Welcome to Opening the Future at Liverpool University Press

Posted by Tom Grady on June 8, 2021 at 0600

Liverpool University Press (LUP) are pleased to announce that we are adding to our existing Open Access (OA) publishing programmes with the launch of this innovative monograph funding initiative. Our Opening the Future programme offers libraries subscription/membership access to a choice of two modern language backlist series - and in return the we will use subscription fees to produce new OA monographs, freely accessible to all.

LUP has a long history of publishing in the Romance languages, and in open access publishing: we’ve explored many avenues, from BPCs to Green OA, and have been publishing OA books since 2010. This new Opening the Future programme sees us expand this commitment to disseminating research globally, and by harnessing the power of collective library funding no single institution bears a disproportionate burden.

Anthony Cond, Liverpool University Press CEO, said, “The strategic and societal importance of understanding different languages and cultures demands evolving models of research dissemination. The Opening the Future membership scheme is forward-looking and offers a new pathway to impact in a vital field, and Liverpool University Press is well-placed to be an early pioneer. We have been a publisher of open access books for more than a decade and a publisher of high quality Hispanic Studies research for more than a century. Now in 2021 Opening the Future will renew our commitment to open access in the modern languages.”

The programme and platform were initially devised and launched by Work Package 3 of the COPIM project - a partnership of researchers, librarians, publishers and infrastructure providers. WP3 lead, Professor Martin Paul Eve, based at Birkbeck, University of London, said “We’re really excited to be working with LUP on this launch. In October 2020 we established a similar programme with Central European University Press to give member access to (and fund new OA) books on post-Communist Europe and transitions to democracy; so we’re now seeing Opening the Future become a viable option for sustaining publishing in areas of research that span different cultures and the globe. Through this initiative, libraries will gain online access to excellent research, enhancing their collections in Latin American Studies, and contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone cultures. At the same time, their membership fees will enable Liverpool University Press to publish new monographs in these research areas but this time as open access and available to anyone all over the world”. Along with COPIM, LUP is partnering with LYRASIS to facilitate library membership participation in the USA and Canada.

If you’d like to know more about how your library can join Opening the Future, including fees and what books you will get access to, more information can be found on our package page. If you have OA funds, or if your library doesn’t need access to the backlist, you can still subscribe to an OA Supporter Membership. If you’d like to discuss this announcement or would like more information not answered in the FAQs then please contact Martin Paul Eve at martin.eve@bbk.ac.uk and Anthony Cond at a.cond@liverpool.ac.uk.