Rebels with a Cause? Supporting New Library and Scholar-led Open Access Publishing through Organic Collaboration and Academic Community Building

In 2017, several reports were published highlighting the growth of new innovative publishing operations in Europe. Jisc’s “Changing
publishing ecologies: a landscape study of new university presses & academic-led publishing” showed a discernible increase in new publishing initiatives in the UK over the last few years.The “Academic Books and their Future” report, published in June 2017, highlighted that many of these new scholarly communication models were closely linked to university libraries, almost all
were committed to OA journal and monograph publishing. Regarding OA monographs, the Knowledge Exchange “Landscape study on open access and monographs” was an in-depth study, which compared and contrasted access to books across eight European countries. Many presses highlighted in this study are engaging with new models for OA book publishing are academic or library-led.
However, the Academic Book of the Future report highlighted a number of issues regarding these innovative ventures. Many are still relatively small-scale start-ups with few staff and small numbers of journal and monograph publications.The report suggested that “at present, they have more in common with the world of self-publishing than with the more established presses”. Concerns regarding the perceived lack of professionalism and quality of these new presses were also heard at the UP Redux conference in February 2018. The presenters of this panel argue against this perception. The session will outline the landscape before providing examples of how these initiatives, albeit differing in scale, form, and ambition are adhering to academic quality standards and often surpassing them, and are actively going through processes of professionalization, including initiatives to collaborate in collectives and consortia to enable further collaboration.