Taking back control: the new university and academic presses that are re-envisioning scholarly publishing | Impact of Social Sciences

"Yet many open-source and commercial platforms and tools are unknown to universities and academics interested in setting up a press, or require heavy customisation or significant financial investment. Bringing together more information about these tools and platforms – and developing new ones, where required – and testing them out to establish best practice will be essential. As such, the community professed a need for the development of a toolkit approach that will aid existing new university and academic-led presses, as well as those universities and academics that are thinking of setting up their own publishing initiatives. Such a toolkit will allow presses to adapt specific workflows, tools, and services to their own publishing platforms instead of having to adapt to existing platforms, which are often regulated or structured in a specific way. This toolkit, based on information collated from the communities themselves, could consist of how-to-manuals, best practice guidelines, standardised contracts and agreements, alternative FLOSS software able to support the production process, guidance on how to set up a press, legal advice, and guidelines for preservation and dissemination. This is something Jisc plans to develop in the coming year...."