Exciting times for the Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA) - UKSG

"With the coming of digital publishing and new technologies, increasing awareness of the benefits of open access publishing and growing criticism of the practices and profits of commercial publishers, more universities have launched their own publishing organisations and initiatives over the last decade. OIPA was officially launched in 2023 with 10 members, in part as a response to this significant growth of university-based open access publishing. This new community of practice now forms vital infrastructure supporting non-profit open access publishing in universities and offers authors important alternative publishing venues. OIPA members represent a broad range of publishing within universities, from library staff tasked with running individual open access journals or hosting platforms, to smaller university presses, all supporting academics to publish open access. Our network also includes publishers who are ‘born’ open access – i.e., only publish this way – as well as those transitioning to, or striving for, fully open access models and hybrid models. 

Two of the founding members of OIPA, Philippa Grand (LSE Press) and Suzanne Tatham (now University of Southampton) published an article in the Times Higher Education in March 2025 outlining why open institutional publishing matters, including the fact these publishers are mission-driven and non-profit, offer authors publishing experiences tailored to their projects and with care, and seek to drive change in scholarly communications in championing principles and ethics in publishing over revenue generation and profits.

2025 saw a significant increase in our membership, with now almost 30 members, showing the continued importance and vibrancy of open institutional publishing.  We were delighted to welcome several new members, including Lancaster University Open Journals, Salford Open Journals, Sheffield Hallam Academic Press, Shortform Hosting at Oxford (SHOx), University of St Andrews Journal Hosting Service, the University of Southampton Press and the University of Warwick Press, and Brown University Digital Publications in the US as our newest Associate Member. Find out more about our members and the publishing opportunities they offer researchers here and in our new Members catalogue."