Launched in June 2015 as part of UCL’s commitment to open research and scholarship, UCL Press provides scholars with the opportunity to publish their monographs, journal articles and textbooks via open access, meaning that they are free to download online anywhere in the world.
UCL Press broke the mould as the UK’s first fully open access university press and over the last ten years has published over 380 scholarly monographs, 11 textbooks and has built a portfolio of 15 scholarly journals.
The pioneering Open Access (OA) programme spans many of the major academic disciplines, from history to philosophy and the sciences to anthropology.
With global collaboration in mind, UCL Press publishes not only UCL authors but also independent scholars and authors from other academic institutions around the world.
UCL Press’s global reach extends to 242 countries and territories, with the United States topping the list of countries with the highest number of downloads, followed by the UK, then India.
The most downloaded title in the UCL Press list continues to be How the World Changed Social Mediaby UCL Professor of Anthropology Daniel Miller and a collective of eight other global anthropologists. The title has been downloaded over 930,000 times in over 227 countries and territories since its publication in 2016.
More recently, UCL Press has also established an open access textbooks programme to provide free, high-quality digital textbooks for students.
Books published by UCL Press have won critical acclaim, including Geographies of Solar Energy Transitions edited by Siddharth Sareen and Abigail Martin, which won the American Energy Society’s Award for Best Edited Book. A Contemporary Archaeology of London’s Mega Events by Jonathan Gardner also won the London Archaeological Prize for the best book about London archaeology.
Marking the occasion, Dr Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost (Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science) and Chief Executive of UCL Press, said: “From the start, UCL Press was about breaking down barriers. Traditional academic publishing often locks knowledge behind paywalls, with monographs costing academic institutions and the public money and selling just a few hundred copies.
“UCL Press flipped this model of publishing on its head. It was the UK’s first fully open access university press, making OA publishing more accessible to both early career researchers and experienced scholars alike.”
As part of the university’s commitment to an open science future, UCL Press receives funding from UCL to support its open access publishing model and deliver global impact for its publications.
A celebratory 10th Anniversary panel discussion, featuring speakers from the worlds of universities and publishing will take place on Tuesday 10th June 2025.
