Tag: open access journals

It’s all action at Active Travel Studies!

Trans experience in urban Brighton, new data from Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and the joys and struggles of Black male cyclists in London are just some of the latest active travel reports from the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy. For links to the podcasts, datasets and more, see below… You can read the ATS Journal here

Listen to Matt C. Smith discuss their research into trans and non-binary experiences in Brighton and Hove

ATA’s Rachel Aldred sat down with University of Brighton PhD researcher Matt C. Smith to discuss their investigation into trans and non-binary experiences in the urban spaces of Brighton and Hove. They have two specific research areas – analysing how trans features within planning policy in the city of Brighton and Hove and the experiences of trans and non-binary residents using creative mapping sessions.

Listen to the podcast or download the transcript here.

Rachel came across Matt’s work while listening to them present at the RGS-IBG research conference.

Matt’s first academic paper based on this research is now available!

Latest data on London’s Low Traffic neighbourhoods

Since the introduction of emergency Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) from March 2020, the Active Travel Academy (ATA) has been gathering data on LTNs in London. ATA is now making the latest version of the dataset available – it runs to November 2022 and includes both modal filters and LTN area maps. Read the blog to find out more and download the datasets.

New podcast episode on the joys and struggles of Black men cycling in London

Akwesi Osei, Transport Planner at Possible, discusses his recently published research into barriers to Black men cycling in London with Dulce Pedroso, long-distance cyclist and PhD researcher at the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy.

Link to the podcast and show notes/links here.

Read Akwesi’s journal article co-authored with Active Travel Academy’s Rachel Aldred here.

More than three million downloads and counting!

UWP publications have been downloaded more than three million times since the press‘s first publication in September 2015! 

This is a great achievement for a young, non-profit, OA university press, as Chair of the UWP Editorial Board Professor Pippa Catterall attests: “When the University of Westminster Press was founded in 2015 the aspiration was to share widely and freely ground-breaking analyses and research that critically engages with contemporary issues and challenges. We didn’t set ourselves targets, but achieving three million downloads in our first eight years would have been beyond our wildest dreams. What’s great is to also see the steady rise in the global reach of UWP and in the numbers accessing the work we have published.”

Our journals have been downloaded 1.9 million times, our books 1.35 million times and our content has been accessed on every inhabited continent across the globe – across more than 200 countries and territories.

The top five countries accessing UWP content are the USA, China, the UK, Ireland and Germany.

UWP is considered to be a New University Press, digital-first with open access as a key principle. It was established by a University steering group in 2014, hired its first part-time employee in February 2015 and published its journal issue in September 2015 and first book in October 2016. Eight years later it is going from strength to strength.

The most popular digital book is David Chandler and Christian Fuchs (eds) Digital Objects and Digital Subjects – with now over 150,000 downloads; the top-selling print title is Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave’s Can Music Make You Sick? ; and the Entertainment and Sports Law Journal is the most downloaded of UWP’s six journals.

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

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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.

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Call for Editors – Journal of Deliberative Democracy

The Journal of Deliberative Democracy is pleased to invite expressions of interest for the editorship of the journal. The new editorial team is expected to serve from April 2023 to April 2026. Multi-institutional and multi-country bids are encouraged but not required.

Established in 2005 (originally as the Journal of Public Deliberation) the journal is a forum for the latest thinking, emerging debates, alternative perspectives and critical views on deliberation. It publishes on all theoretical and methodological traditions and aims to broker knowledge between scholars and practitioners of citizen engagement.  Supported by the NewDemocracy Foundation, the International Association for Public Participation and the University of Westminster, the journal is fully open access, with no fees for authors or readers.  Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to publish in order to prevent delays in making content publicly available, and the journal also publishes themed Collections. 

The journal also publishes The Deliberative Democracy Digest blog.

Published by the University of Westminster Press, the journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, EBSCO and the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, and is included in Science Open.  It has a global audience across 190 countries and achieves average usage figures of over 16,000 per month.  This is an opportunity to oversee the next stage of development of this established and respected journal on a topic of increasing importance internationally.

General responsibilities of the Editor include:

  • Assisting in the peer review of scholarly submissions via the Janeway manuscript submission system
  • Overseeing new Collections
  • Being the focus of editorial activity in their speciality, working to enhance the journal’s visibility and reputation in the field
  • Actively recruiting authors to contribute to the journal
  • Assisting in the framing of journal editorial policy and development of the journal
  • Assisting in the appointment of other editorial team members, ensuring members reflect the diversity of the field and the range of perspectives within the community
  • Attending Editorial Board Meetings
  • Representing the journal and promoting it wherever possible

EOIs should not be more than 500 words and should cover the following topics:

  • Names and institutional affiliations of the proposed editorial team
  • Reasons for editing JDD
  • Priorities for the JDD in the next three years
  • Plans for the Deliberative Democracy Digest
  • Institutional resources available to support the journal (JDD is funded by the newDemocracy Foundation, IAP2 and the University of Westminster Press but identify possible support from your institution/s like teaching relief, financial and other in-kind resources).

The journal invites EOIs to be submitted on/by 30 October 2022. 

Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed in November.  

All enquiries and EOIs should be directed via email in the first instance to:

Philippa Grand

Press Manager

p.grand@westminster.ac.uk

Momentum at a New University Press: Revisiting the UWP Story
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Momentum at a New University Press: Revisiting the UWP Story

Reflecting on the merits of consistent publishing activity and its multiplier effects – some reflections on UWP’s growth on the Ubiquity Press blog from the University of Westminster Press: ‘Thanks a Million: Momentum at a New University Press‘

Interesting to compare with the view in September 2015 ‘Setting up a University Press in the Digital Age’ and again as recently as May 2019, ‘Setting up a University Press in the Digital Age Revisited‘ when a fuller UWP timeline was presented.

Still unconfirmed but possible we will be able to announce in July 1.25 million views and downloads to end June but we have to wait for the data which may or may not confirm that!

Andrew Lockett, Press Manager