Enjoying the 4th Association of European University Presses ([AEUP]: https://www.aeup.eu/) Conference “Sustaining the Flow: Keeping the Pages Turning in Scholarly Publishing”. Hearing some great presentations and having some great conversations!
What do you think? Do university presses have an important role to play to help secure the quality of Diamond OA publishing?
Hi Vanessa! Thanks a lot for your first post, and I have to say, I’m actually quite interested in turning the question back to you! 
Since you were at the AEUP conference, was there any discussion about the role university presses could play in strengthening the Diamond OA ecosystem? Did any concrete examples come up, are they starting to position themselves more clearly in this space? Really curious to hear what you picked up from the conversations there!
What’s with the ping pong?
At the Association of European University Presses Annual Conference, I had some great conversations around quality and Diamond OA. However, doubts always lurk on that topic! Sometimes for good reasons, but most often based on misconceptions. There is still much advocacy to be done.
Many university presses were in the room – of all shapes and sizes from all corners of Europe, some with 40 staff, more with less. Many of these university presses are publishing OA, but not all, and some have been publishing Diamond for years: demonstrating the value and quality of Diamond over time. They are champions of quality publishing and have strong, professional and trusted brands. They can help dispel the myths surrounding quality and be a voice for change to help collectively create a more equitable OA publishing system through Diamond, especially if they join forces on an international level through the AEUP or on national or regional levels. I’m excited by seeing more collaboration between university presses for innovation, standard-setting, and sustainability; long may it continue!
Dear colleagues, I would like to contribute to this space by sharing our experience as a university press that is managed with the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia’s budget but with total independence to carry out our processes: content selection, scientific evaluation, technical review, production and dissemination. In Spain, most universities have a publishing house that supports scientific communication with professional processes and open infrastructures. However, we do not have the recognition that commercial publishers have, and I believe that in the current publishing context, we have the opportunity to demonstrate the value we bring to preserving quality and sharing the knowledge generated with the community, building reliable and ethical bridges of scientific communication. Through the UNE Association we are part of a strong publishing sector in Spain supported by public institutions such as universities and research centres.
[I support multilingualism. My message is written in my native language, French, and translated into English. Read the version that suits you best and feel free to respond in the same way.]
FR
Chère Reme, merci beaucoup pour votre témoignage très intéressant. Il est vrai que dans bien des cas, les presses universitaires font un travail remarquable, qui n’est malheureusement pas assez reconnu. Dans le cas espagnol, des regroupements de presses comme la Une sont des exemples de réussite par le partage des infrastructures et des ressources.
Je voudrais revenir sur cette question du manque de reconnaissance comparé au prestige des éditeurs commerciaux. C’est une plainte que j’entends depuis longtemps et qui est souvent exprimée sur le mode de la fatalité. Ce n’est pas le cas pourtant. Il existe des presses universitaires qui ont une excellente réputation, comme par exemple UCL Press au Royaume-Uni, Presses Universitaires de Rennes en France, Firenze University Press en Italie. Comment font-elles ? Je vais tenter d’identifier quelques points communs qui pourraient définir une stratégie de succès pour les autres presses universitaires :
EN
Dear Reme, thank you very much for your very interesting testimonial. It’s true that in many cases, university presses do remarkable work, which is unfortunately not sufficiently recognized. In the case of Spain, press groupings such as La Une are successful examples of sharing infrastructures and resources.
I’d like to come back to this question of lack of recognition compared to the prestige of commercial publishers. It’s a complaint I’ve been hearing for a long time, and it’s often expressed as a fatality. But this is not the case. There are university presses with excellent reputations, such as UCL Press in the UK, Presses Universitaires de Rennes in France, Firenze University Press in Italy. How do they do it? I’m going to try to identify a few points in common that could define a success strategy for other university presses:
Critical mass: in general, a press is recognized when it builds up an extensive catalog and has a high production capacity without sacrificing quality. This gives it significant economic weight and influence. It is also possible to be a prestigious publisher with a low volume, but then you need to specialize in a well-identified niche sector.
A clear focus on distribution, communications and marketing, with the necessary human resources. Too many presses concentrate all their resources on editorial work, neglecting distribution, communication and marketting. Worse still, in some cases, they make the mistake of considering that open-access publication takes the place of distribution! But just because a book is available in open access on a platform doesn’t mean it’s necessarily discovered, known, recognized or read. Commercial publishers, who literally live off sales, put a lot of resources into this part of the publisher’s work. University presses, which are subsidized upstream, understandably spend much less. However, they should pay attention to this part of their work, as it will generate recognition, attract new authors and ultimately strengthen their position within the research institution to which they belong.
My final point is that research institutions and universities often have governance structures that are not conducive to the development of strong, recognized university presses. Why is this? It seems to me that it’s because there aren’t that many researchers with a good understanding of publishing and its importance. In some cases, the new management knows and recognizes the importance of disseminating knowledge, and gives its press the means to carry the institution’s emblem high. In too many cases, however, priorities lie elsewhere, and everything built up by predecessors is called into question. When we look at the history of many university presses, we realize that this history is often marked by ups and downs, depending on the changes in governance of the parent institutions.
This brings me to my codicil: it is very often useful for the university press to have relative autonomy from the governance of its parent institution. This can take the form of creating a separate legal entity whose capital is held by the institution, or of setting up governance mechanisms that ensure this relative autonomy within the institution. Many options exist, each with its advantages and disadvantages. But the principle of a degree of autonomy that guarantees presses a certain stability in their development cycle seems to me to be crucial in protecting them from the vagaries of downturns within their parent institution.
Pierre, c’était un plaisir de lire un discours en français; je responds pourtant en anglais.
You say that “les chercheurs qui ont une bonne connaissance du travail d’édition et de son importance ne sont pas si nombreux” [“there aren’t many researchers who have a good understanding of the work of publishing and its importance”–I altered the translation, I hope more in keeping with your original point].
I certainly agree, and would add that early career researchers often would like to publish their first book in Open Access but are worried about reaching the best possible publisher for their career (and for their hard years of doctoral research). They are well advised by their mentors, but those mentors are (necessarily) from a different generation. So what they also often lack is expert advice on the world of open access presses.
I’m responding and interested in this topic because I teach a course on “Turning your dissertation into a book” at the European University Institute and do my best to give the course participants information from the different perspectives: we invite commissioning editors from prestigious presses (in recent years Cornell, Cambridge, and Princeton), and our Library’s Open Science officer. I don’t blame them for being more attracted to the former but would like to contribute to the promotion of a high-quality, equitable, non-extractive model of Diamond Open Access. That’s why I’ve joined this forum!
@reme I have contributed a link UNE | Unión de Editoriales Universitarias Españolas.
Kind regards