Out today in OA from meson press in the "Configurations of film" book series: Distributed Productivities Digital Transcreation and the New World Order of Cultural Production Ed. Vinzenz Hediger, Matthias Krings, Bertram Lang and Cornelia Storz What does pizza have in common with Afro Beats?

Join us online on 9 June for a timely transatlantic conversation about defending, celebrating and securing the future of the arts, humanities and social sciences. With colleagues from @acls1919.bsky.social, @artsandhums.bsky.social and @britishacademy.bsky.social. Book now: https://bit.ly/4dv1w9h

Join us in Brighton on 18th June for the 2026 @oipassoc.bsky.social Symposium! Info ⬇️ Panels cover the importance of non-profit open access publishing in the financial HE context and advocacy featuring @theblochian.bsky.social, @rmounce.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy and others + member lightning talks

Thothally Fresh - Launching Thoth 1.0 webinar - If you're a publisher looking to improve your #OpenAccess book metadata and distribution, join us online to kickstart your Thoth journey! 📍 Online event 🕒️ Wednesday 3 June • 3 PM - 4:30 PM GMT+1 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thothally-...

Very tough week here in Nottingham. 40% of academic posts in my School are being made redundant and the numbers are even higher elsewhere - modern languages and music are being cut completely. The scale of the HE crisis in the UK is almost impossible to comprehend.

The two MPs I've seen mentioned re. Burnham's return today are both women and it's very noticeable, especially in a party that's never had a female leader, that the speculation seems to be about which woman will give up their seat so the chosen guy can be ushered into the leadership.

Captain it's Wednesday

Nothing about universities or higher education at all. The managed decline continues. www.gov.uk/government/s...

'History provides a stark example for 2024-25: a 6 per cent increase in the Russell Group and a 5 per cent fall elsewhere. Since 2011-12, history enrolments have risen by 4 percent, but dropped 52 per cent in pre-92 institutions and 58 per cent in post-92 and alternative providers.' 3/4

📣 The first OIPA Newsletter is here! We’re excited to share OIPA's first newsletter. It's packed full of updates, member highlights and insights from across the community. 🔗 Read the newsletter: mailchi.mp/bf74d58f98df... ✉️ Sign up for future updates at oipauk.org/contact-us/

From Copim to WACREN: a librarian’s journey through global Open Access conversations - Open Book Collective obc.copim.pub/from-copim-t...

Another post in the @oabooksnetwork.bsky.social series on born #OABook publishers, this time from Croatia!

'The Morepress platform is available in Croatian & English, enhancing accessibility & making scholarly content easily available to both local & international readers. [...] All books are registered in CrossRef, which helps Zadar strengthen its presence among an international audience' #OAbooks

NEW POST | 'Morepress platform: Advancing Open Access Publishing at the University of Zadar' #OA The latest post in our series 'Born Open: Rethinking Prestige in Scholarly Book Publishing' is by Ivana Morić Filipović, Head of Publishing at Zadar: openaccessbooksnetwork.hcommons.org/2026/05/07/m...

Read this yesterday but still thinking about it today. A very interesting and haunting thread. (CW: suicide.)

We are dismayed by news regarding UG History, and other subjects, at Hertfordshire. This follows recent job losses at Essex and elsewhere, and makes clear the crisis in UK HE. The Society is in touch and working with historians at UoH. As ever, we invite contact from others affected #Skystorians

How can a small, scholar-led press publish experimentally? Francois van Schalkwyk (African Minds) reflects on the ‘Database as Book’ pilot ☑️ Collaboration ☑️ Peer review ☑️ Rethinking publishing workflows 🔗

Thread continues: "I am getting rejection emails for papers I didn't submit."

I get a lot of AI slop book marketing emails, but this is the first time I have ever been . . . mistaken for Jane Austen.

A very helpful, comprehensive introduction to and analysis of the recent British Academy 'Green' repository report and the looming issue of open access mandates for longer-form publications (aka books). 1/3

Join the mailing list and stay in touch with Copim -- the Open Book Futures project is concluding, but there is more to come from this group! #OAbooks #OpenAccess #WhatATeam

The Open Book Futures project may finish today, but the fantastic #CopimCommunity continues! OBF members are booked up well into 2026 so keep an eye on our socials for more info 👀 Join our new mailing list 👉 buff.ly/gP2Q4cw And look out for the final project report, coming soon! #OABooks 1/2

Hey Siri how do you say publish or perish in Latin

Thanks to @openbookpublish.bsky.social for sharing this piece on the rise of scammers utilising AI tools to undertake widespread outreach specifically targeting authors. 🤝 If any of our authors have questions or worries, reach out to our team: [email protected] medium.com/@claude.whit...

Unfortunately at some journals the only alternative to paying an unreasonable fee is to NOT GIVE YOUR ARTICLE TO THAT JOURNAL. Which no one wants to hear but has been the actual underlying answer to most publishing problems since before I started working in this field ~17 years ago.

I post a lot about my own writing, but I hope folks know I'm also the senior acquiring editor for Lever Press, an open access publisher funded by 50+ universities across the US, UK, and Europe. All our books are OA, no author fees, $1000 honorarium for your book, born digital, affordable print.

Flying the flag for#CopimCommunity in Germany 🧡

A good challenge these days is to look at how universities portray their humanities degrees to potential undergraduates. At the same time as core modules are being hollowed out and made identical to everywhere else, departments are barred from championing specific expertise and unique offerings.

You hope that 'a rising tide lifts all boats' as far as the success of community-led open access goes, but there are still striking asymmetries that it's important to address but that are difficult to tackle within a much bigger system.

The issue of prestige is v frustrating as a publisher, esp an indy OA publisher - the 'uni press' brand can automatically confer prestige, even when indy presses are a) also excellent & b) have innovated models & led on projects to build infrastructure that they & uni presses now find great value in

Really worth reading this post: the platform itself is an interesting collab b/w different unis and Stéphanie Vincent makes some excellent points about the tension between the 'symbolic' value of prestige and the different forms of recognition that UN@éditions offers. #Prestige #OAbooks #Publishing

We're delighted our first post comes from UN@ éditions, a #DiamondOA publishing platform founded in 2019: "Born-open presses and platforms such as UN@ are no longer experimental: they are already fully operational actors in scholarly communication." Read it here 👉 tinyurl.com/y22dxaz6

📚 New blog series: "Born Open: Rethinking Prestige in Scholarly Book Publishing". In this series, we'll spotlight #BornOA presses worldwide & hear how they build quality, value & recognition, often without author fees. 👉Read our intro post: tinyurl.com/mr3bnk77

This is why I will always bang on about open metadata, persistent identifiers, interoperability, and funding infrastructure. There is absolutely no need to rely on LLMs to tell you if an article is retracted or not if you can easily check the DOI of a paper against the Retraction Watch database.

The issue of prestige is v frustrating as a publisher, esp an indy OA publisher - the 'uni press' brand can automatically confer prestige, even when indy presses are a) also excellent & b) have innovated models & led on projects to build infrastructure that they & uni presses now find great value in

Perhaps I shld clarify: it was one of the larger born-OA presses (@uclpress.bsky.social) but a smaller press cf the commercials to which it was being compared There's an @oabooksnetwork.bsky.social blog series focusing on born-OA presses & prestige beginning soon, & some of the posts bring this up!

Listening to author of a book pub'd by a smaller #OA press speaking at the London OS Festival saying, to their surprise, the experience of publishing was better than w/a large/commercial press I hear this again & again - sthg we shld be making more of? @scholarled.bsky.social @oipassoc.bsky.social

Over 1,000 UK university job losses announced since January. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Want to know how to make #OpenAccess books accessible? Join this free webinar on 27 April & hear from @jofitz.bsky.social of @copim.bsky.social, Richard Orme of DAISY & James Rice of @whitehorsepress.bsky.social on the tools & strategies to help: openaccessbooksnetwork.hcommons.org/2026/04/16/h...

This has basically been going on since pre-pandemic. Amazon ate the middle (Borders, BN, etc) but mostly left the indies alone. Anyone who's surprised indie book stores are thriving hasn't been paying attention. NPR reported on this in 2018.

Blogging is painful but essential for preserving my work beyond my lifetime. I discuss the steps I take, from metadata to digital preservation, and why it's worth it. https://eve.gd/2026/04/19/the-necessary-pain-involved-in-blogging-if-you-want-your-work-to-be-preserved-beyond-your-lifespan/

The contributions to this issue highlight tensions in current open research discourse, but also reveal the many opportunities for discussions of openness to broaden out and encompass a greater variety of practices and applications across a range of disciplines. [3/n]

This timely and essential collection considers how dominant understandings of open research and open science relate to HSS disciplines and how they are resisted, asking if AHSS disciplines need their own conceptions of openness, or if OR itself needs to “humanise”. [2/n]

We at @jepub.bsky.social are excited to announce the publication of our new special issue on Open Research for the Humanities and Social Sciences, edited by Samuel Moore, Jenni Adams, and Miranda Barnes! journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/issue/45... [1/n]

Extremely relatable

Lovely to see @copim.bsky.social mentioned in this report on Switzerland's efforts to establish a national diamond open access consortium as "a paradigmatic example of scaling small": 0277.pubpub.org/pub/v2nne6u6... #OAbooks #OpenInfrastructure

The ambassador has declined to comment.

Yes we have seen this at @lsepress.bsky.social too

This is helpful from @openbookpublish.bsky.social - we’re also seeing some examples of this with our authors at @uolpress.bsky.social…