Scottish Universities Press: Looking back at 2024
In this post we will look back at an incredibly exciting year for Scottish Universities Press (SUP)! After a busy start-up period, 2024 is the year that we transitioned to become a fully functioning open access press. Our first book, Conversations with Tim Ingold: Anthropology, education and life by Tim Ingold, Robert Gibb, Philip Tonner and Diego Maria Malara, published on 22 October during International Open Access Week and we ended the year with an expansion to accept submissions from all UK HEIs. We are incredibly grateful to our member libraries for their enthusiasm and commitment to SUP, it is through collaboration that we have achieved these important milestones. In 2025 we look forward to expanding to publish textbooks, and have a further 12 books in the pipeline. Below are some of our 2024 highlights:
January: The first full manuscripts were delivered and sent out for a final round of peer review. We also joined Crossref to ensure that all SUP books are registered with DOIs. Conversations also began on expanding beyond publishing books and developing future offers for journals, textbooks and society publishing.
February: We established our cataloguing workflow with the library team at the University of St Andrews and they will create high quality MARC records for SUP books. This is a great example of how member libraries contribute to the development of SUP through in-kind contributions.
March: We were delighted to welcome Queen’s University Belfast as a new SUP member library. We also held a stall at at Edinburgh Napier University’s Researcher Skills Forum, as well as presenting at RLUK 2024 on Developing equitable infrastructures.
April: Paul Clarke took up the post of Commissioning Editor, bringing a wealth of experience in commissioning monographs and in developing strong relationships with authors. We also ran a breakout session at the UKSG conference, Developing Scottish Universities Press: a practical guide to library-led publishing.
May: The Editorial Board accepted the first manuscripts for publication following peer review. The first book, Conversations with Tim Ingold: Anthropology, education and life, entered production. SUP staff attended the ALPSP University Press Redux in Edinburgh, which was a great opportunity to meet staff from other university presses and learn about the landscape. Gillian Daly also presented at the CONUL 2024 conference.
June: We are a proud founding member of the Open Institutional Publishing Association, a community of practice for open access publishing at UK institutions. We helped organise the 2024 OIPA Symposium held on 10 June in York, with a fantastic set of speakers and useful workshops on publishing and advocacy skills. You can read all about it here. We also joined the Thoth Plus metadata service which includes dissemination of SUP books to platforms such as DOAB, OAPEN Library, JSTOR, Project Muse, Google Books and many more, ensuring our books are highly discoverable.
July: Plans were approved to extend the SUP publishing offer to researchers at all UK HEIs. This month we also further developed our marketing and launch plans for our first books.
August: The second SUP title, Digital editing and publishing in the twenty-first century edited by James O’Sullivan et al., entered production and the front cover design was finalised. Two further proposals were accepted for publication at the Editorial Board meeting. After conversations with key partners and stakeholders, plans were put in place to accept proposals for textbooks in the first quarter of 2025. More information about this will be released soon.
September: The final manuscript for SUP’s third book, The vow of stability: An ethnography of monastic life by Richard Irvine at the University of St Andrews, was delivered for production. In governance news, all member institutions started transitioning to the SUP Community Interest Company (CIC), according all members equal status in the running of Press and protecting the not-for-profit status. Jeanette Castle, University Librarian at the University of the West of Scotland and SCURL Vice Chair, became a director of the CIC.
October: This month we published our very first book, Conversations with Tim Ingold: Anthropology, education and life by Tim Ingold, Robert Gibb, Philip Tonner and Diego Maria Malara. We held a lively and engaging fireside chat with the authors to launch the book, available to watch here. The SUP platform was launched with support from the University of Edinburgh Library and the SCURL shared hosting service, thanks to the team there! Launch plans were coordinated across SUP members, harnessing the power of our network to present the title to a wider range of potential readers through in-person events and displays across participating libraries. Gillian also presented at the British Library Open and Engaged Conference, Delivering a Community-led Open Infrastructure.
November: SUP opened to submissions from researchers at all UK HEIS. SUP also met with the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA) to discuss ways to collaborate. We joined the CLOCKSS archiving network to preserve SUP books for the future.
December: We are developing plans to support Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and have been working with the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH). Paul delivered a presentation for SGSAH fourth year students on turning a thesis in to a monograph in Dundee. We also spoke to ECRs at SRUC and plan to run a survey on ECR needs in 2025.
The Editorial Board met for the final time in December 2024, with Professor Morris Altman stepping down as chair after a two year term. Many thanks to Morris for his support in the start-up period! Professor Rhona Brown from the University of Glasgow will step up to the role of chair from 2025, with Dr Janette Pow from Edinburgh Napier University taking on the role of vice-chair.
Looking forward to 2025
In 2025 we will publish seven more books, with Digital editing and publishing in the twenty-first century publishing in February and The vow of stability publishing in May. Please visit our forthcoming titles page for full details. The other five books cover subjects including archaeology, children’s play, accessible music making, surveillance studies and music in the rural creative economy. We will release details soon!
The other main focus will be our extension to publish textbooks, with an open call for content in the first quarter of 2025. We know that this is an area of great interest to libraries, looking for a high quality but affordable route to providing textbooks for their staff and students. We will also scope out an offer for journals in the second half of 2025.
As always we will continue to investigate ways that we can best support researchers at our institutions. Please do get in touch with any questions.
Please note that SUP will close from Monday 23 until Monday 6 January. We hope that you all have a lovely festive break!