The document summarizes a presentation by Brian Hole, the founder and CEO of Ubiquity Press. Ubiquity Press aims to disrupt academic publishing by providing infrastructure and support for academic societies and universities to publish open access journals and compete with large legacy publishers. Their business model offers low article processing charges of $400 and support for institutional branding, extended journal functionality, and research data publication to help universities and societies transition to open access models.

1. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Library Publishing Coalition webinar, 6 June 2014
Brian Hole, Founder and CEO
Disrupting academic publishing

2. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
To return control of publishing to academic societies and
universities, providing them with the infrastructure and support
to not only match but to outcompete the legacy publishers.
About Ubiquity Press
Background
Mission
 Spun out of University College London in 2012
 Researcher-led
 50+ years publishing experience
(BioMed Central, PLoS, Elsevier, IoP)
 Current staff of 13, office in London
 Comprehensive approach: journals,
books, data, software, wetware…

3. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
The Social Contract
of Science
• Validation
• Dissemination
• Further development
Scientific Malpractice
• Data
• Results
• Software
• Hardware, wetware…
#@%$#@
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Source: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2015

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5. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Academic publishing is going to change
 The UK has mandated open access publishing for all state funded research,
EU and US are likely to follow
 Academic societies want open access, but worry
about costs and losing subscription income
 Legacy publishers are unwilling and unable to lower fees for OA, so still
very expensive (average charge $3,000 per article published)
 Many want their own presses to make
publishing more affordable and for prestige
(although it is expensive and difficult to match
the legacy publishers’ systems)
Opportunity
Challenges

6. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress

7. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Our base Article Processing Charge (APC) is only $400
Societies can increase the charge to add income, and still beat legacy publishers on price

8. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
3 levels of support for universities
1 Memberships
- APC discount
- pre or post paid
3 University press
support
2 Ad hoc publishing

9. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Institutional branding

10. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Institutional branding

11. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Extended journal functionality

12. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Extended journal functionality

13. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Research data publication

14. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
Repositories
Modified from: XKCD

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Providing a solution for presses

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Peer review and cascading content

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Research integrity
Full anti-plagiarism checking
Provision for open research data and software
archiving with all publications
Rigorous peer review
Editorial guidance and training
Provision for open peer review
COPE membership for all editors
Close links with society’s ethics committee

19. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
The Ubiquity Partner Network
The Max Planck Digital Library
Six academic presses have signed
University of Westminster
Stockholm University
Universities of Cologne and Munich
The Open Library of the Humanities
The University of Tromsø
10 more in negotiation, including US

20. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress
For any questions, please contact
brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com
Ubiquity Press website: http://www.ubiquitypress.com
Koh, A. 2012. Open Access Ahoy! An Interview with Ubiquity Press. The Chronicle of
Higher Education. Available: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ubiquity/43312
More information