By Christina Lenz, Managing Editor of Books at Stockholm University Press and Secretary in the AEUP board
The workshop “Keeping up with the standards” was held in Riga 5-6 June 2018, by the Association of European University Presses (AEUP). The host was RTU Press (Riga Technical University Press). Participants, a total of 28, came from many different European countries, such as Armenia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
E stands for Europe – joint missions
Margo Bargheer, chair of AEUP, held an introduction about why there is a need for European university presses to meet and work together on standards for university presses.
E in AEUP stands for Europe, and as a press in Europe we all have our different conditions, diversity in languages, laws, cultures, research disciplines etc., but we aim for joint missions stated in AEUP’s “Seven Statements on European University Presses.”
Margo mentioned initiatives such as HIRMEOS and OPERAS, where many presses are participating, as well as AEUP. There are so many things we can actually do together and learn from each other.
After the introduction followed a presentation from the host, RTU Press and from participating university presses – all with focus on different types of standards for open-access publishing of books and to some extent journals.
Discussions on different aspects of standards and exchange of experience
Four sessions followed on different themes with input from experts and the first results from the AEUP survey concerning reviewing and quality control, production and dissemination (survey sent in advance of the event to European university presses) for the following discussions.
Abigail Murdy from Ubiquity Press talked about peer review and editorial processes. Dominique Roux and Edith Cannet from Numédif-Métopes about how to create XML-files and work with a XML-based workflow and Bozana Bokan from Public Knowledge Project (PKP) about how to make the publication available, what we all need to think about, which is much more that to just publish the book on a website.
XML-workshop in collaboration with Métopes, HIRMEOS, and OPERAS
Many participants were interested in learning more about creating XML files. A concrete proposal, an outcome, was to organize a workshop for AEUP members in December in collaboration with Métopes, Hirméos, and OPERAS.
Stockholm University Press host of AEUP’s first conference 2017
Last year, AEUP had the conference ‘Going Digital in Europe, joining forces in scholarly publishing’, which was hosted by Stockholm University Press at Stockholm University Library. It was the first event organized by the AEUP Board.
Masaryk University Press host for next year’s AEUP conference in Brno
The Riga workshop was the second event and next year there will be a conference in Brno in Czech Republic, where Masaryk University Press will be the host.
Keeping up with the standards
All participants were active and did a lot of networking. We had interesting discussions, different opinions and examples of i.e. peer review processes, how to achieve the most and widest possible dissemination of each publication, the benefits of DOIs, ORCIDs, the value of public relations, social media and marketing, etc.
To sum up – European European University Presses continually need to meet, discuss and exchange experiences to be able to keep up with the standards.
Participating university presses, institutions and organizations
Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l‘homme, German Historical Institute Paris, Göttingen University Press, Hamburg University Press, Masaryk University Press, KIT Scientific Publishing, Leuven University Press, Septentrio Academic Publishing, Stockholm University Press, TU Berlin University Press, University of Groningen Press, Vilnius University Press, Yerevan State University Publishing House
CNRS (The National Center for Scientific Research), Malmö University, Métopes, Ubiquity Press, Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Rezekne Academy of Technologies, RTU Press (Riga Technical University Press
Stockholm University Press Blog 