By Philippa Grand, UWP Press Manager

On Monday 4^th December 2023, in the beautiful surroundings of Fyvie Hall, members of the University of Westminster came together to celebrate the achievements of University of Westminster Press – you can find out more by reading the booklet we produced to accompany the event.

UWP was founded in 2015. We acquired our first journal, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, in September 2015, and our first book Critical Theory of Communication, published in October 2016. We now publish six journals and our 55^th book, the final title in our Law and the Senses series, published on the same day as the event. The Press operates under a ‘hybrid’ business model, meaning we fund our open access publishing activities in a variety of ways. Mainly, we are able to publish using the ‘diamond’ open access model – i.e., no fees to either authors or readers. Publishing in this way is seen as more equitable, inclusive and democratic than models that use book or article processing charges. Schemes such as Jisc’s Open Access Community Framework have helped us to extend this to even more of our authors and we are deeply grateful to libraries at Universities of Bristol, Cardiff, Lancaster, Nottingham, Manchester, Sheffield and York for their support of UWP.

The event showcased the achievements of UWP over the last 8 years. As a ‘new’ university press, UWP is part of a movement of open access publishers based within UK research institutions, alongside UCL Press, Goldsmiths Press, White Rose University Press, LSE Press and others. This is a fast-growing sector and UWP is currently holds the accolade of being the 3^rd largest of these publishers in terms of number of publications. 2023 also saw us reach a major milestone as we hit – and quickly surpassed – 3 million views and downloads of our content.

After welcoming guests with an exclusive UWP tote bag and Press merchandise, the evening opened with speeches from our VC, Peter Bonfield, and Andrew Linn, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Peter thanked all those who have supported the Press over the years. Andrew talked about the value of Press to the University noting how it supports our open research agenda, our commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals and making a positive difference, helps to promote the Westminster brand globally, and allows us to amplify our research strengths and priorities through publishing activities. 

Professor Pippa Catterall, Chair of the UWP Editorial Board, hosted a panel on the topic of ‘Open Access, UWP and Publishing Futures’. Professor Gerda Wielander, co-editor of our Cultural China titles (see here and here), talked about the importance of open access for the humanities, how to attract more academics to the OA ‘cause’ and also noted that the debate about open access needs to go beyond discussions of ‘accessibility’ to highlight other benefits too. Professor Maria Michalis, who oversees publication of the CAMRI Policy Briefs and Reports series, talked about how open access publishing can support the impact of research and reach those outside the academy – vital for research that seeks to make a difference. Dr Doug Specht, author of the textbook The Media and Communications Study Skills Guide (as well as a forthcoming student text for UWP on the creative studio) spoke about the need for OA for teaching and learning, particularly noting his experience of seeing the positive impact free access to a wide range of learning resources has on school-age students who aren’t able to use university libraries. 

As UWP Press Manager, I spoke about the future of academic publishing concluding that, ‘having a Press at Westminster gives us our own publishing laboratory – it gives us a chance to experiment and to dream of new publishing futures together. Open access shouldn’t just be about opening up research but opening up publishing to new directions, new approaches and new ideas too’.

Attendees were asked to submit their thoughts on future directions for the Press and a clear theme emerged around the arts and practice research. These fields are often left out of the open access conversation and there’s a clear gap that UWP could address by engaging with researchers here – something we plan to do more of in 2024.

Thank you to all who attended and to our panellists on the night. I was particularly delighted that Andrew Lockett, our founding Press Manager, could attend. Without his dedicated work UWP simply wouldn’t be the success it is today.  Thank you too to our Editorial Board members for supporting the work of the Press and, most of all, thank you to all UWP authors and editors for entrusting us with their publishing projects. We look forward to what 2024 will bring!