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| Ubiquity Press | |
|---|---|
| Name | Ubiquity Press |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters | London |
| Publications | Journals, books, open access monographs |
| Topics | Scholarly publishing, open access |
Ubiquity Press Ubiquity Press is a London-based scholarly publisher founded in 2012 offering open access journals and books. It operates within the international publishing ecosystem alongside organizations such as Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press. The company has engaged with actors across academia and policy, including Plan S, Wellcome Trust, European Commission, Research Councils UK, and Jisc.
Founded in 2012 by individuals with backgrounds linked to University College London, City, University of London, Queen Mary University of London, and Imperial College London, the publisher emerged amid debates involving Open Access advocates and initiatives like SPARC, PLOS, eLife, Hindawi, and Taylor & Francis. Early activity intersected with programs run by Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Research Libraries UK, Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, and funders including Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council. Expansion occurred as open access mandates evolved through instruments such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England directives and the Plan S roadmap, prompting interactions with institutions including University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Stanford University, and University of California systems.
Ubiquity Press has offered article processing charge models and institutional publishing platforms, positioning itself among providers like Frontiers Media, MDPI, SAGE Publishing, and De Gruyter. Services provided included journal hosting, editorial management, peer review infrastructure, copyediting, typesetting, metadata services for CrossRef, and preservation workflows compatible with CLOCKSS and Portico. Clients and collaborators spanned academic societies such as the Royal Society, the British Psychological Society, the American Chemical Society, and scholarly groups including Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE. The firm also targeted research-intensive institutions exemplified by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Yale University, and University of Toronto for publishing partnerships.
The publisher adopted open access licensing practices aligned with Creative Commons frameworks and engaged with license models comparable to those used by PLOS, BioMed Central, Wiley Open Access, and SpringerOpen. Licensing options referenced Creative Commons Attribution, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial, and compatibility with mandates from funders such as the Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, and the European Research Council. Deposit and archiving workflows were designed to support compliance with institutional repositories at ETH Zurich, Max Planck Society, CNRS, Karolinska Institutet, and national systems like SHERPA/RoMEO.
The publisher attracted scrutiny in contexts where debates around open access, APC models, and editorial practices involved stakeholders like Retraction Watch, COPE, Beall's list, Faculty of 1000, and Scholarly Kitchen. Criticism often referenced comparisons to business practices at Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Springer Nature regarding pricing transparency, sustainability, and service quality asserted by representatives from University College London, University of Edinburgh, King's College London, Harvard Library, and advocacy groups such as Right to Research Coalition. Investigations and commentary in outlets connected to The Guardian, Times Higher Education, Nature, Science (journal), and The Lancet discussed concerns over rapid expansion, APC policies, and editorial governance.
Collaborative activity included work with infrastructure providers and consortia like CrossRef, ORCID, Jisc, DOAJ, CLOCKSS, and Portico. Institutional agreements were reported with universities including University of Leeds, University of Manchester, University of Bristol, University of Glasgow, and University of Southampton, and with learned societies such as Royal Historical Society, Institute of Physics, Royal Geographical Society, and British Academy. The publisher engaged in discussions with funders and policy bodies including Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, European Commission Horizon 2020, and philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Ubiquity Press published a portfolio of peer-reviewed journals and open access monographs spanning fields represented by institutions such as London School of Economics, UCL Institute of Education, Imperial College London, King's College London, Durham University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Brown University, Columbia University, and University of Pennsylvania. Titles addressed scholarly communities aligned with professional organizations including American Historical Association, Modern Language Association, American Sociological Association, Royal Society of Chemistry, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Indexing and abstracting aimed for inclusion in services run by Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed Central, Google Scholar, and CrossRef.
Governance structures reflected practices seen at independent academic publishers and began with leadership that engaged with boards and advisory panels resembling those at PLOS, eLife, Frontiers, and university presses such as Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Ownership and investment activity intersected with entities active in scholarly infrastructure, drawing attention from academic administrators at University College London, King's College London, and regional funders like Research England. Senior staff had professional networks connected to Jisc, STFC, Wellcome Trust, UK Research and Innovation, and international consortia including the European University Association.
Category:Open access publishers