Cambridge University Press to be merged with Cambridge Assessment
The University of Cambridge has announced that Cambridge University Press, the world’s oldest publisher, will be merged with the university’s international exams group Cambridge Assessment from August 1st next year, after which the newly-unified organisation will be run by current CUP chief executive Peter Phillips. The move, described as a response to ‘a growing desire from learners, teachers and researchers to engage with Cambridge in a joined up digital way’, is said to have been accelerated by ‘the rapid uptake of digital education during the COVID-19 pandemic’.
Cambridge’s journals division has announced that it will be requesting that most of its journals be given Transformative Journal status by cOAlition S as part of a commitment to transition them to full Open Access. To achieve such status, journals must promise to increase the share of research articles they publish openly each year before flipping to full OA when that share reaches 75 per cent; they must also actively promote OA to authors. The Press has rejected the other route to cOAlition S compliance – making authors’ accepted manuscripts OA without an embargo period – as it believes the model is likely to undermine a path to sustainable Open Access.
CUP has also announced that its free collection of coronavirus research, which involved the waiving of almost 1,000 APCs and the publication of most papers online within 48 hours, has seen 1.7 million articles downloads in the eight months to September.
New open access move from the Central European University Press
The Central European University Press has announced that it will be transitioning to an open access monograph programme through its new library subscription membership initiative, Opening the Future. Revenues from subscription packages – which will give subscribers access to a selection from the press’s extensive backlist – will be used to make newly-published titles openly available to all. Membership is open to libraries and institutions worldwide, and the initiative is being run in collaboration with the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project, Project MUSE, LYRASIS, and OAPEN.
Good month for the Open Library of the Humanities
The Open Library of the Humanities, which last month celebrated its fifth anniversary, has marked the occasion by picking up the Small Digital Publisher of the Year award at the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) Digital Publishing Awards 2020. In a successful month for the organisation, it has also announced two new users of its Janeway publishing platform: University of Arizona Libraries and Michigan Publishing Services.
In brief
Bristol University Press and its imprint Policy Press have announced the launch of their inaugural Library Advisory Board, which will offer feedback and advice from librarians on the strategic questions that impact their shared audiences. The board includes members from libraries across three continents.
Liverpool University Press has announced a new series, Women in Ancient Cultures, publishing monographs and edited volumes exploring the influence of women across the world from 4000 to 800 BCE.
Princeton University Press has added to its already extensive work in audio by launching a new Ideas podcast, featuring interviews with press authors across a wide range of subject areas. The first episode went live on October 15th and is available across a range of platforms.
OpenAthens has called for applications for its Best Publisher User Experience Award 2021; the deadline is November 5th, and the winner will be announced at the Access Lab conference in March 2021. The inaugural winner, announced earlier this year, was Emerald Insight.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.