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Recently published through White Rose University Press: the first volume of the Journal of the European Second Language Association (JESLA).
As a publication with high-quality, peer-reviewed articles in the field of second language research, JESLA aims to stimulate the debate on the bilingual and multilingual individual and society. The journal publishes one issue per year comprising the best papers from the EuroSLA annual conference. In fact, this first issue comprises eleven of the best papers originally presented at the EuroSLA conferences from 2014 to 2016.
While JESLA is a new publication, it replaces the EuroSLA Yearbook Series which ran from 2001-2016. It has been very exciting for WRUP to support the transition of that established publication to its new form on our Open Access platform, making this high-quality scholarship available to all with no paywall hindering access.
We look forward to working with the team behind JESLA in the coming years, and to seeing this new publication go from strength to strength.
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Jisc’s newly-released report Changing publishing ecologies: A landscape study of new university presses and academic-led publishing maps the rise of new university presses and academic-led presses in the UK.
It’s a long report but definitely worth reading. It’s a comprehensive review of the new and changing landscape of new university academic presses. As Jisc’s Chris Keene says in the introduction:
A new wave of university presses is emerging. Common characteristics are that they are open access (OA), digital first, library-based, and they often offer a smaller set of services than a traditional publisher, blurring the line between publisher and platform… These new publishing initiatives have a potentially disruptive effect on the scholarly communication environment, providing new avenues for the dissemination of research outputs and acting as pathfinders for the evolution of academic publishing and the scholarly record.
At White Rose University Press we’re very pleased to be part of this new wave of new university presses (NUPs) and we see our model as offering an important alternative to the traditional scholarly publishing model. In common with other NUPs mentioned in the report, we don’t see our not-for-profit model as the only one or as the best one; rather, we offer one avenue in an increasingly diverse academic publishing landscape. We already have three journals online, with another due soon, and we have several monographs in the pipeline. All our content will be free to download or read online, meaning it can be disseminated and read worldwide. It won’t be behind a paywall and won’t be confined within a handful of print copies held by specialist academic libraries.
There are some really interesting points made in the report and there’s evidence that the growing community of NUPs is looking to work together and to explore new ways of working - all of which is very positive.
You can read Jisc’s blog post about the report here and you can download the full report here (PDF).
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White Rose University Press (WRUP) is very pleased to announce that the Journal of African Cultural Heritage Studies has now published its first articles. This new journal aims to be the major conduit for publishing research carried out in its subject areas, ensuring that African philosophies are represented in the heritage disciplines in both the African and global contexts. Congratulations to the journal editor, Dr Ashton Sinamai of the University of York, on the publication of their first articles.
This is also the first content that WRUP has published so we are doubly excited that it's now available for everyone to freely access, download and read. We expect this to be followed later this summer by articles in the other WRUP open access journals: the Journal of the European Second Language Association and the Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations. The first wave of WRUP monographs are also moving into production (see our 2017 catalogue for more details), and should be available to access later in 2017. Watch this space!
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Our Press Manager and members of the WRUP Management Board attended the recent UKSG Conference, where there was much discussion around scholarly communications and the open access landscape.
Highlights included Chris Banks (Imperial College London) talking about scholarly communication, and the proposed UK Scholarly Communications Licence (PDF), expanding on her Insights article where she discussed OA challenges facing librarians:
From the librarian’s perspective, OA may have started as a means of using the disruptive innovation that came about with the development of the internet in order to seek to drive down journal subscription costs, but it is increasingly seen as a mechanism by which publicly funded research can be communicated to the public at the earliest possible opportunity and without having to pay at the point of use. OA means moving the costs of publishing upstream, from the point of consumption to the point of production.
Banks, C., (2016). Focusing upstream: supporting scholarly communication by academics. Insights. 29(1), pp.37–44. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.292
Chris Keene and Graham Stone from JISC also ran a lively breakout session on new university presses and academic-led presses. In it they noted that today’s publishing environment is evolving and that new university presses like WRUP play an increasing role in the shift in scholarly communication.
They reported on a 2016 JISC study which was undertaken to understand the motivations, models, policies and future direction of these new presses. The session highlighted the appetite from authors for non-traditional publishing routes, and also noted the changes in policy (in particular regarding the REF) that make OA publishing an increasingly relevant option.
Slideshares from the day can be found at www.slideshare.net/uksg and there are also live recordings of many of the talks.
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"UK funding bodies intend the current open-access policy to be extended to monographs for the as-yet unannounced third REF"
If you're on the fence about publishing your book as open-access (OA) I urge you to read Martin Paul Eve's recent post published on HEfCE's research policy blog. He makes a number of relevant points, and acknowledges that monographs are harder to make OA than journal articles, but advocates that institutions and publishers should start thinking about the challenges now.
It's a call to arms: "I would hope to see examples of experimental or new business models for open-access monographs... If we are going to achieve a transition to open-access books, we need to have a range of funding routes to compensate the labour of publishing"
And he goes on to say "There is a persisting erroneous belief that OA books are somehow less rigorous or ‘real’ than a monograph sold as a commodity item or are reviewed to a lesser standard. There is also a wrongly-held belief that publishing digital, open-access books means eradicating print."
The White Rose University Press is proud to be in the vanguard on this: we're already experimenting with ways of publishing books open-access and have two monographs planned for 2017. Our editorial board comprises distinguished academics from across the three partner Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, and we have a rigorous process of peer review and quality control.
We're always happy to hear from scholars with monograph ideas - we can point you towards funding bodies, and those scholars from Leeds, Sheffield or York may be eligible for funding from the Libraries' waiver fund. Get in touch at universitypress@whiterose.ac.uk
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Sharp-eyed readers have noticed that the White Rose University Press now has its own YouTube channel.
We're interested in exploiting the possibilities that digital formats offer, so we're hoping to use videos and other media in some of our forthcoming books. We may link out to YouTube for some files (maybe for particularly large ones), while other media may be embedded and downloadable with an eBook.
We're experimenting with lots of ideas but in the meantime we thought we'd share a few videos that tie in with one of our books due out later this year. The book is a collection of 19th century French poet Tristan Corbière’s poetry and prose, translated into English. These videos feature readings of a selection of poems in French and in English - they'll be included in the eBook and it's hoped they'll not only be a great teaching aid but will really bring the poems to life.
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This year marks the first anniversary of the Press and we've been working with authors and editors from all three Universities, and beyond, to commission several new publications.
Full details are here: universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/site/catalogue
These include a two volume book on the archaeological excavations and discoveries at the world-famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire; the Journal of the European Second Language Association (formerly the EuroSLA Yearbook); and a translated collection of the 19th century French poet Tristan Corbiere. In addition to these, the White Rose University Press will also publish the Journal of African Cultural Heritage Studies; the Undergraduate Journal of Politics and International Relations; and the translated diary of Madeleine Blaess - a York-born alumna of Leeds and former academic at Sheffield whose diary records her time trapped in Paris during the Second World War.
We’re thrilled to have secured such a varied and interesting collection of publications in only 12 months. We feel they really reflect the diversity of research happening at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, and will firmly establish us as a respected academic press. We’re particularly excited that some of the ebooks will feature embedded videos and other innovations made possible by the digital format.
The White Rose University Press is open access and digital, with print-on-demand capability. Electronic books and journals are free to read, anywhere in the world, reaching a global audience without restrictive pay-walls. We have rigorous peer review and quality control processes, under the supervision of an editorial board of distinguished academics.
With the first twelve months under our belt, we look forward to announcing the launch dates of these first publications later this year.
Scholars throughout the UK are encouraged to get in touch to discuss proposals - we can be contacted at universitypress@whiterose.ac.uk. Academics from the partner Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York can apply for a waiver scheme to support their publications.
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Thrilled to report that next week we'll be releasing details of of some of the books and journals we'll be publishing in 2017.
This year marks the first anniversary of the Press and we've been working with authors and editors from all three Universities, and beyond, to commission several new publications.
Watch this space and keep your eyes peeled on Twitter where we'll send links and teasers: @WRUniPress
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We're pleased to confirm that White Rose University Press will be attending the annual MeCCSA Conference hosted by the University of Leeds in the new year.
We'll be speaking at the lunchtime Q&A on 'What Media Studies Academics Should Know About Open Access' (1.30pm, Friday 13th January). We'll be happy to take questions on any aspect of publishing with us and can make time afterwards to discuss specific projects with any potential authors or editors out there.
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Members of our Management Board presented at the UKSG one-day conference earlier this month. Based around the central theme of The scholarly communications ecosystem: understanding and responding to evolving expectations it was an interesting day with talks from publishers, libraries, and academics.
Expert speakers wrestled with challenging topics, including: are academics revelling in more choice, or finding themselves bewildered by new complexities? Should we expect further change as the demographic profile of the workplace begins to shift towards digital natives? How are libraries and publishers adapting their content and services to reflect changing behaviours and expectations?
We spoke about how the White Rose collaboration is working together in the scholarly comms field to achieve more than each library and institution could achieve separately. The White Rose University Press is a great example of this ‘power of three’… though it’s actually the power of four really with Ubiquity Press as our production partner. These partnerships have allowed us to set up a Press quickly, with a full publishing infrastructure, so that in our first year we’ve commissioned several titles (more news on those soon) and are currently managing quite a few more proposals through a rigorous peer review process.
January 2017 will be our first birthday and we’re thrilled at how many academics have already engaged with our open access publishing venture - most interest has come from within the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York but there have been enquiries from as far afield as Florida, Norway, and Russia. And we’re always happy to hear from academics and researchers who’d like to discuss publishing their work - get in touch.
We look forward to announcing our first publications in the new year. Watch this space...
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The Higher Education Funding Council for England has updated its FAQs, with some interesting comments about open access monograph publishing:
FAQ 7.3, in the section on credit in the REF Environment now says that the funding council is “particularly interested in any quantitative evidence of the proportion of published books that are made available as OA”.
This is great news for anyone thinking of publishing with the White Rose University Press: we have everything in place to publish your manuscript fully OA. More information on licences and other details can be found on our website.
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Our gold open access model ensures that your audience can read your work without paywalls, meaning you can reach the widest possible global audience. We know that finding funding for gold OA can be a challenge - luckily we have a list of funders that provide grants for Open Access books: universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/site/oa-funding.
For scholars from within the White Rose partner Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, WRUP also has a waiver fund, to help cover some of our charges.
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The WRUP office are attending this week’s University Press Redux conference, hosted by our colleagues at Liverpool University Press. With a focus on university presses in the UK, this event intends to provide a forum to “benchmark existing practices and map out possible future developments”.
There’s a varied line-up of speakers, ranging from old hands with established pedigrees to recently launched Open Access presses. Topics for discussion include social media for university presses, US perspectives on press/library partnerships, and policy barriers around monograph publication - alongside many more. It should be a very useful event, and shows the level of interest in university publishing in the UK. Details of the conference here.
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WRUP is currently welcoming proposals from authors and editors. We’re dedicated to supporting innovation in publishing and we’d like to hear from you if you have an idea for a book, journal, review, edited collection, textbook, data journal, or set of conference proceedings. Download our proposal form from our Publishing page, or contact us to talk about your idea.
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White Rose University Press (WRUP) is a new open access digital publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books, publishing across a wide range of academic disciplines. We are run jointly by the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York.
We are committed to open access dissemination of research and teaching materials, ensuring academic quality, and supporting innovation in publishing.
To find out about publishing your book or journal with WRUP, please contact us.