UWA Publishing to become ‘hybrid’ press, management to be ‘re-aligned’

The University of Western Australia (UWA) has announced the university’s publishing arm will become a ‘hybrid’ publisher, and ‘internal management of UWA publishing will be re-aligned to the Library’.

Of the hybrid model, UWA vice-chancellor professor Amit Chakma said, ‘some titles will still be traditionally published while others will be published through open access, removing cost barriers to UWA research and enabling greater community and worldwide access’.

‘We plan to publish more scholarly and nonfiction works which profile and share UWA’s research and academic strengths,’ said Chakma.

The university said the new hybrid publishing model would ‘be developed with oversight by a newly established Advisory Board and publishing decisions will be supported by a robust process of Editorial and Peer Review’.

The planned changes follow a design workshop held in early 2020 to decide on the press’s future publishing model after the university’s previous plans to entirely close the publisher, made public in late 2019, met with strong opposition.

While UWA’s announcement made no comment on implications for the publisher’s staff, a university spokesperson told Books+Publishing the realignment of the press would not affect UWA Publishing staff. The university said UWAP’s ‘current commitments continue with future publishing, including a number of titles contracted for delivery in 2021’, adding that manuscript subscriptions would reopen in early 2021 ‘with clear guidelines for authors about the content and genre focus for UWAP’.

The UWA Publishing 420-strong backlist remains available.

Category: Local news