rebirth of the university press as a place that runs a set of open access online journals.
Running journals on an ad hoc basis across universities is inefficient. By centralising resources in website maintenance and administration, a university could support several journals. The other main roles are those that are currently performed by academics for free anyway – reviewing, managing and editing the journal, organising special editions, etc.
The same universities are currently paying a considerable sum to publishers through libraries. By withdrawing some of this expense and reallocating it to internal publishing, then the university could cover these costs. In addition, the university gains kudos and recognition for its journals and the expertise and control is maintained within the university. If enough universities do this, each publishing four or more journals, then the university presses can begin to cover the range of expertise required.
This is, of course, happening at many universities, but it’s a piecemeal approach, often operating in the spare time of people with other jobs. One has only to look at the list of journals currently using OJS to see that it’s an approach that is growing. Universities may outsource the ‘back-office’ functions to a publisher like Ubiquity, while still maintaining control of the editorial function of the journals.
Frances Pinter of Knowledge Unlatched (n.d.) is seeking to create a library consortium to pay for the creation of open access publications (http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/about/how-it-works/). This model takes a global view and reflects that libraries are currently purchasing material produced by academics from third-party publishers, so a redefinition of this approach would be for the libraries to allocate those funds directly to the publication
