UJ Press has recently become a member of OASPA in the small professional publisher category, further enriching the growing community of members. To gain more insight into their recent affiliation with OASPA and to learn more about them, we conducted an interview with Wikus van Zyl, Manager of UJ Press.
Q. Tell us a bit about your organisation and the service it provides – and your role within it?
UJ Press is a scholarly press based at the University of Johannesburg Library, South Africa. We publish gold and diamond open access books and journals. We have 22 open-access journals on our journals platform, of which 18 are diamond open access. We have 195 titles live on our press site, of which 156 are open access. 24 of these were published as diamond open access. We publish our titles in PDF, EPUB, XML and Audio formats. I am the press manager, responsible for the sustainable and efficient running of the press.
Q. Why did you decide to join OASPA and what do you hope to get out of your OASPA membership?
UJ Press applied for OASPA membership as we wanted to be part of the open access conversation and meet colleagues who also work in the open access environment. We want to ensure that UJ Press is at the forefront of open access best practices and that our business model ensures sustainable open access publishing.
Q. How is your organization showing its commitment to making globally equitable participation in open scholarly communication a reality?
UJ Press decided from the beginning that we want to remove barriers to publishing and accessing published content. We therefore do not make access to funding a requirement for publication. We also decided to publish in a variety of South African languages. Our main drive is to publish quality research outputs in a variety of formats on as many platforms as possible. We also ensure that our publications are accessible to a variety of readers including visually impaired readers.
Q. What challenges must funders and institutions overcome to create incentive systems that treat open publishing practices as beneficial for career development?
In South Africa, access to funding is a major barrier to open access publishing. Emerging researchers do not have sufficient funding to afford the APCs and BPCs charged by international presses and they are therefore excluded from scholarly publishing avenues. Some universities have made open access funding available and it is assisting scholars in some way.
Q. How do you think OASPA can help mitigate those challenges?
OASPA can help mitigate these challenges by providing publishers with a compelling case for open access publishing that they can share with funders and institutions. This will help publishers to lobby for open access publishing and show the impact of open access publishing.
