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At Ubiquity Press we believe that academic publishing is about achieving the widest possible dissemination of research, with the maximum benefit for authors, and in a transparent, cost-effective manner. If you are interested in starting or transferring an existing journal, or publishing a book, please contact us and we will be happy to explore this with you. We recognize the value of research data and software, and provide important solutions to enable their publication. We are also a part of Ubiquity, which provides partner press infrastructure and services to university presses and library publishing programs.
Ubiquity Press journals are published as 100% open access, with Creative Commons CC-BY licenses. Highly cost-effective, all journals have low and transparent APCs. This allows institutions to make better use of their funds, makes open access publishing affordable (especially for disciplines with less funding such as the humanities), and allows societies to replace subscription income.
We provide dedicated editorial support to all journals, and ensure that they are operated with a high degree of integrity, with full anti-plagiarism checking, rigorous peer review, and open data publication. For more details please see our Research Integrity page. Ubiquity Press is proud to be a supporter of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
In many cases the journal running costs are covered by the owning institution, society, or via grants, creating a ‘diamond’ open access workflow. In cases where the owning organisation cannot fully finance the journal, the published authors’ institution or funder will be invoiced the Article Processing Charge (known as ‘Gold’ open access). Our standard Article Processing Charge (APC) starts at only £625 (c.€730, $740).
This model allows the journal to be completely sustainable. Ubiquity Press was born open and electronic, without legacy costs such as managing subscriptions and print distribution. Our platform makes use of open source software wherever possible, and all of our production work is done offshore by highly-skilled but cost-effective teams (see our FAQ for details of our outsourcing policy). We can therefore maintain a base APC that is far lower than many of our competitors. This provides a lower-cost alternative for authors, funders and universities, and means that library and research budgets can go further.
All Ubiquity Press journals include the ability to discount or waive the APC to those who do not have APC funding. Requests for a waiver must be received as part of the article submission, within the journal’s submission system. Requests received during or after the peer review process may not be accepted. Waiver requests will be assessed and discounts or full waivers will be granted based on financial need and availability to that journal. We ask that all authors (submitting author and all co-authors) contact their institutional department, library and funder (if applicable) prior to requesting a waiver so that confirmation can be provided that APC funds are not available. All journals will have details of how to request a waiver on their own website. In some cases, journals may have eligibility criteria that stipulates that authors receiving waivers must be located in lower-middle income countries, as defined by the World Bank. All decisions on waivers and discounts are made independently of the editorial process.
Ubiquity Press also offers an institutional agreement, via JISC. This agreement allows institutions to agree to pay the APC for their affiliated authors, whilst receiving a discount and reduced administrative burden. The author can then be completely removed from the APC invoicing and payment process.
In order to establish trust with authors, institutions and funders, we provide a transparent breakdown of how the APC is calculated. The framework used follows the structure created by the FAIR Open Access Alliance (FOAA. p3), as recommended by Plan S, thus ensuring that all Ubiquity Press journals are compliant with key open access funder requirements.
The table below shows the average APC breakdown for Ubiquity Press gold open access journals (2023 data). The list of ‘gold OA’ APCs for each journal can be found in this APC table.
| Discounts & Waivers | 19% |
| Journal Operations | 33% |
| Publication | 13% |
| Fees | 11% |
| Communication | 1% |
| General | 23% |
Journals with APCs provide waivers or discounts to authors who do not have funds available to them. The data includes all publications where no APC income was obtained via the author/their institution or funder. In such cases, the publisher may be covering the publication costs, or the journal's owning society may have paid for the APC directly.
Ubiquity Press does not outsource the operational parts of the platform. Whilst we use open-source software, we employ in-house developers to maintain and enhance the platform. Our developers contribute to the core open-source code base, as well as make customisations to the Ubiquity Press offering. The technical side of journal operations includes the maintenance and development of:
We provide all of our journals with editorial support, including an Editorial Account Manager and a range of digital support resources. This support ensures that editorial policies are being developed, implemented and followed, in line with industry best practice, and that the Editor in Chief and their editorial team/board have quick and efficient access to support regarding both editorial and technical issues. This editorial support covers a wide range of activities, including:
All Ubiquity Press journals receive a complete production and post-publication workflow, ensuring that the published articles are created to high standards and are disseminated and archived as widely as possible. This workflow may include:
A human element is always accompanying this service, with either the Editorial Account Manager or Publishing Editor assisting with issues around the submission, peer review, publication or post-publication that may occur.
Some journals choose to include fees that go back to the journal’s institutional/society owners. These fees do not go to Ubiquity Press, but are used to cover the costs of running the journal on the owner’s side, or to support the owning society more widely. Examples of such fees include:
Ubiquity Press has numerous methods of communicating about the journals that we publish as well as the open access movement and academic publishing in general. We have an in-house marketing team, who utilise outreach methods such as newsletters, social media, blog posts, community port updates, and conference/event sponsorship and attendance. The journal’s editorial account manager can also help to create and disseminate communications workflows for the journal in an effort to increase awareness.
There are costs to running a growing publishing company that are not directly linked to the journal or individual articles, but are essential to running the company. These include costs such as:
Ubiquity Press Metajournals provide a fully open access way to discover research resources that are spread across multiple locations and usually hard to find. Our meta papers reward authors for openly archiving their research datasets, software, bioresources and reports, through citation and impact tracking. By doing so they also enable new and more efficient research, new collaborations, and use by the public (e.g. for teaching and journalism). The following metajournals are currently available:
Ubiquity Press books are (full-text) peer reviewed and published fully open access, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license, as we believe that book authors should receive the maximum dissemination of their work. This is important for increasing the impact of research, in particular in disciplines where a high proportion of work is distributed in book form. Authors are permitted to select which licence they would prefer.
The books are free to read online and free to download in a variety of formats (currently PDF, EPUB and MOBI). Copyright is retained by the authors and we don't require any exclusive license.
Ubiquity Press books are disseminated widely, with our titles indexed in Google Scholar, Google Books, JSTOR, Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN), Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and unglue.it, as well as library suppliers, such as ProQuest (Serial Solutions), ExLibris (Primo Central) and EBSCO Discovery Service. The publications are integrated in WorldCat (OCLC) and BASE.
Hardcopies can be purchased through the normal bookseller outlets, often at well below average prices. As standard practice we can offer 30% of profits from print sales of the book to the author(s)/editor(s). Remaining profits are directed towards maintaining global distribution and indexing, and reinvesting into the platform to help reduce costs for authors wishing to publish on an open access platform.
We recognise that authors benefit from having their work disseminated as quickly as possible. Once a book has passed peer review and final copy has been supplied, Ubiquity Press undertakes to publish the book as quick as possible (usually within 2-4 months, depending on extent and complexity).
All individually authored items (i.e. books, chapters, data) are citable using DOIs. Citations are tracked, which enables authors/editors to take credit for their book publications in the same way they currently do with journal articles.
If you wish to submit a book proposal, please use our online book management system by clicking the button below (registration takes one minute). However, if you would like to prepare your proposal offline or prefer to send it by email, please send it to tim.wakeford@ubiquitypress.com and use our offline proposal form (Word file). Please complete all information on the form, or provide details as to why it cannot be provided, so that we are able to fully assess your proposal.
Our business model involves charging only for the work we actually do and it does not rely on print revenues for sustainability. Because of this, we release all content under a CC BY/CC BY-NC license, which enables maximum dissemination. Other publishers that rely on print revenue often use more restrictive licenses, limiting the reach and impact of the author's work, whilst also only selecting to publish 'sellable' titles.
Books are published with processing fees similar to those used for journals (in this case Book Processing Charges, or BPCs). As with our journal APCs, we can maintain BPCs, which are significantly lower than those offered by other publishers (this is particularly true when comparing CC BY options). The BPC is typically covered by a funder or institution. We strive to keep the BPCs as low as possible whilst retaining an excellent service for our authors.
For information on funders and institutions which make funds available for open access book publications visit our open access funds page. Please feel free to get in touch with us regarding such funds and we might be able to offer assistance or advice.
We offer custom publishing services to ensure that the BPC covers the services and costs included for each specific book and no more. This means that each BPC will be quoted individually, based on the specific book being proposed. Services range from camera-ready manuscripts that require reduced production tasks through to books that include our 'full service' options. Our standard, core service includes:
English language copyediting (CE) will also be added to our services as standard, however, this may be removed to reduce the BPC if the authors are able to provide high quality texts or arrange the copyediting themselves.
If you are interested in the camera-ready option, please get in touch.
In addition to the above, we offer optional book index creation (IN) services. The table below shows approximate BPC quotes (excluding VAT), based on the size of the book and services provided.
Please contact us for a quote by providing information on estimated word count, number of figures/tables and data/media items, services required and whether it is for an edited volume or monograph.
| 30,000 words | 100,000 words | 150,000 words | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1] Core service | £4,020 | £4,995 | £5,950 |
| 2] Core service + CE | £4,680 | £6,690 | £8,380 |
| 3] Core service + CE + IN | £5,190 | £8,000 | £10,270 |
*above prices should be taken as a guide only, as each BPC is constructed individually, based on the content and services required for the proposed book.
Libraries can download a complete set of MARC records for Ubiquity Press titles; so you won't need to catalogue the titles from scratch! If you wish to download the full set, just click on the button below.
Taking out a membership with Ubiquity Press is a great way for institutions and funders to demonstrate their backing of a more sustainable and affordable open access model. We offer a simple membership model that institutions can sign up to, helping to reduce the cost of APCs and administrative burden whilst providing reassurance to authors that their submission is fully covered. On top of our naturally low APCs, any institution that signs up to a publishing agreement with Ubiquity Press will receive a 10% discount. Our broad subject coverage means that the benefits of open access publishing can be enjoyed by researchers in a wide range of subjects and disciplines. With an average APC of under £800 (full table available here), our institutional agreements aim to give maximum value to institutional libraries.
Ubiquity Press offers this agreement to UK-based institutions via JISC. Institutions that wish to know more about the agreement but are not members of JISC should contact brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com for more information.
Research funders can sign agreements with Ubiquity Press to make it easier for researchers involved in funded project to publish open access and to lower overall costs.
Whether your society is small, with 2-3 journals, or has a large portfolio of journals and books, Ubiquity Press can provide it with a fully re-branded, professional publishing presence. We provide you with a fully open access service to ensure the widest possible dissemination and impact of your members’ work, while also offering you a range of ways to continue to earn vital revenue from its operation. As our base APCs and BPCs are highly cost-efficient, societies can afford to charge a fee on top of this to generate income, while still remaining price competitive. To find out more about hosting your society’s publishing operations with Ubiquity Press, please contact our team.
We are a part of Ubiquity, which provides partner press infrastructure and services to university presses and library publishing programs. The partner presses also become members of the Ubiquity Partner Network, not only achieving an economy of scale through shared infrastructure and services, but also cooperating with one another and having a say in the governance of Ubiquity overall though representation on the Partner Advisory Board.