sabrina Polz.
Last year the most popular article from Volume 1 was Examining the LLAMA aptitude tests by Vivienne Rogers, Paul Meara, Thomas Barnett-Legh, Clare Curry, and Emma Davie - it had 1205 views and 352 downloads. We hope that Volume 2 will enjoy similar success!
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On Thursday 21 June, colleagues from across the White Rose Libraries collaboration travelled down to London to the THELMA awards dinner. This was the first time White Rose Libraries had been shortlisted for a THELMA, and our entry was in the category of Outstanding Library Team. This recognised work done on shared collection management, targeted staff training, and also the development and progress of White Rose University Press. This has been a very significant achievement for White Rose Libraries, and the timing of the THELMAs could not have been better - coming so soon after the publication of the very well received Star Carr monograph.
In a category with such depth, it was a great achievement just to be shortlisted, and it was absolutely fantastic to actually win. This recognised the incredible work done by colleagues across all three White Rose Libraries, and we believe that the collaborative nature of our work was key in winning the award. The judges felt that “White Rose University Press [is] an exemplar of effective teamworking across the partner institutions”.
It was fantastic to see this collaboration and teamworking fully represented at the awards dinner, with colleagues from all three libraries representing the full range of White Rose projects. It was also a great opportunity for us to hear about the innovative work being done in different areas across so many HE institutions. Congratulations to all who were shortlisted this year, and to all those who were successful on the night.
Looking forward, hopefully we can continue to build on what has been a fabulous year for White Rose Libraries, and for White Rose University Press, and continue to make the most of the opportunities that working collaboratively brings.