University of Toronto Press (UTP) and the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) proudly announce that they will continue to make leading scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences freely available online, by publishing them as open access (OA) digital editions. As part of this renewed partnership, UTL agreed to increase the number of OA publications that they will fund annually, from three to five monographs. Starting in 2021/22, the second phase of this collaboration will run for a three year period, ending 2023/24.
UTP and UTL have also revised the terms to make the OA program accessible to a wider group of academic authors. The joint initiative first ran between 2019-2021, and focused exclusively on publication of monographs written by University of Toronto (U of T) faculty members. Of the five OA titles that will now be published every year, at least two will be by Black, Indigenous, or person of colour (BIPOC) authors, regardless of whether they are affiliated with UofT.
The first book to appear under UTP and UTL's renewed partnership will be Degrees of Dignity: Arab Higher Education in the Global Era by Elizabeth Buckner. Through a comparative analysis of higher education in eight countries in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, Buckner reveals how policy models are implemented, with often complex results, in countries throughout the region. Degrees of Dignity is slated to appear in January, 2022.
UTP and UTL's renewed partnership is modeled after similar collaborative efforts like that of TOME: Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem, a joint initiative of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of University Presses (AUP) in 2017. All of the monographs that UTP-UTL publish as OA editions will be vetted in terms of the high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship that UTP is renowned for publishing.
UTP will continue its participation in TOME and will also publish and distribute print editions of the works selected for this OA initiative as they have done with OA titles published as part of the Knowledge Unlatched initiative.
UTP has also agreed to extend the reach of these books by making them openly available through the University of Toronto Press Open Monograph Collection along with Scholars Portal and other partners.
Open access monographs will continue to be available for purchase in print from UTP.
For more information and updates on UTP publications visit utorontopress.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
If you are interested in making your work open, please visit: utorontopress.com/ca/for-book-authors
Contacts
Lynn Fisher, Vice President, Book Publishing
University of Toronto Press
lfisher@utorontopress.com
Graeme Slaght, Acting Head, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office
University of Toronto Libraries
graeme.slaght@utoronto.ca
About
University of Toronto Press is the largest scholarly press in Canada and one of the most respected university presses in North America. Founded in 1901, UTP consists of a book publishing division, a journal publishing division, a book distribution service which provides book distribution services to more than 70 publishers, and bookstores on the three campuses of the University of Toronto. It publishes close to 200 scholarly books and undergraduate course books per year and more than 40 journals directed at an audience of scholars, students, and libraries.
The University of Toronto Libraries system is the largest academic library in Canada and is ranked sixth among peer institutions in North America. The system consists of 40 libraries located on three university campuses: St. George, Mississauga, and Scarborough. This array of college libraries, special collections, and specialized libraries and information centres supports the teaching and research requirements of over 280 graduate programs, more than 60 professional programs, and about 700 undergraduate degree programs. In addition to more than 15 million volumes in 341 languages, the library system currently provides access to millions of electronic resources in various forms and over 31,000 linear metres of archival material. More than 150,000 new print volumes are acquired each year. The Libraries' data centre houses more than 500 servers with a storage capacity of 1.5 petabytes.