Every day, university presses worldwide step up to educate and enlighten, motivate and inspire, support and act.
During University Press Week 2024, we explore the myriad ways our community’s publications and platforms give context to current issues and events, offer solutions to global challenges, and present diverse voices in a broad range of disciplines. It’s not hard to see how the work of these mission-driven publishers helps all to stride forward with purpose.
This week, Liverpool University Press will be looking at what we do to #StepUP starting with a focus on our work with Early Career Researchers in this blog post. Make sure to check out blog posts from other university presses in the Association of University Presses’ (AUP) UP Week blog tour and browse the #StepUP gallery and reading list here.
Starting in Editorial, our Books Commissioning Editors have a lot of experience in advising first-time authors on the process of converting a thesis into a monograph. As well as providing clear guidance to individual authors at every stage of the publication process, they also regularly present on this topic to groups of ECRs at conferences or via online events.
Related to this, we launched our Trailblazers initiative in March 2024 with the libraries of Lancaster University, University of Liverpool, and University of Salford. The project is built on foundations of institutional collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Trailblazers is a thriving Open Access initiative for the rising stars of their disciplines, combining OA publication to maximise the opportunity for impact from early career research, with a series of author boot camps, which equip Early Career Researchers with the knowledge and skills to support the publication of their work throughout their careers. The first cohort of Trailblazers has now been selected and the initiative now invites other libraries to join and support ECRs from their own institutions to publish their first monograph Open Access.
To register your interest, please contact Alison Welsby, Editorial Director at LUP awelsby@liverpool.ac.uk. The deadline for expressions of interest is Friday 29th November.
Find out more about Trailblazers >
Continuing on the Open Access theme, LUP’s Open Access Author Fund was created to support Open Access publications by Early Career Researchers in the humanities and social sciences. LUP authors may donate all or part of their royalties to the Fund and LUP will match all contributions. The establishment of the Fund is a response to the challenges faced by early career scholars as Open Access becomes increasingly important for researchers, research funders and readers. Earnings from the Fund are match-funded by LUP and allocated to a rigorously peer-reviewed publication. Publishing decisions are taken by the Press’s editors with input from academic advisors and are based solely on scholarly merit.
Modern Languages Open is partly supported by the Liverpool University Press Open Access Author Fund. As part of this Fund, there are a small number of waivers available each year to cover MLO article publication fees for ECR authors. If you wish to apply for one of these waivers, please state this on the submission of your article and contact the relevant Section Editor to indicate your interest in an ECR waiver.
Learn more about the Open Access Author Fund and get involved >
Learn more about the MLO waiver >
As part of LUP’s 125th anniversary this year, we offered 10 Early Career Researchers a bursary towards conference attendance through a range of partner societies. This contribution helped ECRs across a variety of disciplines attend a key conference in their area. When planning our anniversary celebrations, giving back to the academic community was high up on our agenda and supporting ECRs has long been important to us.
Learn more about our anniversary celebrations >
Stay tuned for a full recap blog post on all of the ECRs we supported with this initiative throughout our 125th anniversary year >
Finally, another initiative we are working on has involved stepping up in collaboration with some of our fellow university presses. Open Access is becoming ever more important for researchers, research funders and readers. With limited resources available for Gold Open Access, early career researchers face significant barriers. They must compete with established scholars while they build a successful track record of publication, their employment contracts may be short-term, or otherwise less secure than those of their more senior scholars, and they are more likely to have heavy teaching commitments. At the same time, they are unlikely to have been eligible for research leave and are engaged in learning a new career. This risk of inequality is particularly acute within the Humanities and Social Sciences, where funded research (and associated funding for Gold OA publication) is the exception, and monographs remain dominant as research outputs. To combat this, in 2022 we announced the new OpenUP initiative with five other University Presses from the UK: Bristol University Press, Edinburgh University Press, Manchester University Press, UCL Press, and University of Wales Press.
The first of our titles as part of this initiative published in June of this year: Desire and Disunity: Christian Communities and Sexual Norms in the Late Antique West by Ulriika Vihervalli who is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool.
Learn more about this book and read Open Access >
Find out more about the OpenUP initiative >
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