New transnational pilot program from AUP
The Association of University Presses has launched a new pilot program seeking to deepen transnational dialogue and collaboration among mission-driven scholarly publishers. The Global Partner Program will pair member presses with non-member presses in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, with the aim of amplifying the work of presses in the ‘Global South’ while also expanding the knowledge base of the university press community worldwide. Two such pairings will take place during the pilot year: South Africa’s African Minds with Duke University Press in the United States, and Uganda’s Makerere University Press with Liverpool University Press, whose director Anthony Cond proposed and designed the program.
Cambridge takes first prize at PROSE awards
Cambridge University Press has taken top prize at the Association of American Publishers’ annual PROSE awards. Simon Martin’s Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE was awarded the R. R. Hawkins Award for the most outstanding work among each year’s entries. Martin’s book was joined by another Cambridge title, David Merritt’s A Philosophical Approach to MOND: Assessing the Milgromian Research Program in Cosmology, amongst the winners of the five Excellence awards, alongside works from Harvard University Press, John Hopkins, and W. W. Norton. Cambridge also won nine of the individual subject category awards, ahead of Princeton University Press with four, and Oxford with three.
New transformative deal – and milestone – for Oxford
Oxford University Press has signed a three-year transformative read-and-publish agreement with the FinELib consortium of Finnish universities, research institutions, and public libraries. Oxford, which this month announced that more than 25,000 of its academic research books are now available online, will provide participating institutions with read access to research published in its journals, and the opportunity to publish research at no additional cost in its hybrid journals.
New diversity initiative from Princeton
Princeton University Press has launched a new grant to support underrepresented scholarly writers in drafting a book proposal. The first application cycle, running from 15th February to 1st April, will be open to women, transgender, and gender-expansive authors in science and mathematics. Grant-winners will work with a book coach and sponsoring PUP editor on their proposals, on which Princeton will have first refusal.
Busy month for OLH
The Open Library of the Humanities has announced two new members of its Library Partnership Subsidy Model: Trier University and Freie Universität Berlin. The organisation has also become a member of the community-supported Portico Digital preservation archive, which safeguards access to e-journals, e-books, and digital collections in case of ‘trigger events’ such as publisher closure or long-term platform failure. Additionally, OLH Managing Editor Dr Rose Harris-Birtill was this month awarded a place on the StellarHE programme which aims to increase the representation of BAME academic leaders in senior management positions across the Higher Education sector.
Successful KU pledging round sees more books and journals published open access
Knowledge Unlatched has announced the results of its 2020 pledging round, after hundreds of libraries pledged support for its open access initiatives. 240 books from the KU Select 2020 HSS Books Collection and 65 books from KU’s partner collections will be published OA this year, while a further 31 journals will be flipped to OA through KU’s Subscribe-to-Open partnerships with Pluto Open Journals and IWAP Open Journals.
New journals for Edinburgh
Edinburgh University Press has added two more journals to its list, taking the total to fifty. Burns Chronicle, devoted to international research on the work of Robert Burns, is published on behalf of the Robert Burns World Federation, while Legalities, a new journal, will publish interdisciplinary socio-legal scholarship.
In brief
Liverpool University Press staff will be raising money for Samaritans Liverpool and Merseyside this month by collectively walking the 430 miles from its office to Paris through their daily lockdown walks.
Edward Elgar Publishing has become the latest publisher to sign up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Publishers Compact.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.