Tag: journals

New Collection on ‘Deliberation Amid Deep Conflict’ from the Journal of Deliberative Democracy now available

The Journal of Deliberative Democracy has published a new thematic collection on the theme of ‘deliberation amid deep conflict’. Societies marked by deep divisions post challenges for deliberation. They may have entrenched interests, power inequities and a history of ill-will and misconceptions – yet deliberation also potentially transforms intergroup conflict and promotes reconciliation, mutual respect and cooperation.

Drawing on articles from the last ten years, this collection spotlights the functions, practices and limitations of democratic deliberation during conflict, exploring how deliberation can cultivate recognition and understanding of opposing views within the political system, how it can promote peace, stability and integration in deeply divided societies, the importance of adapting deliberative democracy to local contexts, and the need for empirical investigation by researchers in order to contextualise assumptions about deliberation’s impacts.

You can access the collection here.

New Joint Editor-in-Chief for Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman Announced

Angela Last, Lecturer at the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment at the University of Leicester, has joined David Chandler and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos as joint Editor-in-Chief of the University of Westminster Press journal, Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman.

Dr Last is an interdisciplinary scholar who started off in Fashion, where she became interested in environmental and social justice issues in relation to design. After working outside academia for several years, she subsequently completed a PhD in Geography at the Open University, UK. Her research focuses on human-environment relations, and specifically the politicisation of these relations. This research necessitates continued interdisciplinary work, whether in teaching, research or outreach, and she will bring this experience to her work for Anthropocenes. For example, Angela has been working on environmental sound art events, fashion workshops, and taught on the MA in Art & Science at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London.

Her main aim in joining the journal is to forward the idea of ‘anthropocenes’ as a multiplicity of relations that humans have with their environment, kin, cosmos, or however they frame their relation, and not simply as ‘Anthropocene’ according to the current (still relatively ambiguous) geological interpretation. She notes, ‘the current planetary emergency requires many of our relations to change, which needs urgent discussion, and for this to be as geographically wide as possible.’ While traditional academic journals have some obvious limitations in terms of reach and economics, Dr Last envisages that Anthropocenes can make creative contributions to the debate by staging interdisciplinary conversations and publishing these in a variety of formats.

Anthropocenes is a fully open access journal, with no fees to authors or readers. It launched in 2020 and has readers in over 130 countries. Articles publish as they are ready to avoid delays in making work publicly available, and the journal actively encourages multimedia and non-traditional submissions including creative writing, audio and visual work. The journal is currently open for submissions – find out more at anthropocenes.net. You can follow Angela Last’s work on her blog Mutable Matter.

University of Westminster Press to partner with Michigan Publishing Services and Janeway Systems for Open Access Journals

London, UK and Ann Arbor, MI, USA – 10 December 2020

The University of Westminster Press and Michigan Publishing Services working with Janeway Systems digital journals publishing platform have reached an agreement whereby they will partner to publish UWP’s six scholarly journals from January 2021.

Andrew Lockett, Press Manager (University of Westminster Press) warmly welcomed the new arrangement: ‘Michigan are at the forefront globally of the innovation and development of academic library publishing services and together with Janeway represent an exciting opportunity for UWP’s activities to be part of the development of sustainable public open source scholarly communication infrastructure. We are excited at the prospect at learning from and working with two innovative teams that share our values and to further enhancing the impact, reach and quality of our new and established journals’.

Jason Colman, Director of Publishing Services (Michigan Publishing) said: “We’re delighted to form this new partnership with the University of Westminster Press and Janeway, who share our commitment to an open and community-owned future for scholarly publishing. We look forward to seeing UWP journals made available to readers on Janeway very soon.”

“We’re very excited to be working with the University of Westminster Press” added Andy Byers, Senior Publishing Technology Developer at Birkbeck, University of London, “and look forward to expanding our existing relationship with Michigan Publishing.”

Additional Information
As one of the UK’s first fully open access university presses, the University of Westminster Press has been publishing open access journals since 2015 and open access books since 2016 achieving 850,000 views and downloads thus far for its publications in the process across its books and journals. It has published 170 new journal articles with an archive of 719 articles publishing 33 new books and 6 policy briefs launching the new journals Silk Road – A Journal of Eurasian Development, Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman and (forthcoming in 2021), Active Travel Studies. Its 2020 catalogue recently released was its third and its book publishing and general website continues in its current form with Ubiquity Press.

Michigan Publishing Services is a team of librarians and publishing professionals offering a suite of publishing services to the University of Michigan community and several other partners in the UK, US and worldwide. Its Fulcrum platform offers infrastructure and services that enables the full richness of author’s research output to be published in discoverable, durable, accessible and flexible form. From 2021 Michigan Publishing Services will migrate its own, more than 40 mostly open access journals, to the Janeway Digital Platform.

Janeway is a digital platform designed for publishing scholarly research material. Launched in 2017, the platform provides a workflow for the submission, processing and presentation of scholarly materials. It was developed by Professor Martin Eve, Mauro Sanchez and Andy Byers at the Centre for Technology and Publishing, Birkbeck, University of London, and the Open Library of Humanities, UK. Janeway is currently used by many publishers and libraries including Michigan Publishing Services, UCL Press, the Open Library of Humanities, Huddersfield University Press, Iowa State Digital Press, the University of Essex, the University of West London and California Digital Library to host its recently launched Preprint service Eartharxiv.

UWP, #openaccessweek2020: a raincheck

At the end of #openaccessweek2020 honoured to reflect that since September 2015 open access imprint @UniWestPress has published 254 unique editor/authors in our journals and books from 34 countries. That’s 32 books (incl. edited), 6 policy briefs and 5 distributed titles; 131 new journal articles also making available 719 archive journal articles.

Today we have just had certain confirmation that we have hit over 750,000 views and downloads for our publications already, close to a 50% increase in less than a full year. Over 20% of UWP’s unique authors are University of Westminster authors with on the other hand 58% of contributions originating from outside the UK. Many authors (75) have worked with us more than once. One of our journals Silk Road is based at Westminster International University in Tashkent.

It’s not all about quantities. Our books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese and (shortly) Turkish; one has won a Latin American prize. We’re proud of our diverse range of authors from the global south, Europe, from all corners of the English-speaking world, feminist writers and early career research authors, the academic stars of the future as well as – Jurgen Habermas, Antonio Negri and Jean-Luc Nancy contributors to our list.

It would not have been possible without support of our authors and editors @UniWestminster @UniWestLib @ubiquitypress the Research Environment and Knowledge Exchange Team at Westminster and the UWP editorial board.

UWP – a timeline in figures

Reaching 300,000 views and downloads on 18th of January 2019, UWP has grown its readership briskly in the last two years across books and journals. Here are the landmarks as they were recorded.

18 January 2019: 300,000 views and downloads reached

8 October 2018: 250,000 views and downloads reached

5 March 2018: 200,000 views and downloads reached

29 March 2017: 100, 000 views and downloads reached

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